Meet Adam and Ali, a married couple sharing their journey of love, faith, and what it means to build a life together across religious traditions.
Adam, who is Jewish, and Ali, who is Muslim, invite us into their everyday lives as they reflect on how their relationship has shaped their understanding of both Islam and Judaism. The film explores key moments in their story, from meeting and falling in love, to navigating family, community, and faith as a couple.
Alongside these moments, we see how shared experiences, especially cooking and eating together play an important role in their relationship. Through food, Adam and Ali bring their cultures and traditions into the same space, creating something that reflects both of them.
It’s an intimate snapshot of a modern interfaith marriage, highlighting themes of love, identity, belonging, and the ways different faiths can connect, overlap, and work together in everyday life.
Transcript
Producer: What I’m going to ask you two to do first. Is if one of you can do one big clap in front of your face.
Ali: Go on.
Adam: Keep going?
Producer: Just do one big one.
Adam: Oh okay! Oh!
Adam: Hi. I’m Adam and I’m Jewish.
Ali: Hi, I’m Ali, and I’m Muslim.
Adam: And we are married. I went to religious schools my whole life. My family, my upbringing wasn’t overly religious. I was in quite a religious environment for most of the day at school, so it still plays a big part in my life. I may not be traditionally religious in terms of keeping all the exact customs and rules, but it still plays a big part in my identity and my values.
Ali: So with myself, my family were very liberal. We did celebrate Eid, every year, and I just remember going to the mosque with my dad. But growing up, you know, I did then start, um, learning more about my faith and about my religion. I had met, obviously Jewish people in my life growing up, but I had them. I wasn’t really aware of their festivals. Um, I knew on Friday they had Shabbat and that’s all I really knew. When I met Adam and, um, I started learning more about his faith and his religion. I knew it was really important to him. Friday night dinners with his family. And that was very similar to me and my family because every Friday night we would have our Friday nights dinner. We met and we, you know, Adam told me he was a Sephardi Jew and I thought he was from a safari. I didn’t understand what the difference was when you got Sephardi and you’ve got Ashkenazi. And, you know, from that first week I started learning about the difference in Judaism.
Adam: So I’m making like our own kind of take on chicken shawarma, like chicken kebabs. So we’ve got our marinated chicken. It’s been marinating overnight. But I know for Ali, particularly his dad, this kind of food, he would cook. And for me, it would make me think of like Middle Eastern Jewish food and um, as well. It’s definitely a food that crosses a lot of different cultures, lots of flavour, lots of spice, like lots of energy and sunshine as well.
Ali: This, um, just reminds me of my nan, to be honest with you, when I was younger. Um, and then as I got older and then met Adam, he then reintroduced it to me when we went to Israel and it was one of Adam’s favourite as well.
Adam: Something that I didn’t really know anyone else knew. This was quite unique. I was like, we both quite slightly different names, but we both absolutely love this dessert, yeah. I guess what you learn a textbook about a religion or a festival, and then what individual families do can also be really different as well.
Ali: My family are not full on practicing Muslims, but we still have our faith and culture that we still do celebrate. And that’s really lovely.
Adam: I guess from a culture perspective, it just felt actually really everything felt really similar, really familiar as well. like, um, like food we liked. It was all really similar, just different names like music we like. The way our families are and the way they’re, they’re kind of quirks and mannerisms that are really similar. And I think that really brought us together initially as well. I guess the challenge is for us in our relationship as well. That we both understood was that there’s a big sense of what will people think? It’s their small communities. Things are very tight knit. So there is a worry from people. What would this person think, what would this person think, which is the more traditional parts, I guess, of being from a smaller community. What I would say is someone who believes interfaith relationships won’t work is you need to find your own path and your own way of doing things like, you absolutely just got to find what’s right for you. And whether that’s taking bits from both your cultures or nothing, from both your cultures and just doing you and your own and what works for you, whether it’s taking religion or not taking religion. I think families can apply pressure in different levels. And I’ve seen it with, with, with different friends as well. Um, and you’ve just got to stay strong. Stay as one team and work together to kind of overcome things like that, because there’s always going to be challenges in any relationship, whether it’s an interfaith relationship or not.
Ali: I feel we should have passed that stage in life now. So whether it is an interfaith relationship, that shouldn’t really be a concern. Someone made us glasses with our with our with our names on every single person, the wedding that attended has got these glasses on. It’s quite fun. I didn’t realise I forgot that the bottom was fake. So when I went to cut the cake we were cutting. The cake wasn’t cutting and you could see me going urgh, Adam! And then the cake lady was saying, she’s like, Ali, the bottom’s fake. I was like, oh yeah. And everyone burst out laughing.
Adam: And I’ve seen it. Yeah. With with um, Jewish, Christian, Christian weddings where the brides wanted to have the Jewish dancing and the, the, the, the groom who’s Christians were like scarily and reluctantly been on the chair. And I think it’s really incredible because it shows that love that person has for the other one, that they want to love all aspects of them and not change or remove any of that.
Ali: We work together as a team. Um, you know, don’t get me wrong, I know we can annoy each other sometimes because that’s just life, unfortunately. But as long as you don’t lose that respect for one another, and as long as you know you are there supporting each other all the time, you can get through through anything. You’ve got the younger generation now who are, you know, bringing more things, breaking the rules, you know, because that’s what it’s all about, trying to follow this rule that you should just stay in your lane when actually you’re allowed to come out of your lane. And, um, it’s more fun actually.
