Palestinian and Israeli Women Discuss National Identities

On the second Monday of May, TRUST WIN (Women’s Interfaith Network) held a meeting of women from varied backgrounds – Palestinians and Israelis – Christians, Jews, and Muslims -who met each other with the intention of getting to know one another as women while getting cosmetics make-overs together. We had students, teachers, mothers, grandmothers, and one seven month old baby. Even though the meeting was held in the midst of all the national holidays – Israeli Independence Day and Memorial Day, and the Palestinian Nakba – events which generated strong reactions, there was no tension felt at the table. Instead, women were eager to share their feelings about these complicated times. After a brief introduction we began to talk about our experiences. Stories poured forth into the accepting arms of the sisterhood. Some women never went for their make-over because they didn’t want to leave the discussion. One Jewish Israeli woman told of her fears of her son’s budding desire to be a soldier, while at the same time expressing an understanding of the importance of a strong national identity. An Israeli Arab told us that, in her opinion, Israelis must accept the Arabs right to a separate feeling and identity, so that they need not be ashamed to sit during the Memorial Day siren. In her eyes, it is the acceptance of the legitimacy of another person’s feeling, without the denial of your own feeling that will bring understanding on both sides. Palestinian women explained to the Israelis about the Nakba commemoration of the “Disaster” they experienced at the founding of the State of Israel. A Palestinian woman laughed as she told of her experience trying to find a taxi in Tel Aviv on Israeli Independence Day that did NOT have Israeli flags flying on it. An Israeli woman shared her sadness to see Arab boys dancing on the street during the siren for Memorial Day. One young Israeli woman told how different it had been for her in the past three years when she was a soldier and was aware on Memorial Day of her friends and comrades who had died or were currently in combat zones. We listened and accepted each other’s feelings and experiences. We also laughed and enjoyed the beautiful transformation that took place as the women were made up as you can see in the attached photographs. People walking by stopped to look at the strange spectacle of Arabs and Jews together. Imagine – twelve women sitting and enjoying each other’s company! Why is this strange? We understand each other’s grief as mothers, sisters, aunts, and friends. We understand each other’s wish to end the conflict and act in a non-violent manner. We understand each other’s hopes, as women. We are an example of the normal behavior which can be practiced in our society.

Interfaith Meeting Despite Tensions

At a time when tensions are strong and much suspicion and vengeance exists between Israelis and Palestinians, TRUST – Emun in partnership with the Jerusalem Peacemakers organized an evening of study and discussion about religious perspectives on “Non – Violence” in Judaism and Islam in light of recent violence in Jerusalem and our region. There was some skepticism and resistance within both communities to our event– Israeli Jews saying that this was not the right time to meet because of anger about the massacre at the Jerusalem Yeshiva and Palestinians saying they couldn’t meet with Israelis because of anger about on-going killings and oppression in Gaza.

Fifty Palestinian and Israeli residents from East and West Jerusalem, as well as from Ramallah, Hebron, and Bethlehem joined us to hear the teachings from Rabbi Daniel Landes, the Director and Rosh Yeshiva of Pardes Institute, and Sheik Izhak Taha, the Deputy Mufti of Jerusalem. The meeting took place in Abu Tor, a mixed neighborhood on the seam between East and West Jerusalem. Joining us were Ultra-Orthodox Jews in black hats sitting with secular Jews and Muslims in hijab and modern dress, from all age groups. After an opportunity for people to introduce themselves to each other in one on one encounters, the invisible walls and barriers in the room disappeared.

Rabbi Landes taught how Aaron would resolve conflicts by going to both wronged persons in a conflict and telling each how badly the other felt for what he did and how much he regretted it. Then when the two would meet, they would embrace and econcile immediately. The Rabbi said that today we have the opposite of Aaron because we have the media and our leaders continually telling us how much the other side hates us and wants to kill us and doesn’t want to reconcile. He emphasized how important it is for each of us to share our experience here with our own communities, that members of the “other side” do feel badly for what has been done to us and wants to reconcile.

Sheikh Izhak Taha said that the basic teaching of the Quran is a message of love and tolerance and that this love extends to all creatures and all humanity. Those who do turn to violence are not true Muslims, they are choosing the path of darkness rather the light that the Quran offers. He also spoke about how his grandfather told him stories of a time when Jews and Arabs lived together here like family, how his grandmother even wet-nursed a Jewish baby. Though he hears most often the pain of his own people, the sheikh sees that two nations in the Land are suffering. We should eat and dance at each others celebrations, this will build trust and love between us, he said. We have forgotten how we used to live together.

