Update on the Sulha Peace Project
Thank you for your generous support!
Dear Friends,
A week ago, I announced that I would be donating all revenue I received this year from your voluntary subscriptions to this Substack account to the Sulha Peace Project. Today, thanks to your generosity, I was able to send a $2,000 donation to this worthy organization. I am moved and deeply grateful to be able to do this. Thank you to all who contributed. Some of you have pledged monthly contributions, so as those pledges come in, along with any new paid subscriptions, I will be able to make further donations.
I want to reiterate that whether you decided to offer payment for your subscription or are opting for a free subscription, I am honored and delighted that you are interested in receiving my writings. Please do not feel any pressure to give funds.
I intended to write more this week, but life happened. So instead, I am sharing a post from before Rosh Hashanah about my experience at a September 7 Sulha gathering, to give you the flavor of the kind of on-the-ground, non-governmental relationship work that is going on between Arabs and Jews all over Israel. These efforts continue even now during the Israel-Hamas war. Thank you again for helping me to support them.
Shabbat Shalom, may you be blessed with moments of expansiveness and peace,
Rabbi Jonathan Kligler
(with Melila Hellner-Eshed)
Wishing everyone who celebrates Rosh Hashanah a year of health and engaging activity, a year of being brave in the face of the many challenges we each and all will face, and a year of unexpected pleasures and joy.
I have been in Israel celebrating my brother’s oldest grandson’s Bar Mitzvah. I feel so blessed to have the resources and time to be able to do this.
I want to offer a vignette of hope for the New Year: While in Jerusalem with my amazing friend Melila Hellner, I accompanied her to a gathering of the Sulha Peace Project, which she chairs. The Sulha Peace Project is a seat-of-your-pants, grassroots collection of Jews in Israel and Arabs from the Palestinian Territories who are absolutely committed to staying in loving connection with each other, despite the gauntlet of obstacles - political, logistical, ideological - that make connecting nearly impossible.
Yet I gathered last Thursday with more than 150 of these brave people for an evening at Neve Shalom/Wahat Al Salam, the only joint Jewish/Muslim/Christian village in Israel (or perhaps anywhere…) Most of the Arab participants came from the Hebron area. Just the effort required to secure passes for these folks to cross into Israel boggles my mind. Some of the younger Jews and Arabs may have been meeting someone from the “other side” for literally the first time.
In our “listening circles” we were each asked to share a personal story of when we experienced the best of humanity. As each person shared a story, translating back and forth between Hebrew and Arabic, I could actually feel our hearts collectively thawing, our spirits lifting as, amidst the grinding hopelessness of the status quo, we remembered how good and brave and beautiful people can be.
This doesn’t change the political reality, of course, but it changed us. It was like an inoculation of hope. Our eyes lit up and we were able to breathe deeply. Thus refreshed and fortified, we could go on, and keep striving to be our best.
But the organizers had even more good medicine in store for us. Following a delicious dinner, we gathered in Neve Shalom’s grassy outdoor amphitheater as a fabulous ensemble of Israeli and Palestinian musicians played and sang in Arabic and Hebrew - and we danced!
As if to say: yes, it is our birthright to connect deeply with one another, but it is also our birthright to live with joy!
I am overwhelmed with gratitude that I was able to participate in this gathering, what a way to send me into this New Year! I will be supporting their efforts financially as I am able. If you want to give some tzedakah to a worthy cause that is operating on a shoestring and flying under the radar, here’s the link: sulhapeaceproject.com.
Again, wishing you and your loved ones, and our precious planet, a year of open hearts and good courage. (September 13, 2023)