fwd from Leah Green: Another ripple from the Compassionate Listening Project

[Janet Minshall]

Dear SAYMA Friends,  The message below is forwarded from the Jewish Quaker
e-mail list, initially by Maxine Nunn, a Canadian Jewish Friend who did
peace work in Israel for several years and was actually accepted by the
Knesset as both Jewish and Quaker when they granted her a visa to do peace
work in Israel.

I hope you find it as wonderful a Rosh Hashana (New Year's) message as I did.
                                Best Regards,  Janet Minshall




>RE:     Another ripple from the Compassionate Listening Project
>
>
>MidEast Citizen Diplomacy
>PO Box 17 Indianola, Washington 98342 USA
>phone: 360/297-2280   fax: 360/297-6563
><A HREF="http://www.mideastdiplomacy.org">mideastdiplomacy.org</A>
>
>
>Dear Friends,
>
>Niki Landau was a participant in our Compassionate Listening Project this
>past April. She delivered this sermon at her temple, Temple Emanuel
>(Toronto), on
>High Holidays last Sunday.
>It's so beautiful and inspiring I wanted to share it with all of you.
>
>With love and blessings,
>Leah Green, Compassionate Listening Project
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>DVAR TORAH
>by:  Niki Landau    delivered:  Sept. 12, 1999 (2nd day of Rosh Hashanah)
>
>
>When Rabbi Bielfeld asked me to do the Dvar Torah on the second day of Rosh
>
>Hashanah, I was surprised.  First of all, I had no idea what a Dvar Torah
>was.   I am not exactly what you would call a devout Jew.  I would call
>myself a confused Jew.  I am one of those people the Rabbi was speaking
>about on Friday night.  The congregants who only come once a year to shul
>and don't even know why.   So how does a confused Jew come to stand before
>all of you today and deliver the Dvar Torah?  Good question.
>
>I think the answer, strangely enough, lies in the Torah portion -- Genesis,
>
>Chapter 1, Creation.  The Rabbi told me that I should be able to at least
>mention the Torah portion in my speech because, and I quote, "it's an easy
>one".  So I pulled out my personal Torah, dusted it off, and looked up
>Genesis, Chapter 1.  It begins in a familiar way:  "In the beginning, God
>created the heaven and the earth -- the earth being unformed and void, with
>
>darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the
>
>water -- God said, 'Let there be light'; and there was light."
>
>The Torah talks about Creation.  I would like to talk about Re-Creation.
>Only once in my life did I get the chance to start from the very beginning,
>
>and I was too young to make much of the opportunity.  But here we are,
>standing on the edge of another year, on the very edge of a New Millenium,
>and still it seems that the more things change, the more they stay the
>same.
>  So I think it's a good time to talk about Re-Creation.
>
>Re-Creation means that we aren't starting fresh.  Whether we like it  or
>not, when we step into the future, our past will tag along.  We Jews know
>something about Re-Creation.  We've re-created ourselves over and over,
>leaving old unfriendly countries, starting new again in promising lands.
>And still our past catches up with us.  New situations seem to bring the
>same old issues -- anti-semitism, spiritual divisions, moral dilemmas.  And
>
>maybe it's like that for us as individuals, too.  No matter how promising
>the new year looks, somehow the old issues resurface again and again.
>
>So if our past is going to keep walking with us, maybe it's time to embrace
>
>it as a friend.
>
>With this in mind, I turned back to the Torah, to the opening sentence of
>Genesis, Chapter 1, "In the beginning...".  The first image that strikes me
>
>is the image of the void.   I can relate to that.  I've had sadness in my
>life, I've had lonliness, but there is only one time that I have felt such
>a
>profound emptiness, such a sudden darkness in my life, that I knew I'd
>found
>my version of the void.
>
>Nine years ago, I lost a friend, Marnie Kimelman, in a terrorist attack on
>a
>Tel Aviv beach.  I'm sure many of you have heard of Marnie.  She lived just
>
>a few streets away from here, on my street, Truman Rd.  I was also in
>Israel
>that summer.  We were both seventeen years old.
>
>Suffice it to say that nothing in my childhood prepared me for what
>happened
>in Israel that summer.  It was as if my entire world had exploded and all
>that was left were hollowed-out old beliefs -- belief in humankind as being
>
>essentially good; belief in Israel as being safe and noble;  belief in God,
>
>and the concept that life was, in the end, fair.
>
>My father said that, sooner or later, I was probably going to have to come
>to terms with some of the realities of the world -- what is commonly termed
>
>"growing up" -- but that it was usually a slow erosion over time, not a
>sudden explosion.  I think that, regardless of how you lose your faith in
>the world, whether it comes from the sudden loss of a loved one, or whether
>
>it comes slowly, as a gradual compromise you make with Life -- regardless,
