By Noam Rotstain
Growing up, some of the most magical stories I heard came not from books or movies, but from my grandmother, a proud Bukharian Jew who was raised in the winding alleyways of Samarkand and Dushanbe. Her tales of life in Central Asia were filled with colour and texture: stories of Muslim neighbours who watched each other’s children, food they’d bring their Muslim neighbours for Iftar, and how they would purchase the Jews’ “chametz” (non-kosher for Passover food) prior to Passover.
She spoke of a marketplace alive with aromas, where saffron and cumin mingled with the scent of Bukharian challah baking in courtyard ovens. She told me of neighbours who prayed in different languages but mourned and celebrated together. I remember one story in particular: when her older brother fell ill during a harsh winter in Dushanbe, it was a Muslim neighbour who crossed the snowy alley with a hot herbal remedy passed down through generations, insisting it be given “before the sun sets,” and long behold—it worked.
Those stories painted a picture of coexistence that wasn’t theoretical. It was lived. It was real. And for me, they became a seed—one that I didn’t realise had taken root until years later when the current fractured reality made me ache for better times to already come.
Fast forward to 2020: The signing of the Abraham Accords filled many of us with hope, and for me, a sense of mission. While diplomatic normalisation was historic, I kept thinking back to my grandmother’s world—one where normalisation wasn’t just a treaty; it was the sound of neighbours laughing across a courtyard. I founded TABI—The Abraham Bridge Initiative—to try and capture that spirit and carry it forward; to remind us that we are spiritual and even genetic cousins.
TABI is a regional student diplomacy project born out of the Shimon Peres Fellowship and Raphael Recinati international school. It connects young adults from Israel and Abraham Accords nations through dialogue, storytelling, cultural exchange, and policy collaboration. We believe that peace isn’t made only in boardrooms—it’s made through handwritten letters, shared recipes, joint research, and long conversations that don’t end when the Google Meets call does.
My vision for TABI is simple but ambitious: to build a generation that no longer needs to be convinced to embrace regional partnership, because they’ve already lived it.
We launched TABI Voices, a penpal initiative connecting young Israelis with peers across the region. We created The Abrahamic Kitchen, where students from different cultures cook each other’s traditional dishes, film the experience, and share what they learn with the wider world. We constantly plan and execute projects, joint op-ed writing labs, and soon—inshallah—cross-border youth summits.
But TABI is more than its programmes. It’s a mindset shift. In a region often painted in black and white, we work in colour. We see nuance, complexity, and the beauty of cultural overlap. One Moroccan participant told me, after trying shakshuka for the first time, “This reminds me of what my grandmother used to make, only we called it something different.” It’s in these small moments that the larger truth emerges: we are not as far apart as we think (or are convinced to think.)
There are young people in Morocco, the UAE, Bahrain, and Israel who are ready to lead a different kind of conversation. All they need is a space to begin.
For me, TABI is that space. It’s my way of giving life to those stories from Samarkand and Dushanbe—of honouring the memory of my grandmother’s neighbours who, without knowing it, gave me a blueprint for coexistence to be birthed in Israel.
Our region is too often defined by what divides us, I believe our generation has the opportunity to become the bridge and build a future that will connect us. We are the bridge, let’s build it (I promise this isn’t a Bob the Builder reference).
עִבְרִית 
English