In the second half of 2005 I was doing an internship in Jerusalem as part of my MA in Peace Studies from the Kroc Institute at the University of Notre Dame. It was a fantastic experience and I highly recommend the Kroc program to prospective students. In November of that year I was most fortunate to be invited by Eliyahu McLean to a wedding being held in an Israeli settlement deep in the West Bank in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. One of Rabbi Froman's ten children was being married — one of his daughters.
The bride dances
The wedding turned out to be a magical evening, and not only because it was my first time to attend a Jewish wedding. It was an evening to never forget because the Palestinian religious peacemaker Hajj Ibrahim also came to the wedding — he was delayed and arrived late, but made a grand entrance. Luckily I was able to document some of the evening's events with my camera.
Hajj Ibrahim dances with Rabbi Froman
Earlier that year I'd started to learn the craft of photography. There was a lot to learn! Some aspects have taken me several years to master. I've also had access to better equipment and software than when I started. In the past several weeks I've reprocessed the photos I originally took, improving their look. The first thing to get right was the white balance, and then the color and noise control. The conditions were difficult photographically — like almost all wedding halls, it was dimly lit. I made the choice to make the photos bright and colorful, reflecting how the event felt emotionally.
You can see the photos and the original writeup I penned at the time at a gallery on PBase.
Noam Sheizaf has written a detailed account of the death of Jawahar Abu-Rahmah at the village of Bil'in.
Poor Ms. Abu-Rahmah was killed by exposure to tear gas during a protest in which she was a bystander — and instead of the Israeli government and Israeli Defense Forces pausing to take a deep breath, and reassess why they protests are occurring, a deluge of shameless lies emerges.
Blind Palestinian villager during protest on September 2, 2005.
The events Mr. Sheizaf describes are very much disturbing — in a way that I cannot quite make rational sense out of. As Mr. Sheizaf suggests, to be killed or wounded in the places where everything is going on — in the middle of the action among the bullets, tear gas and rocks — is not at all surprising. Yet Ms. Abu-Rahmah was standing on a hill, away from central action, and the gas rushed towards her and ultimately killed her. Perhaps it is a kind of metaphor for the unintended consequences of deploying mass violence to repress problems. The gas, carried by the wind, is our foolishness and arrogance, our failure of the imagination, and our greed. We cannot control the wind, and no one in the history of humanity has been able to control all the flow-on effects of choosing violence over nonviolence, repression over dialogue, and arrogance over genuine collaboration between people with differences.
Rabbi David Rosen is one of the world's leading figures in inter-religious relations.
This interview was conducted in his office in Jerusalem on January 8, 2006. Nothing has been left out.
Rabbi David Rosen giving a speech at an Arab university on January 4, 2006
Damon Lynch: Very briefly, I am interested in something called the spiritual imagination. I see my interest in this as being related to character, conduct and consciousness in people, and how they connect their inner life—their spiritual life—to the action they take in the world. I am particularly interested in how they see the use of love, power and knowledge. My feeling is that a lot of religious people talk about love without incorporating necessarily the component of power. There is the Quaker phrase, “speak the truth to power.” I think we can have power as well, and use it responsibly. I am very interested in developing a counterpart to C. Wright Mills’ sociological imagination, but with a more inner dimension. And I am interested in how people understand the development of their inner selves, their inner life, with the action that they take, particularly peacebuilding. So I wanted to know what kind of ideas you might have in this area.
Rabbi David Rosen: Well I do not know I have any particular significant ideas. What you say sounds extremely right—that these individuals do have what you call a spiritual imagination and are integrated in their approach towards both the more moral and ethical-spiritual dimensions. Then their ability to be able to contribute to reconciliation and mutual respect is all the more powerful. I agree with you that the ideal would be where these elements are of both one’s relationship to the institutional structures that determine people’s life—political structures, the structures of authority—should be the goal of those who are animated and motivated by the moral, emotional and spiritual aspects of their own conviction. But the reality, certainly in this part of the world, is that that tends to happen too rarely, that those who are related to the structures of the power are anyway here very much subject to political authority. Also the vast majority here, because we are in a context of conflict living in degrees of greater or lesser fear and suspicion, which therefore limit the full expression of their spiritual imagination. Those who are more spiritually developed tend therefore not to be part of the institutional structures and tend to be more involved in grassroots activities, and there tends to be a dislocation between the two. And therefore, if I may be so immodest, those few of us who do seek that kind of integration have a responsibility to try to be able to egg on those in institutional positions in order to be more responsive to the challenges. I think we need to be modest as to what extent we can actually open up their minds and hearts.
Lynch: It strikes me that most people when it comes down to it would rather be a blessing instead of a curse on the rest of life.
Rosen: Well it is absolutely true, but nevertheless it is like the famous—this is an over exaggeration—it is like the Mel Brooks takeoff of Hitler where he says “all I want is peace, I want a little piece of Poland, and a little piece of this.” So everybody here wants peace and everyone here wants to be a blessing, but they always wanted peace on their own terms. Generally speaking, because of their own insularity, and because of their fears, they see the responsibility with the Other and see themselves as virtuous and self-righteous.
Lynch: I have noticed that when I have asked people how they connect their inner life to their outer actions, people struggle to articulate this. Maybe I am asking the wrong questions.
Rosen: No, I think it is very true because most people do not think of their inner life. I suppose it depends where. I think in the Western world, that is not so true. In the Western world we have had to look more critically at what our what our religious and spiritual convictions and therefore can talk of them in terms of our inner life. But I would say that is relatively new. Well, it has always been of course the language of the mystics. But, in terms of institutional authority, maybe there are two things. Maybe in a way, power and authority tend to stifle the degree to which people devote themselves more to their own inner life. If you look through history, I suppose, generally speaking, those of the more mystical orientation have been those who have eschewed power and authority. And those who have been in authority, therefore have been by almost definition rather one-dimensional types. In our part of the world to the large degree that is still the case. Then there is another factor, and that is to be able to answer your question properly requires a degree of self-critique. It requires a capacity of introspection, which tends to come with a capacity of self-critique. That requires a degree of confidence and I would say that the vast majority of people here do not have that self-confidence to be able to look critically at themselves or at their tradition. So there are a number of different factors that need to be there to facilitate that integration. Of course there have always been remarkable individuals who have risen above such limitations, but they have been exceptions and therefore almost by definition not impacted enormously upon the overall context. So I think if you going to say to what extent does your prayer and your meditation and of course you religious study impact upon your life, all leaders would say “of course it impacts upon my life, it directs my life.” But nevertheless, they have not really looked at themselves within a more self-critical perspective to enquire more profoundly as to what relationships are between the inner and the external. The difficulty that people have comes to some extent from the circumstances in which they live, and of course it could come from the fact that maybe they do not have a significantly developed inner spiritual life!
Lynch: One example I am intrigued by is the example of Abdul Ghaffar Khan in the North West Frontier Province of what is today Pakistan. With his Servants of God, they took on British imperialism with nonviolence. His people were, to put it bluntly, a smashed, divided, very weak people. One of the arguments he put to his people was that “if we Pukhtuns fight the British violence with nonviolence and we are patient, we will show the whole world who are the civilized people here”, obviously putting the challenge to the British to critique their own concepts of civilization. He used a number of religious and nonreligious arguments to convince his followers to stick steadfastly to nonviolence. But I very much like one in particular: the idea of taking the culture’s strengths and using them to overcome its weaknesses. A particular strength of the Pukhtuns was their honor. Khan used it to get his followers to overcome a serious weakness, which was the idea that they were brutes, uncivilized and uncouth (which had some truth to it as well). Sheikh Aziz Bukhari mentioned to me yesterday this idea that if you are standing at a checkpoint and the soldiers are not being nice, he does not want to give them the satisfaction of seeing him respond with anger—sometimes they provoke people to do that. He said he instead smiles. I see that as a similar kind of a concept, but in a smaller way, of taking a bad situation and turning it into a good one. I am beginning to think that this seems to be a core idea of being able to imagine something very different from what it is now—of taking what you have now, and transforming it into something good.
