Making Things Happen in Fayetteville
Harvey Gilbert has shared another wonderful piece about how Rotary can really change lives.
Making Things Happen in Fayetteville, Arkansas
This is a true story about a wonderful guy and also a tale of how Rotary makes things happen. The story could start out like a common bar joke. .. “a Jew and an Arab walk into a room”,… but, it actually evolves into something else entirely.
A math teacher named Bill Feldman from Boston was looking for a job. In 1971, despite the unfamiliarity of settling where there was no Jewish community, he accepted a position in Arkansas as a math professor. Eventually, Professor Feldman became the head of the math department at the university and married a woman who converted to his religion.
They became observant, and over the next 30 years he participated so much in the activities of his small Reform Temple that he was elected President of the Temple. Eventually, after 30 years in their rented temple space, Bill spearheaded the congregation’s search for a permanent temple. The search was fraught with difficulties, and after several failures, they finally found a parcel of land that was suitable for them. However, the congregation could not afford both the land and then the construction costs of a temple. They raised one million dollars, but there was an additional million dollars that they couldn’t afford.
It was also in 1971, the same year Bill Feldman began his teaching career in Arkansas, that young Fadil Bayyari left his Palestinian village of Tulkarem on the West Bank to come to Roosevelt University in Chicago. After his time at the university, the next 30 years were eventful for Fadil. He found a sizable fortune with McDonald’s franchises in Los Angeles and Hawaii. He then developed construction skills with a company in Bahrain. He then married.
He and his wife decided to move back to the United Sates to raise a family. Mrs. Bayyari had fond memories of Arkansas vacations she had as a child so that is where they settled. Fadil’s construction company in Fayetteville, Arkansas near the University flourished and he was appointed to the regional planning board. An active member of the community, Fadil joined the local Rotary Club so that he could give something back to the community that had become his home.
One of the members in Fadil’s Rotary Club was a member of Bill’s temple. At a Rotary meeting, Fadil heard of the congregation’s efforts to build a new house of worship and he went to several board meetings where he met Bill. Fadil empathized with their mission, recognized the temple’s difficulties and thought that they could use his help. He offered to become the general contractor for the construction of the Temple without charging for his services. This saved the project over $250,000 and was the catalyst to make the job happen. The congregation called “Temple Shalom” – peace in Hebrew and linguistically close to the Arabic “Salaam” has committed itself to raising a million more dollars to endow programs assuring interfaith efforts.
If in the middle of the “bible belt” of the United States, a Muslim can make good things happen for a Jewish congregation, and provoke reciprocal generosity of spirit, maybe there is hope for all of us everywhere. Rotary made this happen.
The more complete story of these two men can be found on
www.nytimes.com/2007/10/06/us/06/relgion.html. The temple’s site is atempleofpeace.com