Interview with Eliyahu McLean

Please tell me a little about your personal history and how you came to be involved in peace work.

My mother is a Jew from New York and my father is the son of a protestant minister. I come from a long line of protestant pastors and missionaries, going back hundreds of years. I grew up in Hawaii on the island of Oahu. My parents raised me with a very universal ideology, trying to find the commonality in all the world’s religions. I could relate to those teachings, but I wanted a sense of my own identity. The only Jewish connection my family had was that we lit Hanukah candles,1 and my mother cooked borscht2 and said “oy gevalt.”3 When I was 12, my friend invited me to his Bar Mitzvah. I said, “Hmm. I have exactly one year. I could have a Bar Mitzvah too.” I studied for a whole year, and had my Bar Mitzvah. My Jewish grandfather, zichrono l'vracha,4 gave me the name Eliyahu. Before that, my name was Olan, and my nickname at school was Oscar.

After I graduated from high school I spent a year in Israel on the Young Judea Year Course,5 then went to study at the University of California in Berkeley. I was already speaking Hebrew. I wasn’t a right-winger, but I was passionate about Israel. I lived in a Zionist6 Young Judea co-op. I became co-chair of the Israel Action Committee on the Berkeley campus. I was to organize guest lectures, movies, speakers, anything to raise awareness of Israel and her needs. Through becoming an Israel activist, I started to have to deal with some of the anti-Israel activities on campus. There was an initiative called Measure J, to make Berkeley a sister city with Jabalia Refugee Camp.7 I was on the “No on J” campaign, because Jabalia was a center for Hamas8 and militants. However, through that process I met the “Yes on J” people, so I started to hear another side to the story, which I simply wasn’t aware of. I was sent [by the Israel Action Committee on the Berkeley campus] to spy in on a class called Palestine, a class devoted to Palestinian history--’48,9 ’6710 -- the Palestinian narrative. I started to hear the Palestinian narrative on everything I had been defending as an Israel activist. I really started to question a lot of the assumptions I was spouting.

Can you give an example of some of the assumptions you had before hearing the Palestinian narrative?

The narrative that Israel was a land without people for people without a land; not knowing that there were indigenous people here before. The attitude that there was just a handful of Arabs and everyone else who’s here now came from the outside. The 1948 War,11 and the aftermath of the war; the typical Israeli narrative is that all the Arabs just fled completely of their own will and volition. I started to learn about what Israel did systematically to forcibly expel people--Deir Yassin,12 some of the massacres that took place. Now it’s called “Post Zionist Historiography,” having a critical look at the history of ’48 and ’67. I knew that a lot of what they were spouting was also propaganda, but at least I was able to hear the other side. I decided to go back to Israel for another year, and that was the year that I became sort of an activist.

I became disillusioned with the Zionist narrative and fascinated with Arab culture and Arabic. I went to Hebrew University and studied Palestinian spoken Arabic. When Measure J failed in Berkeley, the group tried to make UC Berkeley a sister university with Bethlehem University. That measure passed. I remember listening to those debates at the UC Berkeley student senate. I was ambivalent. I remember thinking, what’s so wrong with establishing a connection with students at Bethlehem University? I had already begun to be called a fence sitter, trying to listen in as an Israel activist. I visited Bethlehem University. I made friends with a student there and he brought me to his home in Dheisheh Refugee Camp.13 I went back to Hebrew University and started bringing Jewish students to the refugee camp and Bethlehem University. That began my work of crossing boundaries. I was fascinated. I wanted to learn everything. I was learning Arabic, traveling all over the West Bank,14 and getting way into it.

The Gulf War15 hit, and I needed money because our program was cancelled. I got a job at Jerusalem City Hall as a construction worker and I lived with Palestinian Muslim construction workers from Hebron.16 I started to practice Arabic, but when I was living with them I sort of got the feeling that I was trying so hard to identify with them, that I was almost trying to become Palestinian. I was so fascinated by it, and I was fed up with the way Israel was acting. I started feeling a little alienated. I thought, “What else is there?” I ended up at the same time studying in a yeshiva17 called the Israelite Yeshiva in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City.18 I would work construction during the day, and at 5 pm I would take a shower and rush over and the whole evening would be studying Jewish mysticism, Kabbalah, Torah, Chumash.19 I was in two worlds, even then.