Rosen: I would say two things. First of all, what you are describing with regards to the Pukhtun ways of course was Gandhi’s own approach towards the British as well. A number of scholars have observed that he was very lucky that he was preaching this idea of nonviolence, a culture of nonviolent resistance, to the British. Had he been advocating that let’s say to Nazi Germany, then that would have been the end of India, and it would have been wiped out entirely. In order to be able to have preached that kind of approach, you have to have an antagonist on the other side who can be responsive to it. Otherwise, as a principal I think it is a fallacy with regards to those who cannot appreciate the value of what you are standing for. Therefore I think we have to be very cautious about generalisations in that regard. With regards to Sheikh Abdul Aziz I think it is very important in any situation, if we are able to, to be compassionate. I remember reading a story of somebody during the period of the Holocaust. He was a rabbi, and he was being beaten by the Nazis. He was being tortured, and he was feeling a great deal of pain. He was filled with an initial sense of great hatred towards the people who were torturing him. He said, “I had to remind myself that these are also creatures created in the image of God. Once I remembered that, I could bear all the torture that they had to throw at me.” So obviously the power of both affirming the dignity of the Other and compassion towards the Other is an enormous resource and reservoir that enables us to withstand enormous adversity. However in certain situations, smiling at somebody can actually do the reverse. I remember another Hasidic story of a rabbi who had a shrewish wife and he was very henpecked. She used to say all sorts of nasty things to him, even in the presence of his Hasidim, his followers. He never answered them back. He always kept his quiet, because he was a very saintly man. On one occasion he replied to her sharply and she was quiet and went back to wherever she had come from. The people said to him “Well rabbi, you have never ever replied to your wife. Why did you do that like this? ” He said “because I could see that being quiet and not responding to her was causing more anguish than if I responded.”
Lynch: I remember Sri Ramakrishna used to say to his followers that some people should be saluted from a distance. I very much like that image. As an aside, what you make of the arguments of some that the challenge of the German women to get the Jewish husbands back outside the Reichstag in Berlin—I forget which year it was, 1941, 42, 43—paralysed Hitler’s so-called iron will? What do you make of this account that the German women undertook nonviolent direct action? [Editor’s note: read a detailed account of the event here. The location was Rosenstrasse, not the Reichstag]
Rosen: I do not know. I do not know the story, but I would be very surprised. I cannot see any reason why Hitler would have behaved like that.
Lynch: I wish I had memorised it better, but in short, the German women with their Jewish husband’s, perhaps numbering in the hundreds, were taken and imprisoned. Some were already on the way to the gas chambers. The German women for two or three days conducted nonviolent resistance, right outside the headquarters of something important like the SS, a very symbolic place anyway. Hitler knew what was going on. He could not just shoot them.
Rosen: Why?
Lynch: Perhaps because they were German.
Rosen: He shot plenty of other Germans. He did not have any problem with homosexuals. In fact, I would say the vast majority of those who continued to be married were publicly humiliated. If anybody was caught walking with a Jewish partner they were generally publicly humiliated in the streets. It is very difficult to believe that Hitler felt a little more compassion than his SS guards who were behaving like that the streets.
Lynch: Well apparently in this case not only did the men come back—not only were they saved that day—but they were not picked off one by one as the war progressed, as we might have assumed. Apparently they lived.
Rosen: This is totally inconsistent with almost everything else that happened under Nazi Germany—there must be some other factor at play.
Lynch: I share your concern about the smile and be happy approach all the time. I think it has its time in its place. Sometimes, a word said sharply can be very useful.
Rosen: I think actually what is much more effective is the model that Marshall Rosenberg has developed, which basically comes out of Carl Rogers, and that is the language of empathy—being able to understand somebody’s needs and wants and their feelings at any given moment. Therefore, if you are able to say to somebody something along the lines of “I realise that this is really tough for you and it is really dangerous and there are some really nasty people around who want to do harm, and you had to protect it, etc”. You show compassion to them. Then you say, “I would like you also to understand how I am feeling in this regard” than express your own particular feelings, values and needs. As long as you have shown compassion from the beginning, you are likely to get a lot through. But you have got to be able to connect to the person’s feelings and needs.
Lynch: In your own tradition, what are some ways that you teach others to develop empathy for those who they truly believe are inferior to themselves?
Rosen: In my own tradition, from my point of view, the most important principle is to teach them that there is nobody who is inferior to them, because everybody is created in the divine image, and therefore everybody is of inestimable worth, and every life in all their dignity is therefore of inalienable value. That is not taught well enough. The problem is that when you get to the situation of conflict there is a need to demonise. Therefore you look to sources that therefore can reinforce the dehumanisation of the other. But in my opinion they all fundamentally contradict the most central principle that everybody is created in the divine image. Of course we all have problems with our texts because in every text, whether it is the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, or the Koran, we find areas of where clearly there violent things that are endorsed in one way or another under certain circumstances. Therefore if you are dealing with a person of a more liberal orientation, you can look at them and you can say what are the more central principles for the more contextual issues, and therefore what we have to be guided for. But when you are dealing with people who are basically fundamentalists—this word fundamentalist of course, Scott Appleby in particular would understand is a rather dangerous word because it can have so many different meanings. But if we said let us use the term to say we are dealing with people who are uncritical with regards to their text in their tradition, then it is very much easier for them to be able to draw on more problematic texts as much as to be able to draw on the more positive texts. I would therefore obviously seek to reinforce as much as possible additional texts. The most famous rabbinic text is a discussion between Rabbi Akiba and Ben Azzai on what the most important principle is in the Bible. I would say to them “look, there is no way it says the most important principle is a question of protection of property or protection of land. The most important principle that they discuss is that Akiba says ‘love your neighbour as yourself.’ And Ben Azzai says the more important principle is that every human being is created in the divine image, so you do not say because I was despised so let my neighbour be despised, because I was cursed, so let my neighbour be cursed. In other words his concern is that Akiba will make ‘love your neighbour as yourself’ to mean ‘love your neighbour as you yourself were loved or not loved’, and therefore his emphasis is that it does not matter how you have been treated, you have to be able to always remember that you have to treat an individual as a child of God and a person created in the divine image. And then comes the punchline of Rabbi Tanchuma who says that if you do so (in other words if you say because I was cursed so let my neighbour be cursed, or because I was despised so let my neighbour be despised) know who it is who you despise, because in the image of God he made man.” In other words, any act of disrespect to another human being is an act of disrespect to God. So if you could communicate that effectively to people that in fact behaving badly towards other people is behaving badly towards God, then even in your more uncritical—or using the term unscientifically, fundamentalist elements—you may succeed better in getting it across. However I get back to what I said before. All these arguments utilising Jewish sources are only going to be feasible if people do not feel threatened and if they do not feel fearful. Therefore to overcome their sense of threat and fear, you have to be able to give them empathy. To give them empathy means that you need to be able to show them that you are connecting to their needs and their feelings.
Lynch: In a moment, I want to come back to this disconnect between the power structures and the religious life. I share your caution about being arrogant about this kind of thing, but let us suppose for a moment the more highly developed spirituality of some people. But as an aside, in Hinduism of course one of the ancient discoveries was that the Atman is the same as Brahman, or the inner infinite Self is the Godhead. Is this compatible with the idea that we are all created in the image of God?
Rosen: I would say yes obviously, and it would be more within the mystical tradition that would see us meaning “all created in the image of God” as all part of God and that we die we are as it were returned to the Godhead. Therefore it is all part of the mystical idea especially developed by the Hasidic movement, that God is in everywhere and everything. This was not always the perception, in which often the sacred was divorced from the non-sacred. There is within the mystical tradition a view that there is sanctity in everything everywhere. And that idea I would certainly identify with, even though I would not buy into all necessarily the cosmology that comes with certain parts of Jewish mystical tradition, specifically within Kabbalah. That is part of the reason also why I am a vegetarian, because I believe that in different degrees there is sanctity in everything. One can never be absolutely reverential of all sanctity to every single degree—one has to find a balance somewhere. But the more one is conscious of the divine in everything, the more one is able to both ennoble oneself and one’s society. Again, there is a danger of course, especially with regard to vegetarians—there are plenty of people who care more about animals than they do about human beings. It has always got to be done with a certain telos, a certain teleology in mind. Those who accuse people of speciesism are actually being immoral. If you put all sentient beings on the same level then you are going to be at some stage inadequately sensitive to the needs of human beings. This is not a new idea. This is in the writing of one of the great Jewish philosophers, Joseph Albo, a mediaeval philosopher. Therefore for me ethical vegetarianism actually is in its most potent and valuable when it takes place with an understanding of a hierarchy of life in which human life is more sacred than animal life. In my opinion that is where vegetarianism is its most ethical. Where it is seen that all sentient life is of the same order, then it is dangerous, because then you can lose the necessary sensitivity towards human life.