Participants shared in small group listening circles about their pain, fears, frustration, as well as positive memories of a shared past and hopes for a better future. Both Israelis and Palestinians spoke of frustration and despair about the extreme attitudes in each society and the reluctance of the majority to work together non-violently to find solutions. Both spoke of the need to hear the other side acknowledge their own violence and express regret. Possible ways to do this were discussed.

One Israeli mother spoke of her fears for her son about to enter the army. One Palestinian with tears in his eyes spoke of his hope for the time when Israeli and Palestinian children will play together and grow up together in harmony.

The evening was ended with a circle of spontaneous prayers for peace. People were reluctant to leave the warmth of our oasis of trust that had been created. The desire for continued dialogue led to plans for a series of study sessions beginning in May.

Making Up is Hard to Do

On a day on which 19 Qassam rockets fell on Sderot and 1.5 million Gazans remained under siege — that is to say, on a typical day last month — a meeting takes place in Jerusalem aimed at changing, ever so slightly, this dismal reality. There are 16 of us — eight Israeli Jews and eight Palestinians — all women listening attentively to the guest speaker, who is neither a politician nor a military expert.

“Remember, before applying your day cream you should always put on serum,” explains Chantal Mazig, a strikingly pretty woman with glowing skin and short black hair, who works for an Israeli cosmetic company. We are in a cafe in an upscale mall near the Old City’s Jaffa Gate, meeting in the framework of a dialogue group called Trust – Emun, whose goal is to break down barriers between us. The morning is to include coffee, cake, a lecture on beauty products, and a beauty makeover in the adjacent pharmacy.

The name of this cosmetic attempt at reconciliation? “Let’s Make Up.” Trust – Emun founder Elana Rozenman, a woman in her 60s whose girlish features belie the ordeals she has lived through, bids the just-arrived Palestinian women good morning in heavily American accented Arabic. “Saba elhir,” says Rozenman, an Orthodox Jew, who was born in Chicago and has been living in Jerusalem for much of the last four decades. The rest of us have come from Jerusalem — both East and West — and from Modi’in, Bethlehem and Hebron.

We range in age from our early 20s to mid-60s, Jews, Muslims and Christians, some of us clearly religious, with heads covered; others in tight jeans, hair flowing freely. After we introduce ourselves, our beauty consultant goes on to extol the powers of anti-aging creams and jojoba serums. “You have to be pretty gullible to go for this,” whispers the Israeli woman sitting beside me.

For a moment I wonder which aspect of the meeting she is referring to. Can we just gloss over our differences with this shade or that shade of lipstick? What kind of foundation can smooth over the scars accumulated living in this violent corner of the earth? My thoughts are interrupted when Rada, a teacher from Bethlehem, poses a question: “Doesn’t powder accentuate wrinkles?” Yes, we are absorbed in the most trivial of topics while people not far away are dreading the next barrage of rockets, or scrounging for food. And we are even laughing.

“This,” says Mazig, holding up a bottle of David Beckhams new cologne, “has a spicy scent that includes paprika.” “My husband already smells like paprika,” one woman quips and we all giggle. Later, waiting in line in the bathroom, Awatif, a nurse from Hebron, tells me that she works at a hospital in East Jerusalem. “I switched my shift in order to come here today. I think that only women can bring peace,” she says, her dark ponytail bobbing. “Women see things differently.”

I can’t resist asking her how women suicide bombers see things. Some women respond to pain and loss in a “twisted way,” she says. Her own family, however, encourages her meetings with Jews. “My mother keeps asking me to bring my Jewish friends to our home in Hebron.” As we enter the pharmacy, the talk turns from terror to toner. Half a dozen beauty consultants fawn over 16 women, while curious passersby watch through the large windows. And we all know it’s not the make-up session that has attracted attention.

It is the sight of Arab and Jewish women enjoying themselves together. Rozenman recounts how, recently, another group of Israeli and Palestinian women strolled around the mall together, window-shopping and laughing, and people stopped in their tracks. “The reactions are extreme: Either people say, ‘Wow, isn’t this wonderful,’ or they stare at you with fear and suspicion,” she says. Funny how we no longer blink when we hear that a city is bombarded by rockets, or that over a million people are cut off from food, electricity and fuel – that’s normal. But what should be a banal activity — a bunch of women trying on makeup — is considered totally abnormal because it involves Israelis and Palestinians doing something other than fighting.