I was asking, what is the spiritual underpinning, what does Judaism have to say? I started opening up to ideas about Hashem20 and truth and God. When the Gulf War was over, I went to Egypt. I studied Islam, and spent a lot of time in a mosque. I ended up praying in a Muslim prayer line. I wasn’t really conscious of it but I technically became a Muslim. I said the necessary words.21 At the time I said, “Who am I to say Mohammed is not a prophet? Why not?” I was searching for truth. I was invited to a traditional Sufi22 gathering, with Egyptian Muslim Sufis dressing in white robes, chanting and swaying. It was a very, very profound experience for me. I spent a long time there and I was really drawn to Islam, it was a beautiful path. But there was a voice in my head calling me back to Israel.

From that point onwards all of my work was dedicated to bridge building. When I went back to Berkeley, instead of being involved in a pro-Israel action committee, I helped revive a group that was called Tzedek,23 Jews for Social Justice, doing black-Jewish dialogue, and I became very active in Jewish-Arab dialogue. My heart and soul longed to come back [to Israel].

This time I ended up working as a goat herder in the Galilee24 for a religious Jewish mountain man. I spent a lot of time in meditation out in the fields of the lower Galilee, and felt like I could connect with the tradition. That’s when I started wrapping t’fillin,25 and started growing my peyot,26 I always tuck them back. That was in 1994. I also spent a lot of time with Shlomo Carlebach,27 before he passed away. He was a big influence. I would watch how he interacted with people and helped them return to their roots, and how he respected anyone of any religion who came to him. He always said you have to have “holy chutzpah.”28

What does that mean to you--what did you learn from Shlomo Carlebach?

Having the audacity to stand up and do the right thing in the world. I interpreted that to mean that you have to have holy chutzpah to work for peace. Sometimes it takes chutzpah to work for holiness, and holiness to me is peace and understanding.

There was an organization called Interns for Peace,29 so I applied and was accepted and was sent to live in a Muslim Arab city in the Galilee called Tamra.30

What did you do with Interns for Peace?

I was supposed to work in the community center and implement programs with high school students. I worked on a project with five Jewish and five Arab community centers from towns in the Western Galilee region. I was the counselor for 40 Muslim Arab teenagers, and I was meant to help organize multi-cultural programming. I will never forget when I was welcomed into Tamra, this Galilee Arab village, by a Palestinian from Gaza who was part of the Interns organization. He gave me the name El Khader, the Arabic name which is equivalent to Eliyahu, Elijah.

Tell me about Interns for Peace--does it still exist?

They do exist, but they’re not nearly what they once were. I was involved with Interns when it was on its last little blip. In the ’70s, Interns used to send 10 to 20 mostly American Jewish people to live for a full year in an Arab, Muslim city in Israel to become trained in Arab-Jewish coexistence work. It was one of the first organizations to do something like this. A lot of the graduates of Interns for Peace are now the heads of big organizations: Arik Ascherman of Rabbis for Human Rights31 lived in Tamra. Gershon Baskin of IPCRI,32 Sarah Kreimer, the founder of the Center for Arab Jewish Economic Development.33 A lot of us were trained with Interns for Peace.

It wasn’t an easy time for me, to be honest. Usually they sent a group, but I was the only Jew who went that year. They sent me to live with a young Bruderhoff (a branch of the Mennonites that live in Pennsylvania and do peace work), who didn’t speak a word of Hebrew or Arabic. I ended up having to translate, and he left early. So I was alone, and I had to leave after three months. I ended up in Jerusalem and I’ve been living in Jerusalem ever since.