Lynch: Yes I think I agree. I am also a vegetarian. Coming back to this disconnect between the power structures and the spiritual life of people, you must have given some thought about how to make that disconnect a little less disconnected, and to build some bridges between these two worlds.
Rosen: It is not a matter of just thought—it is a matter of what I do in my life. It is really what I do. In order to do that, I have to be able to speak many languages. Even as I am speaking English or Hebrew in the course of the day, I have to speak many languages because I have to connect to people where they are at. Very central to my work is a belief in the power of the human encounter. I agree with you that most people want to be a blessing. From this point of view, this is a big difference between Judaism and Christianity, of not seeing the human being as essentially flawed. From a Jewish perspective, if anything, we are born with original virtue. It is only social factors that can corrupt us and lead us astray, or these fears that I spoke about before. The more that we can therefore bring people to overcome those fears and those suspicions and overcome those stereotypes and prejudicial preconceived perceptions, the more we can enable their inner spiritual life to be expressed in the way they relate to others and in the issues and initiatives that they able to contribute to and come to. I see myself very much as a mediator in that. Certain things for example, like bringing the Chief Rabbinate of Israel out of its cocoon, have been facilitated by external factors, not least of all the visit of Pope John Paul II to Israel in the year 2000, which developed the opening for the Committee of the Chief Rabbinate for Dialogue with the Vatican. For those involved it is significant, and even for those not involved it begins to lead them to start questioning as to whether their narrow perceptions are fair. We had another moment at a discussion on interfaith relations at - a conference of Orthodox Jewish leadership that has just concluded. Most Orthodox rabbis unfortunately, and I say this as an Orthodox rabbi, tend to be rather insular. This once again reflects their fear and lack of comfort with the world outside. On discussion of interfaith, of course I was very passionate about its importance. One of the reservations expressed by one of the rabbis, is the fear that this would therefore lead to intermarriage and undermine the integrity and therefore the continuity of Jewish identity and of the Jewish peoplehood. I give that as an example of the kinds of fears that one has to be able to contend with. You need to be able to argue with them constructively, both by giving them empathy for what their fears are, of being able to suggest to them that there is actually more to gain than to lose, and to be able to introduce them to the opportunity. You cannot always do it. In many cases it is not possible. One just has to keep on trying as much as one can.
Lynch: The initiative that you are involved with, with rabbis and imams, this world council, is this involving rabbis who represent a broad spectrum of rabbinic thought in Israel?
Rosen: In Israel, yes. There are all kinds of internecine problems, similar to the problems that you will not be able to get major Sunnis if you have Shi’ites there, or if you have Sufis there, and certainly not if you have Baha’is there. Unfortunately most of my Orthodox colleagues, unfortunately—while they are certainly open to meeting Muslims and to a lesser degree meeting Christians—the ones they fear most are other kinds of rabbis from the liberal strands of Judaism. Basically in their eyes they see those as heresies. They see them as more threatening heresies because they threaten to undermine their own power base. One of the things we have to decide with regards to the imams and rabbis is who are our target groups. If your group encompasses the total spectrum, then you will not get the spectrum, because by having the presence of one you cannot have the presence of the other. Our need was to get to the most intensely rooted—and in a way you might even say insular elements, within both communities. In Brussels at the first conference the spectrum of Israeli Jewish orthodoxy was amazing. We had an amazing spectrum of rabbinic representation. Many of those had never met a member of another religion ever before, let alone a religious leader. It was a very important opening for them. I would say it was the same in many senses for Muslims as well. In order to be able to get that spectrum of Orthodoxy it meant we had to have only a sprinkling of non-Orthodox rabbis, and then almost under wraps in order to get the more fervently Orthodox elements to participate.
If you are involved in trying to take spiritual values which are animated by one’s own personal inner spirituality and moral convictions—and to bring these to an area where people, because of their fears, misunderstandings and insecurities are less able to give full expression to this inner life—then you have to work out all kinds of stratagems and tactics that are seeking certain creative options, but are always making certain sacrifices at the same time. Inevitably this involves some form of moral sacrifice in the process. Just not to invite people who represent other communities is in a way a moral sacrifice.
Lynch: That is where the importance of having a trusting relationship becomes paramount, does it not?
Rosen: Yes it is very important but it is important that that trusting relationship—and this is very germane to your central thesis—comes from your own inner spirituality in relation to the Other because intellectually and strategically, because in a way you are being dishonest. When I meet with colleagues from the most fervent Orthodox segments of society, and yet I know I want to bring some of my Liberal colleagues to be able to be there, I have to some extent to deceive them. Now I will try to do it in a way that is as tolerable for them as possible, and obviously be conscious not to put them in an embarrassing position. While I am to some extent deceiving them on a strategic level, what I must never do is deceive them in terms of the inner spiritual content. In other words the sincerity of what I am doing and what I am saying must come across to the other individual. As long as the other individual feels I am sincere, he or she might discover that things were not exactly as they had fully planned—or there might have been things that were even a little uncomfortable—but within certain bounds they will be able to tolerate that if they feel that the motive is totally sincere. But it is a delicate balance.
Lynch: I am trying to put myself in their shoes, imagining what it would be like. It is difficult, because I was not raised in that strand of thought. I am trying to imagine what it would be like from their perspective to be with people they have never met before, and to be an authentic, Orthodox Jew and to meet with an imam.
Rosen: That is much easier for them than to meet with a reform rabbi, especially with an imam. As far as Orthodoxy is concerned, Islam is pure monotheism. Christians are a little more of a problem, because there their perception of Trinity and incarnation poses certain questions. They have to be able to hopefully get into position where they can understand that maybe the way Christians understand these concepts is not exactly the way they think Christians understand them. Of course that is one of the most important guidelines of interreligious dialogue—to be able to understand the way the other understands herself or himself, and not the way you have necessarily conceived of the Other’s beliefs. But for their perception, a Jew has to observe a Jewish way of life the way they understand it. Therefore a Jew who seeks to understand a Jewish way of life in a different way, or even propound it in a different way, is far more problematic than a Muslim leader, who is a pure monotheist. You also have to remember that from a Jewish perspective, however this has developed, there is not a universal imperialism—you do not have to be Jewish in order to be loved by God. God loves you as a good Muslim, and I would say also as a good Christian, and I would say also as a good Hindu. From their perspective, certainly God loves you as a good Muslim because their perspective is that Islam is pure monotheism. Their dialogue with the Muslim is actually theologically the easiest thing for them to do. The problem for them is because of the political reality, in the conviction—which unfortunately is on both sides, both the Muslims and Jews—that the other side is out to get them, or to do them in, or to get rid of them, or to undermine them, or to deny their dignity or their attachments or one thing or another. The relationship has been vitiated in the last hundred years by politics—intensely so—but of the theological relationships, it is the easiest one for them.
Lynch: To have a Rabbi Fruman show up at a Hamas rally in Gaza, having met monthly with Sheikh Yassin in prison I understand. . .
Rosen: These things get exaggerated. He met with him I think only twice.
Lynch: Is this something that you attach some significance to?