Maram tells me, partly in Hebrew, partly in English, that she is a divorced mother who lives in East Jerusalem and that she is studying photography. Anat, an Israeli beauty consultant, is soon chatting with her in fluent Arabic (learned in school), and leading her by the hand down an aisle. An hour later, Maram’s green feline eyes have been further enhanced, and she and Anat, and a growing crowd of women, are gawking over a photo album filled with pictures of the man Maram is set to marry next week.

“Doesn’t he look Jewish?” Maram laughs, as she shows off a picture of a handsome, clean-shaven young man with dark hair. “We believe in encouraging one-on-one relationships between women from both sides,” says Rozenman, watching the interactions around her, as a consultant buffs her nails. Later I discover that Rozenman knows a thing or two about dealing with scars.

Her son Noam was severely injured in a triple suicide bombing on Ben Yehuda Street in Jerusalem in 1997. “It was a wakeup call, telling me that it was time to reach out to the others who were in such violent conflict with us,” she says, “and I felt the way to do that was through women.” After two years nursing her son to recovery, Rozenman started bringing together Palestinian and Israeli women through a variety of programs, including the year-old Trust – Emun.

Rozenman admits that she has no illusions about reaching “the crazies on both sides.” But she believes that by touching Maram and Awatif and Rada she will have an impact on the next generation. “These women will raise their children with an understanding, based on personal experience, that there are all sorts of Jews and all sorts of Israelis. That makes it much less likely that their sons will be recruited as suicide bombers.”

And through such encounters, she hopes that women like Tova, Miriam and Michelle will bring up their children to know that not all Palestinians are suicide bombers. “It’s about continuing to see the humanity in one another,” says Rozenman. Meanwhile, layers of anti-aging creams and anti-everything-bad have been applied to my face, along with a somewhat garish blue eye shadow.

All of it, the beauty consultants reassure me, is long-lasting. When they’re through, they tell me how lovely I look, but in the mirror I see a heavily made up woman who looks no younger than she did an hour ago, but now has blue smudges under her eyes. My faith in the power of beauty products has taken a severe blow, but not my faith in the women I met today.

Seeing them face to face, I believe that they too want a better future. And perhaps a little banality and frivolousness can make a small difference in a region that is far too saturated with drama and blood. Maybe it’s because I know that aging is inevitable, but I choose to believe that war and hatred are not.

Originally Published in Jerusalem Report February 15, 2008

Practicing Peace from a Jewish Perspective

Distinguished speakers, teachers and dignitaries of Dongguk University, beloved URI brothers and sisters, honored members of the audience:

I know that in these days the great Korean nation longs for peace and reconciliation. I come from the country of Israel – where the peoples of the Holy Land are locked in violence and vengeance – but are also longing for peace and reconciliation.

So at this time of the 55th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War, when you are commemorating and contemplating your own profound realities of war and peace – I am honored that I have been given the opportunity to share my reflections with you about practicing peace from a Jewish Perspective.

I am not a cleric or a theologian. I am not even a learned exponent of my religion. I can speak only as one simple woman — an Orthodox Jewish Israeli who was born and raised in the United States and now practices a Jewish lifestyle in Jerusalem, Israel — the spiritual center of three great religions — Judaism, Islam, and Christianity.

As a religious Jew, my behavior is defined by my religion — with all of its rules, instructions, commandments and laws for every realm of human behavior. I will attempt to share with you the way my individual understanding of a few of these instructions regarding pursuing peace, governs my life and my work.

First, in all of our Holy Books — which are called our Torah, “shalom” – peace – is continually mentioned. Three times daily we pray with continual references to peace. We use the word “shalom” or Peace for Hello, Good-by, Good wishes, Well-being.

Our sages instructed us almost two thousand years ago that we should be like Moses’ brother Aaron: “Be as the students of Aaron, loving peace, pursuing peace, loving people and bringing them closer to Torah (or holiness) ” In my personal life, this pursuit of peace begins with “Shalom Bayit” or Peace in the Home – a much loved Jewish principle.

We believe that Peace in the Home is the foundation for all ethical behavior — and it is the mother’s role to teach her children the ways of peace. For many years I understood that I must strive to keep peace among my family, then my circle of friends, my community, the Jewish people and the nation of Israel.