I got involved in a dialogue project in Nablus.34 We were doing a dialogue project called “transformation of suffering,” bringing 30 Israelis each month into Nablus to workshops to go through the suffering we were both experiencing. It took place in the Palestinian Women’s and Reiki Center35 in Nablus. Did you know there was a Reiki center in Nablus? I’ll never forget a husky Palestinian guy with a big mustache looking like a PLO36 official talking about having the “universal energy come through your hands.” I thought, “Am I in California or am I in Nablus?!”

Why don’t you give me a brief overview of all the projects you’re involved in?

There was a Palestinian participant from Gaza [in the Nablus project] who was an activist in Fatah37 Youth during the first intifada.38 He had a Peace and Friendship Center in Gaza and wanted to start a parallel project in Gaza. We started an Israeli-Palestinian Gaza City dialogue project. I used to bring groups of Israelis into Gaza and on our first trip at each dialogue an Israeli would tell their story to a Palestinian and a Palestinian would tell their story to an Israeli. Then in the larger group the Palestinian would tell the Israeli’s story, and vice versa.

Who participated in that program?

Mostly people who were interested in meeting Palestinians were inclined to go. But I’ll never forget there was one young man who had been a soldier on the streets of Gaza just a few months before, because the intifada had just ended and the PLO was starting to move in.39 There was a window of opportunity. So we brought this Israeli soldier into Gaza City, and he was hosted by a young man who used to organize stone throwing against the soldiers. He was being led through the streets that he used to patrol as a soldier. He recognized those streets and he was overcoming his post-traumatic-stress-disorder by trying to go back there. I’ll never forget when a Palestinian policeman who was sent to protect us took his beret off and put it on the head of the Israeli soldier and took his PLO button off and put it on his jacket.

This project was so successful that some of the young people said, “We don’t want to just do dialogue, we want to do a project.” Kibbutz Ketura40 has an environmental studies program, so we organized a big thing with PIES, the Palestinian-Israeli Environmental Secretariat,41 Kibbutz Ketura and our dialogue group. We had a Gaza Beach clean-up day, with 70 people, and we cleaned up a huge stretch of beach with Israeli and Palestinian and international youth. That was a huge success.

At the same time, I was at Yakar,42 a modern orthodox Jewish liberal think tank, learning and seminar center in Katamon in Jerusalem. Yakar hired me to help start a new teacher training project called the Jewish Muslim Bet Midrash.43 I organized a project to bring Jewish and Muslim high school teachers together to study Islamic and Jewish texts together. The teachers were from East and West Jerusalem, Abu Ghosh,44 around Jerusalem. Most of the Jewish teachers were teachers of Arabic, so a lot of the classes were in Arabic. They didn’t do the dialogue; they actually wanted to go straight to the real work. They didn’t have to do the introductory stuff that most people have to do. We could go very deep very fast. It was a highly successful project and even after I left Yakar it went on for 3 or 4 years.

I also work closely with the Compassionate Listening Project and Leah Green.45 On a few of their tours I was their guide around the country. So I said, “you’ve been listening to too much suffering,” after two weeks of compassionate listening you get pretty depressed. You can imagine, there’s so much suffering here on all sides, and you’re just compassionately listening. I said, “let me bring you to a sheikh.” So I brought them to the home of a Sufi sheik I knew in the West Bank, and he told them a story.

“Ten years ago during the time of the first intifada, the only Jews I knew were soldiers at road blocks. I went to go pray at the tomb of Nebi Musa46 near Jericho.”47 He apparently had a vision of the prophet Moses, who spoke to him out of a body of light and said, “In the future many Jews and Christians are going to seek your wisdom and advice. Welcome them into your home as if they were members of your own family.” But he thought it must be the deceiving voice of Allah, the Shatan,48 because he only knew soldiers. He thought, “How could this be, I must be going crazy or there’s some devil.” Fast-forward ten years, as he’s telling the story, now he has a group of Christians and Jews coming to seek his wisdom and advice. All of a sudden it dawned on him that the prophecy had come true, and he burst into tears. The whole Compassionate Listening tour group came up and gave him a big hug.