>it is hard to live in this world without faith.  And I don't necessarily
>mean religious faith, I mean any faith, faith in humans, in our
>institutions, our governments, our leaders.  Faith in our relationships, in
>
>the promise of commitment.  Faith that the world is getting better and not
>worse, faith in the potential of change, faith in ourselves.
>
>Sometimes in life we lose faith in one area, say a business venture doesn't
>
>succeed or someone we believed in disappoints us, and we hold on tighter to
>
>our other areas -- our family, our religion, our friends -- to get us
>through the re-building time.  And sometimes, we lose faith in something so
>
>fundamental that everything else just seems to come crashing down.  Then we
>
>are alone, and we face such a great emptiness, such a void, that the
>thought
>of re-building seems like an impossible task.  How do you fill such an
>emptiness?
>
>I met an Israeli man named Dr. Yitzhak Mendolson.  He's a psychologist who
>specializes in working with Holocaust survivors and victims of terrorist
>attacks.  A few years ago, Yitzhak was himself a victim of what he calls "a
>
>very mild terrorist attack".  He was shot while sitting in an outdoor cafe.
>
>What's interesting to me about Dr. Mendolson is that, after the attack, he
>became even more actively involved in creating peace.  He began regularly
>meeting and talking with Palestinians in order to listen to their stories
>and further mutual understanding.  It would make sense to me, after being
>shot, if Dr. Mendolson was more interested in security and less trustful of
>
>peace.
>
>But  Dr. Mendolson, or Yitzhak, didn't see it that way.  He decided that
>the
>best way to beat terrorism was to refuse to become, as he puts it, a
>self-terrorist.  Rather than live in fear, he would make a conscious effort
>
>to "humanize" the enemy.  He would use the opportunity of re-creation to
>widen his understanding of the world and achieve an even greater inner
>strength.
>
>Someone said to me once that "you can't change what other people do but you
>
>can change your response to it".  It took me nine years to change my
>response of  grief and anger and emptiness.  But this year I decided that I
>
>was ready, and not only ready but responsible for the re-creation of my
>world.   And this realization, for me, was the real growing up, and it can
>happen at any age.
>
>This year, I returned to Israel to help make peace.  My parents and I
>joined
>a delegation of Jews, Muslims, and Christians as part of an organization
>called Mid-East Citizen Diplomacy.  Our purpose was to listen.  To listen
>to
>Palestinians and Israelies on all sides of the conflict, from extremists to
>
>peace activists and everyone in between.  And not only was our purpose to
>listen, but to listen compassionately.   Which means listening without
>judgement, without deciding whether someone is right or wrong -- listening
>only for the person's story.
>
>One particularly hard day, in Hebron, we met with a man who was a member of
>
>the militant group Hamas.  I couldn't listen compassionately.  I was too
>frightened, too angry, I could barely stay in the room.  Afterwards, when I
>
>was recovering in the hallway, I was approached by Hisham, our Palestinian
>guide in Hebron, a journalist and human rights worker.  Hisham approached
>me, handed me a tissue and said: "I lost a friend."  "I lost a friend too,"
>
>I said.  And there we were,  facing each other, Palestinian and Jew, each
>of
>us trapped in our own tragedy.  And Hisham said, "Then you and I have to
>make peace.  Because if we can't make peace, how can we expect others to?"
>
>Small steps.  Small steps in faith.  Small steps in re-building.  It helped
>
>me to discover that the world is filled with people who have experienced a
>void in their lives and are  trying desperately to re-create, any way they
>can.  Some are using anger, or bitterness, or violence, because these are
>the tools they believe are necessary to survive in this world.  And some
>are
>using faith because, like it or not, that is what it takes to believe in
>the
>possibilities of this world.
>
>I've decided to use compassion.  It seems to me that compassion is the only
>
>human response to a world that is more and more dehumanizing.  And in being
>
>compassionate, I was greeted with compassion.  And that changed the way I
>saw the world.  When I hear the term "Palestinian terrorists", I now know
>that I have met many Palestinians who not only were not terrorists, but who
>
>welcomed me -- despite their own history of suffering -- welcomed me, a
>Jew,
>into their homes and called me family.  When the newspapers say, "Four
>boatloads of Chinese migrants" -- I imagine boarding one of those boats and
>
>sitting down with one of those people, and hearing his or her own story.
>That is my new way of understanding my world and re-creating my beliefs.
>That is the way I'm filling my void.
>
>THE END.
>
>
>_____________________________________________________
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