Then my life was irrevocably changed by religious violence and I arrived at a much deeper understanding of pursuing peace. My 16 year old son was walking down the street in the middle of the day in the middle of Jerusalem when he was caught between two Palestinian suicide bombers — young men like himself — who blew themselves up and killed seven children and adults and wounded 200 others.

I had a lot of time to think, as I spent months sleeping on a mattress on the floor next to his hospital bed while he was treated for burns, broken bones, shrapnel wounds, perforated eardrums, shock and post traumatic stress. This personal crisis and trauma was for me a turning point — painfully illuminating for me the necessity to not only be working to make peace within my own community and the Jewish people — but also to build peace with my Palestinian brothers and sisters — so that no other mother would have to watch her child go through such suffering.

I take inspiration from Rabbi Avraham Kook, the first Chief Rabbi of modern Israel at the beginning of the twentieth century, who taught us that

“Love thy neighbor as thyself”

is an active commandment, requiring us to love “every single person, regardless of differences in opinion, religions, and beliefs …For the noblest love for one’s own nation, in it’s broadest practical and spiritual reaches, appears only in a person who is rich in love for humanity and for every individual man (and woman).”

Our concept of “Tikkun Olam” or Repairing the World — teaches that God created the world with imperfections — and it is our work to perfect the world. So fixing or repairing the world is part of each Jew’s task. In my small corner of the world, in our tiny Holy Land, we live in the midst of such violence and madness, of man’s inhumanity to man — that we have much to fix.

The Holy Land and it’s peoples are filled with hatred, mistrust, animosity — and worst of all, vengeance — everyone focusing on the wrongs that have been done to them, on their own suffering and pain, and blaming the Other for causing it – and pursuing revenge. So in my own personal life, I have dedicated my time and energy to do whatever I can to make some repairs to the world within my own neighborhood.

I do this not out of some lofty theological intention or some religious injunction — I do this because it is a practical necessity for me in order to feel sane in the midst of a collective insanity, in order for me to have integrity as a believing and practicing Jew, and not to collude with the prevalent and pervasive attitude of violence around me. I also do it because my family has suffered from vicious religious hatred and I have chosen love rather than hate. I know that people of faith must strengthen the truth and practice of their religions in order to lessen the power of the religious distortions that fuel violence among peoples.

I work especially with women because I know that all women want their children to grow up healthy and secure — no mother wants her child to die! So I gather with Muslim, Christian, and Jewish women — Israelis and Palestinians — to build an oasis of peace together. We open our hearts and minds to each other and learn about and share our customs, traditions, and differing religions — respecting our differences and creating a sisterhood of tolerance, acceptance, and love.

We celebrate our holidays together, visit each other’s homes, dance at each other’s weddings, and demonstrate that for us peace is not a concept or a goal — but a shared, lived reality that already exists. Recently at my daughter’s wedding it filled me with great joy to see my Muslim and Christian friends eating at tables with rabbis and orthodox Jews – demonstrating the harmony that is our true nature.

History records that our Second Holy Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed on the physical level by the Romans two thousand years ago, and our Sages teach that it was destroyed on the spiritual level because of “Sinat Hinam” or Groundless Hatred between the Jews of that time. And Rav Kook teaches that it will only be rebuilt and bring the spiritual redemption of the entire world — when we live in Groundless Love.

Groundless Love is Unconditional Love for all of God’s creatures. We learn from the book of “Bereshit” or Genesis that we were all created in God’s Image. Our task is to find and love the Godliness in everyone. This does not mean that we don’t continue to hate Evil and to work to transform Evil into Good, but we can separate the Evil from the Evil – doer and find compassion in our heart to understand and respect every human being and his or her experience.

We are also instructed by our Sages “that it is not up to us to finish the task, but we cannot desist from starting it”. In this way we learn that repairing the world, building peace, healing conflicts — these are all tasks that may not be fully accomplished in our lifetime — yet we are obligated to work everyday towards these transcendental goals which give meaning to our existence and purpose to our lives.

I close with a blessing for all of us taken from the last of the Priestly blessings we have recited daily for over 3000 years –

“Yisa Adonai panav elaycha v’yasim le’cha shalom” “May the Lord turn His countenance towards you and grant you peace. Amen.”

Presented at the International Conference on Peace on June 26, 2005 at Donggkuk University, Seoul, South Korea