From that moment I became the sheikh’s booking agent. I started to take him to all these festivals, Shantiki and Boombamela,49 to speak about Islam as a vision of peace. Shortly after I met him, Yossi Klein HaLevi50 was writing a book about Christian, Muslim and Jewish mystics. He grew up the son of Holocaust survivors and in the Jewish Defense League,51 and wanted to overcome his own reservations with the non-Jews he was raised to fear and hate. The sheikh introduced Yossi and me to a whole network of indigenous Palestinian Sufi sheikhs from the West Bank and Gaza. Our adventures among the Sufis became the subject of Yossi’s book, At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden.52 Because I had studied Sufism and Islam those years before, I felt that I could speak the language of religious Muslims, and because of the fact that I studied in an orthodox yeshiva, I could speak the language of the Hasidim53 and the religious Jews, and do bridge building work.

Recently I have been working closely with Abdel Azziz Bukhari,54 who lived in America for 20 years and was in the hippy movement for a while. He lives in the Old City and we have become very close friends. He is a Nakhshbandi sheikh and his family is originally from Uzbekistan. I bring people to visit him because he lived in America and he’s very open. He is from a long line of Sufi sheikhs. One of the things we do together is organize prayer gatherings at shared holy places like Nebi Samuel,55 which is holy to Muslims and Jews. I often bring people to his home, which is like a second home to me. From his rooftop on the Via Dolorosa,56 you see Al Aksa57 and out his front door is the first station of the cross.58 His neighbors are the Khaderiyya and the Afakhani Sufis, this is a huge Sufi center. If you go to his house on a Thursday night you will hear a hundred Sufis chanting at the top of their lungs in the heart of the old city. I introduced Sheikh Abu Saleh59 to Rabbi Fruman,60 and they became like twin brothers.

In the last few years, a lot of what I’ve done is helped organize gatherings. We started a new tarika,61 called Tarikat Ibrahimi, the Tarika of Abraham, Derech Avraham.62 Rabbi Alberto Arbiv,63 a Conservative rabbi in Tel Aviv, and Avi El Kayam,64 a Jewish professor from Tel Aviv University, approached me because I knew the Sufis. One of my business cards should read “dial a sheikh.” We did a big meeting at Neve Shalom65 where we had rabbis and sheikhs praying together. We did zikr66 with Rabbi Fruman and Dov Maimon.67

When the intifada68 started we started the Old City peace vigil above the Western Wall69 with people from different religions praying for peace. We met every single Friday consistently until about two or three months ago. We ran out of steam, it was hard to keep it going, so we’re not still doing it. But for 3 1/2 years, every week was an interfaith gathering with Palestinian Muslims coming, soldiers coming by-sometimes soldiers would say, “It should only be that your prayers should succeed, I don’t want to be here anymore.”

I was also director of an organization called Peacemaker Community.70 The idea was to form a network linking and connecting a lot of disparate, spiritually oriented peace and interfaith projects. Each year the Peacemaker Community Poland branch organizes a bearing witness retreat in Auschwitz71 in Poland. I brought a Bedouin72 Muslim Imam with me to Auschwitz. They base themselves in what are called the three tenets: 1) not knowing, 2) bearing witness, and 3) loving action. Part of the problem in the Middle East is that everybody “knows,” to such an extent that no one will listen to anyone else who also knows. Everybody is so certain. Rabbi David Hartman called Israel a “tyranny of certitudes.”73 I think it’s true.

When Peacemaker Community stopped I started working last year in a freelance capacity for different organizations. I help strengthen big gatherings. For example, with the organization Shvil Zahav,74 which does monthly peace walks. This week they did a huge peace walk in the West Bank with 100 Arabs and Jews. They walk in a spiritual way, silently in a single file line for two to seven days at a time, handing out little flyers that say what the message is. It’s not a protest, not a march, but a silent walk in mindful meditation with Arabs and Jews. When I join that I always bring people.

