Rabbi's Message

Rabbi Elyse Wechterman
Read about the Rabbi
March 2005

Stories of hope for peace in Israel

Amazingly, I want to write this month about renewed hope for peace in Israel and Palestine. I am acutely aware that as I write this - in the middle of February - that things might change quickly and this might be obsolete by the time you are reading it in March. Such is the nature of hope - and life in Israel.

Hope - we have learned all too well - is fleeting and can come crashing down in the instant it takes for a suicide bomber to detonate him or herself in a crowded market place. As I reflect back on my own personal twenty or so years of conscious and committed concern for Israel's safety, I note that the periods of hopefulness - like the euphoria following the Rabin/Arafat handshake on the White House lawn in 1993 - have been relatively brief while the despair and pain - like that I felt after the Rabin assassination - drag on for months and years as I become once again accustomed to and inured to reports of terrorist attacks and Israeli army overkill.

That is why the hope I feel at this moment is tentative and cautious. The same is true, I understand for many of my friends and acquaintances that live in Israel. We are again beginning to speak of hope - hope that the new Palestinian President Abu Mazen will live up to his word and confront violent radicals in his own community the way his predecessor never could (or wanted to). Hope that Ariel Sharon, an architect of much of the West Bank and Gaza settler movement, will actually be the one to evacuate some of those very same settlers. Hope that the violence of the past four years of the second Intifada has finally become too much for either side to bear any longer. But it is a tentative hope nonetheless. We know that the history of pain and heartache is just too deep for any one announcement or move on the part of a politician to change much.

Most of us are aware the road to true peace is a long and hard one that the people themselves must travel.

So I am pleasantly surprised to find that it is in the realm of relationships of Palestinian and Israeli people that my sense of hope is not so tentative. Here are several stories that I have heard recently that give me this hope: Recently, a group of Israeli authors met with a group of Palestinian authors in the middle of one of the bridges across the Jordan River separating Israel from Jordan. There was no major agenda, no political theater. The authors met just to get to know one another and share their passion for literature. They simply wanted to build a bridge in their field.

One of Israel's top bands at the moment sings in both Arabic and Hebrew and includes both Jewish and Arab Israelis. Their shows are one of the few venues that attracts both Israeli and Arab young people together.

Two months ago a member of this congregation gave me a bottle of olive oil. It is from a new collective of Palestinian and Israeli women in the north of Israel who are working together in a joint venture. I looked on the web for more information. Apparently, this is one of many new joint business ventures between Palestinians and Israelis. Another member of our congregation in the business of organic produce distribution received a call from an Arab organic olive grower looking for a US distributor. And our congregant feels compelled as a Jew to pursue this relationship.

Small steps - yes - but these are small steps between people - human beings sharing their cultures, their businesses, themselves with those who were the supposed enemies.

In the long run, the decisions of Abu Mazen and Ariel Sharon won't mean very much at all if the individuals who will have to live together aren't given more opportunities to meet, get to know one another and build relationships of trust and interdependence. And on that end, I am feeling very and fully hopeful.

Rabbi Elyse

PS - What can you do to support the new hope for peace in Israel and Palestine? I hope to have some new websites and businesses representing joint ventures to publish next month. In the meantime, look for Palestinian and Israeli products, cultural exports and other things to support.

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