Rosen: Actually Rabbi Fruman invited me to go along to meet him when Yassin was released, thanks to Netanyahu. Of course it was Netanyahu who brought Yassin back to Gaza, because of his botched attempt to try to assassinate Mashal, and therefore this was the price he had to pay to King Hussein. When Yassin came back to Gaza, Rabbi Fruman called me up and said “would you like to go with me? ” I said “there is a limit.” I am willing to reach out to anybody who is willing to be able to at least seek to live with me in some form of peaceful accommodation, and even if that person says there are these conditions, 1, 2, 3—but somebody who is openly advocating murdering me, my children, and my family at the same time, it seems to me to be a rather rash thing to do. It seems to me that there you are behaving irresponsibly with regards to your own community because you are undermining their well-being. Now, Hamas is not the way many Israelis think, a totally monolithic structure. There are different elements within it, like within the Islamic Brotherhood, or like the stupidities you hear in America with regards to Wahhabism and Salafism as if it is all somehow totally inimical to the very existence of anybody else, and totally destructive. I personally think that is totally counter-productive. There are within all those communities the possibilities of finding individuals who are open to dialogue, and who could become interlocutors. Looking to the possibility of finding elements within Hamas with whom you could dialogue I think is a wise thing to do. It depends who does it and how it is done, because you do have other factors to take into consideration, of the ways in which it can be exploited and misrepresented and can do more harm. In principle, I am not against it, but I think it requires a very very cautious and careful approach.
In a blog entry recommending a couple of resources focusing on the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, Z writer Paul Street opens with 'Here is a killer musical video from the wonderful left English folk-singer Billy Bragg: "The Loneseome Death of Rachel Corrie," adapted from a famous Dylan song.' Rachel Corrie was killed by an Israeli military bulldozer while undertaking nonviolent resistance against housing demolitions undertaken by the Israeli government. It disappointed me to read Paul use the term 'killer' to describe something dedicated to her work. I considered simply leaving a comment to this effect, but I decided it was more productive to ask him why he used that term.
In a comment, I asked him 'What made you describe the video as a "killer" video? If it is excellent, why not say so? Why use the language of violence and death to describe something that is intended to be uplifting and ennobling? And why did you use this in the context of a woman who died practicing nonviolent resistence?'
He responded with 'Damon please don't come round here unless you have something substanttive to say; tantrums over minor word-choice matters are not worth having online. Life is short.'
Paul's use of language and his response to my questions raises some interesting points. I will consider four of them. First, Paul interpreted my questions as evidence of a tantrum. Or perhaps he was merely trying to be humorous.
My questions were genuine and it never occurred to me that they could be perceived so negatively. This was a mistake on my behalf. Another mistake I made was not to connect emphatically to what Paul was promoting, which is nonviolent, creative, life-affirming responses to Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands. If I had started out by saying 'I realize that you are describing very important work by courageous people who face hostility and danger on a daily basis' -- if I had shown compassion to Paul -- and then said 'I would like you also to understand how I am feeling in this regard' and then expressed my own thoughts, I then could have received a much more positive response from him. This approach was taught to me by Rabbi David Rosen, and it is something that I personally need to work on a lot more.
The second point is that the choice of words we use really does amount to something substantial. Every word counts. Everyone knows this. That is why racists use language that humiliates people they consider inferior to themselves, and that is why people who fight racism also fight the very language racists use. Sexist language is less common than before because of efforts to encourage use language that is more representative of reality. Therefore Paul's claim that using the word 'killer' is not worth discussing is simply wrong.
Third, using a word like 'killer' to describe something as having excellent qualities betrays the values of social movements that Z embraces. 'Killer' is a word associated violence and murder, and specifically with slayer, exterminator, executioner and so forth. These are not the foundations upon which we want to build our societies. They are the antithesis of nonviolence.
Whether falsely shorn of its ugly brutality and merely labeled 'force', or adorned in the vain glory of terrorism, the sharp edge of violence is its medley of methods that penetrate, starve, bowdlerize, impair, disable and pulverize the body. Its pernicious profundity lingers after the bodily act itself through fear, shock, denial, horror, despair and anguish; it manipulates memory by attaching itself to culture in distorting and occasionally insidious ways, including the language we use.
Israeli activist and aoldiers in Palestinian village
For those of us who have lived with violence or its direct threat, the choice of words is even more acute than for those whose exposure has been minimal. Waking up in Ramallah to the sound of automatic weapon fire close by is not something that is easily forgotten or dismissed. Having a powerful gun pointed at you by an Israeli sniper who is seriously contemplating gunning you down sinks into the ocean of the mind like molten lava – it burns and sears, eventually hardening into rock. Passing buses in streets far away from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv still prompts me to briefly ponder if they will be blown up -- such is the efficacy of violence.
Fourth, the deepest challenge of all is to always communicate kindly. The mystical side of Islam, Sufism, has a wonderful proverb about speech. It says that one should say something only if it is necessary, true, and kind to all concerned. My meditation teacher, Eknath Easwaran, has written 'Millions of people today believe that unkind, hurtful language is a necessary part of communication. I feel very deeply, but I never use an unkind word. I have very strong convictions, but I never express them in language that would be harmful. I think it is Gandhi who pointed out that those who get angry when opposed or contradicted have no faith in themselves. When you have faith in your convictions, you won’t get angry. I can listen to opposition with sympathy, and yet I will stand by my own convictions whatever the opposition is. . . . When people are impolite to you, that’s the time to be exceptionally polite. When people are discourteous to you, that’s the time to be more courteous. By your continuing courtesy and kindness, you are educating that person.'
Upon recently arriving in Jerusalem, I was determined to go to the Haram Al Sharif and into Al Aqsa Mosque on the night of Laylat Al Qadr (you can read more about this holy night here and here). Many Muslims are unable to travel to the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, their third holiest site. It is therefore a great privilege for me to go there, and I wanted to make the most of it.
I walked in the direction of the Haram Al Sharif from Damascus Gate, down through the streets of the Old City of Jerusalem. There were many people--mothers holding tightly onto small babies, old men wearing their "kafiyeh" (head dress), and old women walking leisurely on the way. All were making their way to or from the Haram Al Sharif. The Old City's streets are narrow in some places. Because the shop keepers like to put seemingly half of their shop's goods for sale on tables outside their shop, the streets became even narrower. Pop music sung by women from Lebanon was heard bellowing out of one shop, while another not far away had Qur'anic music sung by groups of men with deep voices. Shop keepers yelled out what they were selling and how much it cost. "Hamseen sheckels!" they yelled again and again. Even the young boys working on behalf of their father or uncle had booming voices that no one could fail to miss. Smoke from meat burning on barbecues and countless water pipes hung in the air almost everywhere.
I finally arrived at my favorite entrance to the Haram Al Sharif, not far from the Western Wall. There were many thousands of men and women praying. Most of the women were in a different area from the men, around the Dome of the Rock, but there were a few women under the covered walk ways off to the side of the men. Some of these women were looking after small children. But others were quite old, and I am unsure why they were not with the other women. No one seemed to mind. It was all quite relaxed.
Praying on the Haram Al Sharif
While the men were praying with devotion and concentration, there were other men shouting out what food they were selling from their stalls. I did not expect people to be buying and selling things on such a holy site during one of the most holy nights of the year.
I immediately found a spot to join the men praying, and I did this for some time. Since I was off to the side, it was a safe place for me to start. After discretely taking a few photos, I went to another spot to pray. This time I went down the front, very close to Al Aqsa Mosque, and much more in the open.
I was doing the prayers like the other men, and soon another man came to pray beside me. I thought to myself "ahh, now I am really in the middle of things!" Many thousands of us prayed, and this particular set of prayers went on for perhaps another 20 minutes. There was a lot of Arabic that I did not understand but for me it did not matter. The main thing was that I was praying sincerely to God, with all my heart. I gave it my best concentration, and I felt my consciousness was changing. By this I mean that when I was focused on God in such a holy place, there was a special feeling in my mind that I cannot describe. All I can really say is that it is not an emotion. Just like when we fall asleep, our consciousness changes. In this case, it was changing but I was of course very much awake! It was wonderful to be in the midst of such a huge crowd of people praying to God on such an auspicious night.