Two and a half years ago Gabi Meyer75 and I worked together to organize the first sulha.76 That was a Hanukah, Christmas, Ramadan77 celebration in the Galilee where we had a talking circle with an olive branch as a talking peace. Jews prepared the Ramadan meal for the Muslims, and Muslims and Christians lit Hanukah candles. That grew to 600 people the next summer, and last summer to 1500 people. We’re hoping for over 2000 people this summer.78 So I’m involved in the sulha gatherings now. I work as a tour guide, Sufi, new-age groups come to meet religious peacemakers. I bring them all over the country, to the Galilee, the Negev,79 Jerusalem.

Another project I organized that morphed out of the Peacemaker Community was the Jerusalem Circle. Every Friday, activists from many different projects and organizations in the Jerusalem area gathered just to be together, to network. I know many people in many projects who don’t know what each other are doing, so the idea was just to gather and sit and share some music and food. Almost inevitably some new idea came out of every meeting. A lot of what I do is as a shiduch maker,80 to say, “You should know that person, you should get together with that person.” A lot of new projects that are happening now, I’m not directly involved with, but I know I helped seed them.

I asked Reb Zalman Schachter81 if there was any initiation, any bracha, any smicha, any hasmacha,82 any recognition in the Jewish tradition for Jewish peacemaking, Jewish peace activism, Jewishly inspired peace work-work that is not just political in nature but that integrates the very principles we study in the tradition, in an activist way. There is so much going on in the States, Michael Lerner and the Tikkun community,83 Brit Tzedek V’Shalom,84 and a lot of rabbis are doing great work. There’s Rabbis for Human Rights here, but that’s more like human rights work. What about peace work, bridge building work? So Reb Zalman Schachter developed a new initiation called “Rodef Shalom,” Pursuer of Peace. I spent a day with him and he gave a personal blessing and put his hands on me like in a rabbinic ordination. He wrote up some official looking documents in English, Hebrew and Arabic.

What does the “Pursuer of Peace” distinction mean to you?

Maybe in certain Orthodox circles this might not mean anything because it’s not an official smicha, but it’s definitely an affirmation and acknowledgement of the work that I’m doing. Part of the problem is that what I’m doing does not have an official title or role. Even though I’ve been “Director of the Peacemaker Community,” that still doesn’t really describe what I do, so this is the closest kind of affirmation and support.

But the powerful thing about this Rodef Shalom initiation is that Reb Zalman Schachter encouraged and empowered me to train others, so I’m actually developing a training program for Jewish peacemakers. I have a number of people in the States-- one is in graduate school and the other is studying to be a Reconstructionist85 rabbi-- who want to be a Rodef Shalom. I’m working on how to structure it-what would be the credentials, what can someone in North America do, would it be activism related to Israel, or would it be a Jewish person doing any tikkun olam86 work anywhere in the world? When I talked to Reb Zalman, right away he said they should have to study Arabic and spend some time working in a conflict region. Those were the first things he said, automatically. So that is sort of a personal thing I do in addition to other ongoing projects.

For someone who doesn’t know anything at all about this conflict, why do you think what you’re doing is important?

I like the way Rabbi Menachem Fruman from Tekoa puts it. He often says, “I am a proud primitive.” The problem is that the negotiations that happen in Washington or in Europe are between English speaking academic Palestinians and English speaking academic Israelis. They don’t incorporate any of the people-to-people approach, the grassroots elements. They leave out the religious and spiritual dimension, which is often missing from statecraft. We’re trying to reclaim the indigenous tools of Middle Eastern peace wisdom-- the sulha, text study-- tools found within Islam and Judaism in particular, but of course also in Christianity and in all the traditions here. Spirituality deals with the trans-rational level, the non-rational world, with spiritual ideals. Sometimes if you try to approach this conflict only from a rational point of view, you don’t get anywhere; it’s almost like deadlock.

