The past nine months haven’t been the most hopeful time in history, when it comes to yearning for peace between Israel and Palestinians. But in August, a Milwaukee-area synagogue will host an event aimed at laying the groundwork for peaceful resolution – including the appearance of both an Israeli and a Palestinian.
The event, which is scheduled to take place on Aug. 8 at Congregation Emanu-El B’ne Jeshurun in River Hills, grew out of Cantor David Barash’s series of trips to Israel, specifically the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, located at Kibbutz Ketura in Arava Alley.
Two people the cantor has met through the program and its associated charity bike ride, one Israeli and one Palestinian, will be in Wisconsin for the event. They will both tell their stories and engage in dialogue with one another.
Cantor Barash has participated multiple times in the Israel Ride, an annual bike ride from Jerusalem to Eilat, as a fundraiser for the Arava Institute. He said he was taken by its mission for the first time in 2017 and was inspired to take part other times, although the ride has been canceled recently due to the pandemic and the war.
He met both of the talk’s participants on different Israel Rides, although they did the program years apart and will be meeting for the first time at the event.
The cantor called the August event “another approach, to have two people who have been through a program such as this, to be able to share some experiences, of where they came from, where they are now… and hoping to share a hopeful future together.”
“It’s a place where they have Israelis and Palestinians and Jordanians all come together and work to solve environmental issues in the region,” Barash said of the Arava Institute. “Then, they bring that technology and the solutions back to their communities. But while they’re doing that, and working together, they learn to build trust… they learn each other’s narrative.”
“The scarcest commodity, as they will often say, is not any of these resources; it’s trust.”
Matan Tawfik, a third-generation Jerusalem native, is the Israeli participant in the event, although he now lives in New York City. He is a professional dancer and a film archival researcher, among other vocations.
He came to the Arava Institute while looking for a place to study environmental policy and performing arts and later learned about its work on striving for peace.
“My interest in it grew further because I realized that it was a very holistic program that was both rigorous academically, while there was one day a week where you only focus on the conflict, and you gain different skills of communicating… that was appealing for me,” Tawfik said.
The Palestinian participant, who we’ll call Omar, is a native of the West Bank who had trouble getting a work permit in Israel after graduating from university until the Arava Institute hired him.
“It’s Arabs, Palestinians, and Israelis in the same class, taking courses, and we live together on the university campus,” he said. At one point, he met a young Israeli woman there whom he was sure he had met before. Later, he realized that she was a soldier stationed in his village who used to stop him every day.
“When I told her I was from that village, she was so scared of me,” Omar said. “And I told her you don’t have to, and I’m not here to hurt anyone, I just remembered your face.”
“I want us, me and you, to work together for our future, for our kids, not to meet at a checkpoint, but to meet at the institute, or the education institute first, not at the checkpoint first, where have the first impression that’s very scary and not safe. And now we’re working together.”
Omar will tell several other stories at the event about “what I’ve learned, what I’ve gained, it’s good for other people to hear… it can encourage other people to believe in peace, and not lose their hope. Because if we lose our hope, we lose everything.”
“I’m going to meet someone who I’ve never met before, who is a Palestinian, who these days is supposed to see me as an enemy, and I’m supposed to maybe see him [that way],” Tawfik said of Omar. “But I think what the Arava is amazing at doing is, you live together and you exist together for a semester or a year, and you learn to sit in the room, even if you don’t agree on everything.”
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How to go
The peace talk at Congregation Emanu-El B’ne Jeshurun will be held 7 p.m., Thursday, Aug. 8. Open to the community. RSVP at Ceebj.org.
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