When we finished, the man beside me turned to me and he said "you made many mistakes". I said "yes you are right, it is to be expected because I am very new to this". He asked me "are you Muslim or a tourist?" I gave him my answer, and he told me he wanted to teach me about Islam. While I think all prayers offered with sincerity are as real as each other, it is of course best to show respect for what is considered correct, so I was eager to hear what he had to say about correct ways to pray. I listened to what he had to say. Instead of talking about prayer, he emphasized the elements of cleanliness and purity. He liked what he was teaching, but I could not help but think he should have talked to me a little more first to understand exactly what he needed to teach me! However it was still good to listen to him.
After we finished our discussion, I went straight inside the Al Aqsa Mosque. It was not my first time there, but it was my first time on the night of Laylat Al Qadr. There was hardly any room to pray. There was many people and many things were taking place at the same time. Someone was giving a political speech about America and Israel. Some men were praying. Some were sleeping. Others were looking at everyone who walked by them.
Inside Al Aqsa Mosque
There was little emotion from the people praying and waiting inside Al Aqsa Mosque, giving the occasion a very different temperament than might be had a Shi'ite place of prayer, for example. My initial impression is that Sunnis seem to be more reserved than Shi'ites. Personally I prefer the more emotional and passionate approach--I cannot but help think of the example of Sri Ramakrishna on the occasion of religious festivities. Perhaps it will sound strange for me to mention a Hindu man as a role model, but for those who know of the life example of Sri Ramakrishna, it is of absolutely no surprise at all!
It's pretty amazing what you can do with a creative imagination, a 28mm lens, and the will to think big (all images are from the Face2Face project):
"The Face2Face project is to make portraits of Palestinians and Israelis doing the same job and to post them face to face, in huge formats, in unavoidable places, on the Israeli and the Palestinian sides."
It features my friends Eliyahu Mclean and Shiekh Aziz Bukhari. Shiekh Tamimi is also here:
To learn more about the project, and watch a good video, visit:
My friend Eliyahu McLean hosted the noted reggae singer Pato Banton in his home in Jerusalem. Pato is described as a "conscious UK reggae artist", which makes sense when you hear his songs. This song is inspiring! Hajj Ibrahim is there to enjoy things -- of course.
The religious peacemaker Eliyahu McLean let me know he was hosting a Sikh tour of the Holy Land, and he invited me to join them throughout their travels. I joined them when they visited Rabbi Froman in Tekoa. Sikhism is one of the world's newest religions, and Judaism one of the oldest. One is from the Punjab in India and the other Jerusalem. Both have about twenty million followers each, and both have experienced more persecution than they have the intoxicating glories of political and territorial rule. While the orthodox followers of one like to wear loose white clothes and the orthodox followers of the other like to dress in formal black suits, they both admire long flowing beards very much. It promised to be an interesting afternoon and evening.
The delegation of Sikhs numbered about twenty. They were all Orthodox: they faithfully followed their tradition of kesh (keeping their hair uncut) and wearing a kara (steel bracelet). One of them assured me they also wore the kangah (wooden comb) and the kirpan (ceremonial dagger), albeit a small version “so as not to cause problems with security.” They take this tradition very seriously, wearing their dagger even when they sleep. However they were not wearing what would strictly be considered kachha (short pants). I imagine this was a concession to modesty than for any profound religious reason.
Upon boarding a small bus to visit Tekoa I found the Sikhs sitting contentedly, their tall trim bodies filling the small seats. All but two were men. Some were already in a trancelike state, an impressive undertaking given the formal prayers had not yet started. Eliyahu later confided they had been up all night travelling and were probably just exhausted.
The Muslim peacemaker Ibrahim was there sitting at the back of the bus with his usual big smile and traditional Arab garb. Last time Ibrahim and I were on a bus he would take every opportunity to tell the young Israeli soldiers stationed at numerous checkpoints that they looked like one of his ten children and that they were beautiful. The soldiers invariably broke into a big smile themselves when he told them that, their tension spontaneously transformed into genuine joy.
The settlement of Tekoa is reputed to be the land of Prophet Amos. It is close to the Palestinian village Tekua. Mt. Herod sits silently nearby. Tekoa is in an arid part of the West Bank, beside a series of spectacular valleys heading down to the Dead Sea. What few trees survive without be watered by people are undoubtedly old and hardy.
We arrived in Tekoa to find an Israeli soldier guarding the entrance. Rabbi Froman is a man of peace but his village still relies on the military for protection.
Froman joined us on the bus with greetings of “shalom salaam”. He said in Jewish and Islamic traditions, shalom and salaam respectively mean both peace and “the very name of God.” Thus the land of peace is the land of God, according to both faiths.
We were guided to the edge of the settlement, overlooking the inspiring hills and valleys. Jordanian hills could be seen in the distance. A dry riverbed (known as a wadi) wound its way through the valley floor below.
Gulleys beside Tekoa
Off in the distance an isolated settlement sat, its distinctive red roofs signifying it was Jewish. Although it looked peaceful, the existence of settlements like this are perceived by many Palestinians, Israelis and international observers as one of the three major causes of conflict between Palestinians and Jews, along with Palestinian refugees demanding they be able to return to their villages they left during wars during the 1948 war, and the status of Jerusalem as a capital city claimed by both Israelis and Palestinians.
Jewish settlement
Amidst laughter and joy the Sikhs' leader and Froman began to swap religious insights and stories, using the geography of the land and their respective religious culture for guidance. Ibrahim looked on as the Jew and the Sikh conversed.
Swapping religious stories
But before this interreligious dialogue Rabbi Froman thanked the Sikhs for their remarkable hospitality at the 2004 World Parliament of Religions in Barcelona, where they fed the 8,000 participants free meals. Froman said Jews have strict dietary requirements, and confessed with a happy smile that the enormous Sikh tent was the only place in all of Barcelona they could eat. He apologized for not preparing a tent for the Sikhs. The Sikh leader said that on the contrary, the land itself was a big tent, where they shared the love of God. Froman said “yes, yes, the love of God.” The Sikh leader said they had come simply to pray, to love each other and seek peace. He added that we become wise by serving God and serving his people.
Swapping religious stories
When Froman tried to articulate a spiritual dimension of hospitality, his budding command of English led him to confuse the word with hostility, bringing not only more laughter but an observation from the Sikh that language is tricky and cannot satisfactorily describe God. Froman added that despite his limited command of not only English but also Arabic, he has close friends who are Arab. He said it did not matter because “the language of the heart is less tricky than the language of humans.”
A young Sikh alone surveyed the land quietly as the sun hovered behind him, a land described by Froman as currently being in a “miserable” state because of the conflict between Jews and Palestinians, one of the few political references shared between them.
Contemplation
Jewish tradition holds that the wadi that runs from Jerusalem (a point of life) to the Dead Sea (a point of death) is special, for at what Froman referred to as “the end of days” the Dead Sea will receive the water from Jerusalem and become a sea of life instead of death. Froman also outlined a story from Chronicles, near the end of the Hebrew Bible where enemies are defeated not by power and force but by love, humility, and by singing to God and praising him (God was always referred to in the masculine sense by both Froman and the Sikhs). The Sikh leader then recounted a Sikh story which had a similar perspective on the need to praise God.
These observations reminded me of the complex nature of religious thought. While praising the God present in all people as being higher than one's limited self is a fine thing—or put it in non-religious terms, to live for the good of others and not just yourself is wonderful—to live responsibly does not mean abdicating reason to a vain hope for what Karen Armstrong calls “miraculous intervention”. She points out the danger of “a form of religiosity that reduces spirituality to magic.” Religious stories will always need wise interpreters, it seems.
After the two religious leaders shared spiritual insights, emphasizing a universal spiritual identity above that of their identities as faith leaders, the Sikhs lead a session of prolonged prayerful singing.
Prayerful singing
Prayerful singing
The Sikh leader and Froman sat side by side, emphasizing their unity and perhaps even their status as leaders in their respective communities.
Prayers
Two thirds of the way through the sun began to set, and Froman excused himself to perform traditional sunset prayers while the Sikhs continued to sing. Their different voices of prayer came together, the unity in diversity clearly apparent to everyone present.
Sunset prayers
He then joined them once more, this time in a particularly enthusiastic round of singing the praises of a wonderful God, his body swaying back and forth.