I’m trying to approach the chaos and the conflict that seem to be completely unsolvable by getting out of the box of the usual ways of trying to approach this conflict-both in peace activism and in the official governmental level peace talks. I’m trying to bring in this other dimension. This is the Holy Land, and it’s not the Holy Land for nothing. If you try to approach people-the simple Palestinians on the street, the vendors, falafel stand owners, taxi drivers, bus drivers-many of them, on both sides, if you try to approach things purely from a political, rational level, you won’t get anywhere. But if you bring in the spiritual dimension, I find that sometimes you can make bridges in amazing ways.

You can have a settler87 rabbi and a Hamas sheikh working together for peace, because they’re speaking a common spiritual language even though they’re coming from diametrically opposed political points of view. I like to say that spirituality is trying to find the underlying place of unity between contradictory opposites, places where there might be a resonance and a commonality between two opposing sides, even settler and angry Palestinian, or Left wing and Right wing. It’s almost like in this world, things are divided, but the place from which everyone originates, the ultimate place, is a place of unity. So the idea is to remind people that our source is the same source. We come from the same source, whether you call it a monotheistic God, or the Native American Great Spirit, or the Great Buddha, or whatever. I want to tap into the field of energy, the place of unity where people come from.

I like to honor people’s devotion. People who are passionate about the Land of Israel, passionate about the Land of Palestine, might say, “Our passions clash.” I say, “What unites you is that you are both so passionate and devoted to this land.” It might have different terms, but if we can redirect that energy from an exclusive worldview to an inclusive one, then we can direct people’s passion and maybe find a place of meeting and coming together.

What are the obstacles to, in your words, ”finding a place of meeting” between people?

Both societies are committing violence-Israel sending in missiles to kill Hamas leaders and Hamas sending in bombers. Ibrahim Abu El Hawal88 from the Mount of Olives,89 with whom I also work, says, “God chose two of the most stubborn people in the world, the Arabs and the Jews, to live in this land.” We both refuse to budge. We are two deeply wounded peoples sharing this land. We act out of wounded-ness and fear, not what’s really in our best interest, and in fact we make the wounds deeper. We Israelis are traumatized by our history, the Shoah,90 the Holocaust. Palestinians have been displaced and traumatized. You can’t talk rationality to someone who’s traumatized. I think it’s a huge obstacle, the collective national traumas that we are both oozing, and it’s perpetuating the way we behave.

The key is how to break that cycle. I think we’re all looking for how to break that cycle. It’s frustrating for all of us who are working for peace. Sometimes it feels like we are watching all of our efforts go for naught.

What makes you feel doubtful?

When I see what Sharon did yesterday.91 It just set us back. On the leadership level, things don’t seem to be improving. A lot of times when I give talks I say there are so many great things happening on the ground. People ask, “But how are you changing the leadership?” Sometimes it feels like nothing is really getting through to them, they’re only making things worse. And at the same time, we’re the ones who elect them!

One thing I have learned in this work, and this is something that I call having a spiritual perspective, is to let go of attachment to results. Just to do the work because it’s the right thing to do, even if things are a thousand times worse than they are today, and not to be attached to what happens. It’s hard not to be attached, is it not? Just to let go of attachment, of the idea that my work is going to result in X.

You just said one of your goals is not to be attached to goals, but have you seen small successes along the way?

Yeah, absolutely. It’s those little successes that actually keep me going. Maybe I’m talking about letting go of attachment to the bigger change. Definitely as humans, we need something to give us hope. The peace vigil we held for 3 1/2 years every week was a success, holding a gathering in downtown Baghdad92 was a huge success, as was sitting with Rabbi Fruman and the Hamas sheikh in Hebron who is now working for peace. This Hamas sheikh had a huge opening of the heart through the love of this rabbi, and now he’s working day and night for understanding.

Can you talk about these two people a little bit? How you brought them together?

I brought Rabbi Fruman together with the Sufi Sheikh, not with the Hamas Sheikh. But I have gotten to know both of them…

Do you ever get discouraged?

