Is peace possible?

My colleague, Rabbi Ronald Kronish, made aliyah to Jerusalem in 1979 and has been there with his family ever since. In 1991 Kronish founded the Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel (ICCI), serving as its executive director until 2015. During those years, he worked at fostering understanding and cooperation among Israel’s Muslims, Christians and Jews.

Kronish emphasizes has come to emphasize that he and his colleagues have been engaged in building peace, not making peace. From his perspective, making peace is what politicians do; they sign agreements called treaties, which provide formal structures within which peaceful societies may – or may not – develop.

By way of contrast, it is for people like Ron – for social workers, educators, clergy, community organizers – to help build peace among individuals and communities; they seek to accomplish their goals through a variety of carefully chosen person-to-person activities in which Arabs and Jews learn to respect each other, to value the dignity of the “other,” to see the face of the “other.” The ultimate aim of such activities is for the “other” to cease to be “other.” Though this work of building peace is often difficult and frustrating, it is absolutely necessary, if the efforts of the political peacemakers peace-makers are to yield sustained and tangible results.

Nowhere in Israel is there a more intentional community of peace builders than the village of Wahat al-Salam/Neve Shalom, which lies midway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The village, whose Arabic/Hebrew name translates to Oasis of Peace, is a community divided roughly in half between Palestinian and Jewish Israelis. Their school, which goes from Nursery through Grade 6, devotes equal hours of instruction to both Arabic and Hebrew.

To expand its influence beyond the small village population, the community has established a School for Peace, “a training center for activists, academics, and civil servants. Some 80,000 people have completed the School for Peace’s courses, which aims to turn citizens of Israel, both Palestinian and Jewish, into agents of change.”

In the June 17 issue of The New Yorker, staff writer Masha Gessen has written a penetrating profile of Wahat al-Salam/Neve Shalom, titled “A Semblance of Peace: How life in a co-living community changed after October 7th.” The author first visited this community back in 2018 and then returned to it six months after the Hamas attack “to see what the war had done to the community and, more broadly, the Israeli peace movement.”

Perhaps the greatest – and the saddest – change at the village was what one of the Jewish residents called “this very loud silence” of the Palestinian residents, one of whom lost 40 family members in Gaza during the first month of hostilities and kept her silence. After Oct. 7, the Jews and Palestinians in Wahat al Salam/Neve Shalom were waiting for reactions from the “other” which never came: “The Jews wanted the Palestinians to denounce Hamas and its murders. The Palestinians felt that some Jews were indifferent to the devastation of Gaza.”

Dyan Rizek, a Palestinian who has lived with her husband Rayek in this Oasis for Peace for 40 years, runs an art gallery in the village: “Rizak tried to assemble a show that would address the war…but couldn’t find enough artists to share wall space with ‘the other side.’ She is still working on gathering pieces for the show. In the meantime, she has changed the name five times, from ‘My Existence’ to ‘Receiving our Humanity’ to ‘Our Humanity Demands Action’ to ‘Are We Together or Not’ to ‘Art in a Time of War and Destruction, for the Future’ to, for now, ‘Where To?’ ”

“Where To?” Yes, where to?? That is the question, the overwhelming question…not only for those Jewish and Palestinian Israelis at Wahat al-Salam/Neve-Shalom but a question that needs to be heard throughout the Middle East and throughout our entire broken world.

In the Dec. 1 issue of Jewish Rhode Island, during a time when the vast majority of Israeli and Diaspora Jews were in a state of shock and numbing mourning over the barbaric Hamas attack on settlements in southern Israel, I wrote:

“It is not surprising that many of us now harbor a visceral desire – no, more than that, an almost physical need – to seek unrestrained revenge. Some of us wish to see all members of Hamas wiped out, obliterated, exterminated; only then can we experience some form of relief, some sense of peace, some sense of shalom, some escape from our continuing nightmare.

“But at what cost? What cost to Israel’s soldiers? What cost to Israeli citizens? What cost to Gaza’s citizens? What cost today? What cost to future generations? Has anybody figured out what path will be opened after the last bomb falls? Is there any way out of here? Who dares to answer? Who dares not to answer?

“How many lives are yet to be destroyed in the onrushing tide of vengeance?”

At what cost? Here is the cost: Hostages who will never come home alive because they are already dead. Hundreds of IDF soldiers killed, thousands more, seriously wounded. The State of Israel falling apart socially, economically, politically. Tens of thousands of citizens dislocated from their homes near both southern and northern borders. More than 38,000 Gazan non-combatants, most of them women and children killed; thousands upon thousands maimed for life. Their infrastructure in shambles. The mounting threat of a crushing conflict with Hezbollah, even full-blown war with Iran’s most potent proxy, or with Iran itself. Not to mention Israel’s ultra-rightwing government broadening its efforts to subdue the efforts of those Israeli citizens who, despite everything, are trying to be true and earnest peace builders…

Isn’t this cost high enough??

JAMES B. ROSENBERG is a rabbi emeritus at Temple Habonim in Barrington.
Contact him at rabbiemeritus@templehabonim.org.