Prayers
As they all sang together the religious intensity became greater and greater, the men's voices rising in volume and quickening in pace.
After the devotional singing the men and woman talked among themselves. I conversed with a Sikh born in 1941, a humble man with a sharp mind. Many of the Sikhs in the delegation appeared to have roots in Kenya. There are something close to 500,000 Sikhs living in England, according to my interlocutor Sikh, who is leader of a Gurdwara (Sikh religious temple) in England. When I asked if it made sense to ask an Orthodox Sikh if they had a favorite Guru among the thirteen who founded Sikhism, he said it did not, as they regarded all of them as one. In response to a question of mine, he said the idea of Khalistan (an independent homeland between India and Pakistan for Sikhs) was one formed by the “propaganda machine” of India, and that his party was religious and not political, having nothing to do with the Khalistan movement. However he was familiar with a political figure associated with that movement, Singh Mann. He did not know of the Indian independence leader Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, being much more familiar with figures like Jomo Kenyatta, having instead grown up in Kenya and experiencing its freedom struggle.
On the way out we visited a Yeshiva (school of religious learning) in the settlement. There were an impressive number of students and many of them were studying in small groups. They were all very enthusiastic to meet the Sikhs and talk with them.
In the Yeshiva
One thing about the beards, flowing garments and turbans of the Sikhs is that they immediately make them stand out from the crowd, even in a place rich with religious symbolism like Israel Palestine.
In the Yeshiva
When back on the bus I felt a sense of great peace and calm among these religious Sikhs. Their very presence conveyed peace in our often hurried and turbulent world. The next day I heard a well-known Israeli peacemaker who is non-religious describe an experience where Froman was in the back of his car, presumably lost in prayer, completely oblivious to the vigorous political discussion taking place around him. Whether one admires religious peacemaking efforts like this, or finds it archaic, naïve or worse, it is undeniable that the religious figures see themselves playing a valuable role in bring peace to this land. It might be that the mere fact a variety of Palestinians and Israelis witnessing such figures may be an experience that stays with them for some time to come, perhaps even influencing their thinking. Perhaps sessions of prayers and singing gives them legitimacy in the eyes of the religious. Whether it not the actual act of prayer and singing contributes to a culture of peace is a research question where gaining evidence is not easy.
In the Yeshiva
It has been said by some that “denial is not just a river in Egypt”—and this was powerfully illustrated on the bus ride to and from Tekoa. The Israeli man acting as tour-guide pointing out the sights on the way from Tantur to Tekoa began pointing out places where “Palestinian terrorists” had been shooting and murdering innocent Jews. He referred to Israeli settlements not as settlements but as towns. Just six weeks before his son's girlfriend was one four young people murdered by unidentified Palestinian gunmen not far from the road where we turned off to go to Tekoa, an tragedy that generated a lot of news coverage and led to the closure of the West Bank by Israeli authorities for some days. On the way back, the Israeli man again at some length talked about Palestinian terrorism, pointing out places where the Israeli State had placed protective barriers to minimize the effects of sniper fire from Palestinian villages neighboring the road. Not once did he talk about Israeli violence against Palestinians. In private I asked him why he believed the killings were taking place. He replied by saying the Palestinians had a culture of violence. Behind his back, Eliyahu just rolled his eyes and smiled. When I pointed out to the Israeli man that three times as many Palestinians had died compared to Israelis since the start of the second Intifada, he said that was because Palestinians were killing each other in intra-group violence. He said that Palestinians like to fire guns at weddings and funerals. In short his message was: Palestinians are violent and Israelis are innocent of any wrongdoing. Eliyahu mentioned quietly to me that the Sikhs would be visiting Bethlehem later in the week, where they will hear Palestinian perspectives.
The tour-guide when not talking about Palestinian terrorists did usefully point out that some of terraced fields we were passing by in the minibus had been dated as being between 3-4,000 years old by archaeologists, with ancient olive trees also present.
I must confess I was surprised that one of the Sikhs present was a professor at the University of London, who said he was a friend of the late Edward Said and of Noam Chomsky. He said he edits the journal Social Identity and is a specialist in post colonial theory, including sub-altern studies.
Comment from a friend on this article, January 1 2006:
“It is my view that the important thing for people like you, and even to some extent myself though I have been here so long, is to be a neutral as we can. This struggle is not a football match—and no good purpose is served by taking sides as so many outsiders of evident goodwill seem to do. The Israeli who described the attacks by Palestinians was telling the truth as he saw it, and indeed he seems to have had a personal reason for painting them all black. You will find the same absolute black and white views among Palestinians. Those who believe in peace have to slowly reduce the number of people holding these views, based on pure ignorance and inablity to see any point of view except your own, so that those who hold them are reduced to an impotent minorty. But it is slow work.“
The search for perfection, the longing for freedom, truth and pure peace has been humanity's earliest preoccupation in its awakened mind (Ghose, 1971). Humanity dreams of a state of being which is in flagrant contradiction with reality. Sages like Aurobindo suggest that life might well be a series of “transitory satisfactions besieged by physical pain and emotional suffering”, but like generations before us we still long to “build peace and a self-existent bliss”.
Consider these two children. They both live beside railway tracks in Karachi, their makeshift homes standing on the stones that surround railway tracks all over the world, squeezed in between a road and the tracks.
This boy looks unhealthy and perhaps even malnourished. His skin is diseased.
This girl, on the other hand, expresses a tremendous inner beauty. She is physically beautiful, but the radiance and joy she conveys is totally at odds with her surroundings.
It is in the midst of such radiance that the highest dreams dwell.
Despite the immense diversity of cultures that people our planet, and their varying experiences of violence and peace, there are universal shared experiences familiar to all of us, among them fear, discrimination, separation, empathy, artistry, hope, love, and solidarity.
Military Occupation
Let us see what we can learn from Israel Palestine. Perhaps there is something about life under military occupation and the threat of terrorism that opens a window into these universal themes.
We can start by taking a look at the Palestinian village of Bilin on a typical Friday afternoon.
Bilin is a symbol of resistance for many Palestinians. The immense separation barrier Israel has built separates the villagers from their land.
This land has effectively been stolen and given to Orthodox Jewish settlers occupying newly built settlements nearby.
It is an absolute disgrace, and a tremendous violation of the ethical and spiritual principles of Judaism. Rabbi Michael Lerner tells us that ‘The most frequently repeated injunction in Torah are variations of the following command: “Do not oppress the stranger (the 'other'). Remember that you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”’
It is therefore no surprise that Israeli and international activists have joined Palestinians in weekly protests against the barrier, from before it was built to the present day.
The protests are largely nonviolent, but sometimes the villagers throw rocks, as the sound slides demonstrate. Such occasional violence unfortunately provides a convenient alibi for the Israeli military to undertake extreme actions. These actions are frightening. They scared me at the time and they scare me now.
After two years of continuous resistance, 11 Palestinians have been killed. Many Palestinian, Israeli and foreign activists have been injured, sometimes very seriously, including brain damage after being shot in the head at close range.
What have these sacrifices achieved? The fence was built without difficulties. Distinguished peace activist and Israeli parliamentarian Naomi Chazan is critical of the activists for putting so much effort into an unsuccessful undertaking, missing the opportunity to do something more productive for peace.
While she has a point, she under-appreciates the tremendous symbolic value for Palestinians of witnessing idealistic Israelis struggling courageously at their side. Such solidarity transcends typical notions of group identity, allowing at least some Palestinians and Israelis to regard each other as more fully human. The activists have also succeeded in making the conflict more visible.
One remarkable aspect of the Bilin protests is their orchestrated, almost ritualistic character. The basic structure of the ritual is pretty simple.
The nonviolent activists attempt to march to the barrier.
The soldiers confront them at some point, maybe in the village, or maybe at the barrier or along the way. They warn the activists to leave. The activists do not leave. The soldiers fire at them with tear gas, sound grenades, rubber bullets, and on occasion live ammunition.
The activists shout back moral slogans, appealing to the conscience of the soldiers. The soldiers say very little in return.
In short, there is a lot of mutual posturing going on, punctuated by occasional episodes of significant violence resulting in injury and death.
