It couldn’t be more timely: battles in Iraq and Syria have bumped the Gaza disaster off most news feeds, but conflicts between Jews and Muslims still rage on in the Middle East and elsewhere.

My Rabbi, a new play written and performed by Joel Bernbaum and Kayvon Kelly, shifts the action into the local and the personal, based as it is on the rapport that the two—one Jewish, the other the product of an Iranian father and an Irish-Canadian mother—had as high-school best buds in Saskatoon.

“We use our differences to get laughs, and then add in the magic playwriting question of ‘What if?’ ” Bernbaum explains in a telephone interview from Saskatchewan. “ ‘What if the character based on me went away on a spiritual journey to become a rabbi, and what if the character based on Kayvon went away to Iran to search for his roots?’ And I tell you, both parts of the equation are fun, because it’s really cathartic and useful to write about your own experience and to channel your own self. And it’s also empowering, in another way, to jump off that diving board of imagination into the realm of ‘What if?’ ”

That My Rabbi can be cathartic for more than its creators has already been shown. Kelly and Bernbaum have recently returned from a well-received month-long stint at the Edinburgh Fringe, and note that tension between Muslims and Jews is much higher in the U.K. than here at home.

“One of the more intimidating but validating experiences was that we had four young men, Muslims, and they were wearing their skullcaps and being very forward about representation,” Kelly explains in a separate interview. “And we have a scene in the show where we have an argument between the Jewish and the Muslim characters about the conflict in Israel. Our director and stage manager was very near these men, and she said that every time the Jewish character would say something they were viscerally getting engaged; they were almost standing up, wanting to get their voices in there because they were so triggered by what he was saying. And then my character would come back, and they were like, ‘Okay, he’s got it. He’s got it.’ After the show, they gave us a very strong handshake and a thank-you. I think we handled the subject matter in a way they engaged with and approved of.”

If My Rabbi has been winning acclaim from both Muslim and Jewish viewers as well as the general public, it’s likely because it’s rooted in something that transcends faith or ethnicity: friendship.

“First and foremost, this play is about exactly that,” says Bernbaum. “And then it’s about the forces that work on the friendship: the politics and the cultural powers, spirituality and identity. That’s the number one reason why this can relate to a broader context: we’ve all been in relationships, and relationships change. It’s not whether a relationship is going to change; it will. Instead, it’s how we change within that relationship that matters.”

Adding to the likelihood of theatrical success is that both Bernbaum and Kelly are well aware that good friends don’t preach.

“It’s not about getting an agenda across,” Kelly stresses. “And I certainly don’t think the show is providing any answers. It would be very presumptuous for any piece of art to say, ‘Hey, you guys have been struggling for this long, but we’ve figured it out: here’s the answer.’ So we’re just asking more questions.”

My Rabbi runs at the Firehall Arts Centre until next Saturday (October 18).