Posturing is used to project fear and strength onto opponents by demonstrating how dangerous and frightening an adversary one can be. Opponents can fight, flee, submit or posture themselves.
Posturing is exceptionally easy to see in child soldiers who have not had rigorous military training, such as with the young boys and men who fought in Liberia a few years ago. Video footage shows them firing their weapons with apparent abandon, shooting from the hip, dancing as they celebrated their manliness. They were much more concerned with posturing in front of their buddies and the enemy than they were in trying to actually kill people on the other side.
Posturing has always been a huge part of war, embodied in ritual and myth. Modern methods of military training channel the spirit behind such posturing into more efficient methods for killing, but nevertheless posturing is still commonplace (Grossman, 1996).
Separation and intimacy
One of humanity's central dilemmas is separation. The Buddha identified separation from what one loves as one of the “six moments when life's dislocation becomes glaringly apparent”(Smith, 1991, p. 102). It often plays an extremely important role in conflict.
In a relationship if two people separate their intimacy is either stopped completely, or at the very least severely curtailed. One of the most bizarre aspects of military occupation is that this is not the case. Peoples are separated alright, but then they are pulled together in the most intimate of manners. Salam Fayyad, former Finance Minister of the Palestinian National Authority, explains this paradox.
He says: 'Examining the past 6 years of this conflict, I would characterize the Israeli-Palestinian relations over this period as having been too intimate—too intimate for the Palestinians and too intimate for the Israelis. You may be stunned by this characterization, for many have characterized it as the opposite. But the nature of relations today between Israelis and Palestinians has reached levels of micromanagement, where Israel is involved in the minute details of the lives of Palestinians. It is important to remember that the entirety of the West Bank and Gaza Strip is ruled by military orders—not by politics, logic, or reason—but by military orders with “security” dictating the rules of the game.'
If anything, Fayyad was being diplomatic. These “military orders” can make Palestinian's lives hell, with women unable to make it on time to hospital to give birth and cancer patients dying at the checkpoint because soldiers refused to let them pass through by vehicle, to cite but two very recent examples.
Tamar Meshulam
Artists and designers often have fascinating insights into life’s moments of separation, intimacy, awareness and identity.
Tamar Meshulam is a Jewish woman hailing from Jerusalem, who designed a peace game called Master Peace that won the first prize at the most recent UNESCO Design contest, a contest held every five years encouraging young designers to make a positive contribution to society. She says “Every game stands for something, Monopoly stands for capitalism; chess stands for war. I wanted to create something that stands for cooperation.”
Palestinians and Israelis have played the game together, and the game has generated interest in the Middle East, Europe, and the US. It has been described as “a communication project which uses the medium of a game to trigger off group dynamic processes among the players which contribute to an understanding of the ethnic groups and cultures in Israel.”
That’s one way of thinking about it. I spent some time interviewing Tamar, but frankly we are better off reading an account from the magazine Egypt Today. I have modified slightly an article of theirs, and reproduced it:
To play the game, the players are asked to work on a collective story in order to complete a “self-journey” from a place called home, outwards, and then back to home. This is a journey where identity is nurtured; people feel safe and recognize themselves.
The magazine poses the question that these are nice ideas, but how is it possible for Palestinians and Israelis to agree on a constructive story when they cannot yet agree on their past?
Tamar responds by saying “during the game there isn’t one past to agree on, because the story is composed of pieces of everybody’s interpretation of reality. The others are asked to try to comprehend the player’s point of view, and learn to accept it, though not necessarily to fully understand it.” The group’s agreements through their dialogue are made for present actions.
For Tamar cultural exchange is a vital part of the peace process. She says “Israelis and Palestinians experience their common history each in their own way of perceiving life. Getting to know each other’s mental perspective is beneficial for the future construction of our relations.”
“To accept the other’s experience and having the other accept yours is a major step in any relationship, if it ever happens. In the political sense, the situation between Palestine and Israel was a strategic ‘war game’. Now it aims for ‘no game,’ which is a long distance from ‘cooperative game’ [such as Master Peace].”
Tamar says “the use of abstraction in the game, acts as a method for opening new ways of expression instead of repetitive clichés. It definitely does not mean forgetting pasts. This whole game is based on the identities people gather throughout their collective and personal pasts.”
Ancestry
When we talk our collective pasts, of course, we talk of our ancestors. Wherever we go, we bring our ancestors with us. We bring them in our bodies. Our bodies are a living workshop of previous generations' embodied experiences. We bring our ancestors in our minds too. Our expectations, values, knowledge, experiences, hopes, fears and desires reflect what our ancestors thought. Whatever innovations we as individuals bring forth into the world always occur within the design patterns our ancestors have given us.
The ancestors I bring with me on my travels hail from the youthful country Aotearoa New Zealand, and before that from Britain and Greece. I had never personally been to the continent of Africa before visiting there last year. Returning to the United States after spending time in Uganda and South Africa gave me a new understanding of African Americans.
This was not a gradual realization. Rather, it struck me with tremendous force one day in Washington, DC as I saw an African-American man walk ahead of me. I realized that this man had likely descended from slaves forcibly brought to the United States from somewhere in the vast continent of Africa.
It was not an intellectual realization. Since being a small boy I have known that slavery had existed in the United States. Instead, it was an emotional reaction at a gut level. For a few moments, I was observing not an African-American walking down a street in what may well have been his home town. I was seeing a former slave. This man symbolized slavery. His ancestors were not only with him—they were him.
This powerful feeling was made possible only because of my time spent in South Africa and Uganda. Cape Town felt to me like a white town with black people on the periphery. Kampala, on the other hand, felt like a black person’s country, rippling with a multitude of black cultures and subcultures living alongside one another.
Without me being necessarily consciously aware of it, Kampala came to symbolize a truly African home. When I saw the man who had become a slave in Washington, DC, Kampala provided me with the mental imagery to imaginatively recreate the home he had been ripped away from, ending up in a city that symbolized the overwhelming power of the white Western world.
None of this is to suggest that an African-American leads a life any less authentic than a Ugandan, or that a white South African is somehow less African than a black South African.
All lives and all identities are authentic. To suggest one part of the African continent is truly African while another part is not, is not to comment on the authenticity of those who live there, but on the visible intensity of the presence of the place's ancestors.
It is worth noting that in describing his experience playing Idi Amin in the film “The Last King of Scotland”, Forest Whitakker very recently said “I'm African-American, I'm not African. It is my ancestors that come from there, so I had to understand a different rhythm, a different way of looking at the world.”
“Because I was dealing with a lot of people just as friends,” he says, “I got to understand that part of myself that is already deeply rooted in my ancestors in Africa in the way I behave, and that became stronger and stronger as I went along.”
Favela Morro da Pereira
On the day I arrived in Rio de Janeiro, on December 28 2006, violence left 18 dead.
The worst attack was on a bus. About 10 assailants surrounded the bus on a major highway and tossed gasoline-filled bottles inside. The attackers set the bus on fire and prevented the 28 passengers from getting off. Seven people burned to death.
Imagine you were one of the 28 people on that bus. Can you see the men surrounding you, trapping you, hemming you in? Can you see the flames leap and dance? Can you feel the heat burning your skin? Can you hear the screams of your relatives and friends, wounded and dying? Can you smell the burning gasoline, the burning seats, the burning hair, and the burning flesh?
It is safe to assume almost everybody in Rio believes the attackers came from the favelas, which are the sprawling slums perched on steep hills and other marginal places which are a legacy of slavery. Favelas are controlled by powerful gangs who deal in drugs and organized crime. Rio de Janeiro has one of the highest murder rates of any city in the world, and street crime is a major problem. In short, favelas have a notorious reputation.
Morro da Pereira is a favela in Rio de Janeiro. Neucirlan Oliveira lives there. He likes the sense of community and solidarity found in the favelas. Neucirlan is a peacebuilder, literally—he built a model of his favela on the hill outside his family home.
He started when he was 14 and of the boys that helped him, only one took up a life of violence by becoming a gang member. His name was Max, and he was shot dead by the police. I asked him why people join gangs. He said such young people lack information on the reality of what they are about to participate in. “They don't realise they can change the world” he says.
His peacebuilding work could do with some improvement—he banned girls from building the mini favela, justifying this with what are obviously feeble reasons. Perhaps he did so because it might lead to conflict among the boys themselves, disrupting their solidarity.
Despite his gender discrimination, his mini-favela has contributed to peace. But how are we to understand his artistic endeavor as a peacebuilding phenomena?
Since Aristotle is one of my ancestors, I feel it entirely appropriate to leave the last word to him. Paraphrasing Thomas Cahill (Cahill, 2003), we can draw upon Aristotle’s timeless observations of the Greek play, Sophocles's Oedipus Tyrannos, and apply them to Neucirlan’s efforts:
This is not life but a mimicking of life. We have been playing with imitation humans that can be put back in their homes made of bricks. We leave the mini favela warned by what we have witnessed but purged of negative emotions. We are pleasantly exhausted now; as if we had recently expelled a poison from our body. We are at peace, exalted by our encounter with this pageant of truth. We are restored by this vicarious brush with destruction and death. We didn't die. We are still alive—and can face tomorrow with a certain placid wisdom.
Aristotle's brilliant analysis has never been improved upon.
References
Cahill, T. (2003). Sailing the Wine-Dark sea: Why the Greeks Matter (1st ed.). New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday.
Ghose, A. (1971). The Future Evolution of Man: The Divine Life Upon Earth (2d ed.). Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram.
Grossman, D. (1996). On killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society (1st pbk. ed.). Boston: Little, Brown.
Smith, H. (1991). The World's Religions. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco.
The buses plying routes most used by Palestinians in Jerusalem are comfortable, reliable, efficient and relatively inexpensive. Being small, they run regularly, zipping along eagerly from one stop to the next. The only thing that seems to halt their journey is when they are stopped by the police or military, who undertake random checks looking for Palestinians who Israel determines to be in Jerusalem illegally. Palestinians who live in the West Bank and lack an Israeli permit to enter Israel, for instance, are not allowed to visit Jerusalem. If caught they face the prospect of a fine or even imprisonment.
Soldiers questioning a Palestinian bus passenger outside Tantur, July 30 2005.
Today the bus I was on, which runs from beside the old city to Bethlehem, was stopped for such a check. A policewoman boarded our bus. Her job was to collect the identification papers of everyone on board the bus bar the driver for her colleague sitting outside to examine, which she did with all the enthusiasm and joy of someone thoroughly unhappy with their job. She took a lazy glance at my passport, and collected everybody else's papers . She returned in a few minutes with the papers, and we were on our way.
Closer to Bethlehem, our bus was pulled over a second time, this time by the military. A super buffed up soldier entered the bus, his olive green shirt struggling to contain his incredibly muscular and attractively tattooed arms. His hair was cut very short, and his orange sunglasses were resting neatly on his green beret. His automatic weapon was slung over his powerful shoulders like a small toy. He talked to us loudly and enthusiastically in Hebrew, a happy smile and cherry tone of voice putting everyone at ease. The two Palestinian women sitting in the seats in front of me smiled. Having been through the routine many times, I had my passport opened at the page with my photo. He saw I am from New Zealand, laughed loudly, and said in English with a thick American accent "A kiwi!' The two women smiled again. He took my passport from me and briefly thumbed through it. He said I must be a photographer given I was wearing a vest. He was right, and I showed him my camera. He positively beamed and asked if I was going to take photos in Bethlehem or Hebron. I told him I was merely going to Tantur, just down the road. As he moved down the aisle onto the other passengers he methodically checked the overhead racks for anything suspicious, singing a tune from the early 80s as he did so. He may have been jolly but he was certainly thorough.
When the soldier finished checking the other passengers, he said "Ok Mr Kiwi, come with me off the bus please." Mr Super Buff then asked the driver to refund my bus fare before escorting me off the bus to be interviewed by another soldier. The bus left. Like the first soldier, the second soldier was also of American origin, jolly, and buffed. He was not quite as buffed as Mr Super Buff, but he had obviously spent hours in the gym like his buddy. As he looked through my passport, he began a series of questions. What was I doing in Israel? Photographing my classmates, I said. I pulled out my Notre Dame student ID. Where was I going? Tantur, I replied. What was I going to photograph there? I said I was staying there. Then the interesting questions began.
"You have been to a lot countries this year, and you cannot tell me that's for tourism," he said.
I said he was right, explaining that I was taking photographs of peace studies students doing their fieldwork for an exhibition to be held at the University of Notre Dame, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. I began listing each country I had been too, and the names of my fellow students -- Hala from Lebanon, who is in Cambodia. Maria Lucia from Colombia and Tania from Sri Lanka, who are in the Philippines. Mark and Lisa from the United States, and Lison from India, who are in South Africa. Alicia from the United States, YatMan from China, and Patrick from Zimbabwe, who are in Uganda. He interrupted me and I jokingly asked if any of the students are from the United States. And then came the important question.
"What were you doing in Pakistan," he asked, "also photographing students?"
"Attending another classmate's wedding," I said, grinning. "I got detained at the airport for seven hours because of that."
He laughed and said "Yes, you will get questioned after being in a country like that. Those other countries are weird enough, but Pakistan, now that's something else."
"It's a complex society," I said. "You should visit it. I have a Jewish friend working in the World Bank who visits all the time "
"No way, I am happy here!" he said as he handed my passport back.
I hopped on the next bus, whose passengers had already been checked by the first soldier, and made my way home to Tantur.
On Saturday I spent the day with a Jewish religious peacebuilder friend of mine, Eliyahu Maclean. Because it was Shabbat (the sabbath), and because Eliyahu is an orthodox Jew, that meant I could not operate any technology until the Shabbat ended. For instance I could not use the telephone or a camera (shock!). In the morning we went to a long service at a synagogue, and then in the afternoon we had lunch at a friend of his--a woman who had 14 children before her Rabbi husband left her for a younger woman. Her house was modest and cosy. I have never seen so many books in such a small place.
Eliyahu McLean
The sense of community among people who went to the synagogue is strong and vibrant. They loved to sing and swap stories. There was a point where I really wanted to use my camera--after the service, when people were drinking and eating, I noticed a woman in her 60s who was wearing giant platform shoes, a bright yellow dress, a huge blonde wig that made her look like she was 20, and an enormous pair of sunglasses.
Eliyahu was delighted to show me pictures of his trip earlier this year to India with his old friend Haj Ibrahim. They attended a conference on world ethnic religions, whose participants included indigenous sharman's from Latin America and Swedes attempting to recover their pre-Christian religious identity. A huge banner on the stage of the conference had the theme "spirituality without religion" prominently displayed in bold letters. I am sure that is an idea that would excite some people, but what the organisers really meant was religion without Christianity and Islam. Prominent in the conference were the Hindu fascists the RSS. Being India, there were many tens of thousands of participants, most of them men. You can imagine the noise as the massive crowd shouted triumphant Hindu slogans and listened to condemnations of Christianity and Islam. It was remarkable that Haj Ibrahim and Eliyahu were at invited at all. Naturally Haj Ibrahim wore his traditional Palestinian dress and kaffiyeh wherever he went. He charmed everybody, as usual, including even the head of the RSS. When he addressed 2000 students at a local school, he told them what he tells everybody--"you are welcome to my home".
Haj Ibrahim with another religious peacebuilder friend of his, Rabbi Fruman
The local media had a field day with Eliyahu and Haj Ibrahim, putting a photo of them on the front page with the headline "the enemies hug", a rather dramatic announcement given they have been close friends for years.
On Friday morning, I went to Tel Aviv to take photos of my classmate Moon in a meeting, before heading to Ramallah to take photos of Moon attending another meeting. We were taken to Ramallah by the co-chairperson of the organisation I used to intern for, the Israel Palestine Centre for Research and Information. The co-chairperson, Mohammed Dajani, comes from a distinguished family with a long history in Jerusalem. It is his family that owns the abode where Jesus was believed to have had his Last Supper. Moon and I had a brief meal at Mohammed's home. Jesus did not appear for lunch, at least not in a form I was aware of.