Absolutely. Who doesn’t, doing this work? I think yesterday was actually one of the most discouraging days. I was so optimistic after this amazing Baghdad meeting. There’s an Arab tribal leader whom I meet in Amman who told me about the assassination, and we had established such a rapport, and my heart just sank.

Why was it upsetting to you that Sheikh Yassin was assassinated?

It was upsetting to me because it’s execution without a trial. Basically Israel’s assassination policy in general is upsetting to me. Israel has arrested and captured a lot of militants--there are ways to do it without killing people. Ahmed Yassin was old and in a wheel chair, but he was the spiritual leader of Hamas, so there is an argument that people make in support of the assassination.

Several people I’ve known have been killed in suicide bombings--not people I have known well, but people whose families I know. One guy was an Israeli Vipasana Buddhist meditator, Alon Goldenberg,93 a hippy guy with dreadlocks I used to dance with. He was on a bus in Wadi Arah,94 and he was killed by a suicide bomber. I went to sit with his parents in Yaffo.95 His father is a fisherman. After two hours of talking about Alon and his life and everything they had gone through, they said, “So by the way, what kind of work do you do?” To be honest I felt kind of ashamed in that context to say I work with Arabs, with Palestinians, for peace and understanding. I didn’t know what his father thought. A year later we met again at the unveiling of Alon’s tombstone at the cemetery near Tel Aviv. As we were standing over Alon’s grave, his father asked, “Eliyahu, are you still working with the Arabs?” I said, “Yeah,” and I thought, “Okay, here it comes, what’s he going to say, and over his son’s grave, too.” He said these words that I hold with me to this day, that I think of when you ask if I get discouraged. He said, “Eliyahu, I’m counting on you.”

Responding with love, harmony, bridge building, has to be the answer, just to keep plugging away. Sometimes I think maybe in our generation there won’t be peace. But it may be that in two or three generations, when “the great peace” breaks out, they will look back at our work--the projects of people you are interviewing, the projects I’m doing, the radio station,96 Givat Haviva97 and all these other places--and say it’s because even in the times of darkness and chaos they held the flame of light, that today we have peace.

Somehow I almost have this intuitive feeling that in the future that will be the case, but it’s hard right now when you don’t see the results, when you don’t see the fruits, and in fact, you’re working, working, building bridges of understanding, and here I’m talking about rabbis talking with Hamas sheikhs, and now the leader of Hamas has been killed. Where does all that work go? It seems like it goes out the window. So yes, I do get frustrated, I do get disappointed, I do get discouraged.

That Reb Shlomo98 idea of holy chutzpah keeps me going. You’ve got to have the chutzpah even though conventional wisdom is that peace is not going to happen. I mean, it takes a little chutzpah, a little audacity, to send a missile to kill someone in Gaza, wouldn’t you say? Doesn’t it also take a little chutzpah to take a 16-year-old kid, and pack him with explosives to kill himself? Isn’t it a bit chutzpadik?99 So can’t we also have a little holy chutzpah to work for peace? You have to have the same level of audacity to continue to believe and hold on to that vision even when all of this awful, depressing stuff is going on.

Have you faced criticism about your work?

Actually, sometimes I have gotten criticism. I was actually investigated by the Israeli undercover police when I was doing the Gaza project. They heard I was working with Palestinians from Gaza and I said, “But there are a lot of great people in Gaza, they’re my friends.” So they kind of criticized what I was doing, but that was more of an investigation. I wanted to play with them a little because they had come into my house late at night and knocked on the door in a very rude way and basically it was like an interrogation, but it wasn’t a serious one. As they were about to leave and they were assured that everything was okay, I said, “You’re welcome to come to our workshops in Gaza. We need people like you in our workshops. They said, “If we go in we’ll never make it out alive.” They were standing up putting their jackets on, getting ready to leave, and I jumped out and shouted “Gaza!” at them, and they said, “Ahh!!” I got them. They were scared shitless, literally scared shitless. I got them back.

Sometimes right here in my neighborhood I get hassled by my own circle of friends. I have friends in different circles. I have a lot of religious, Zionist Ba’al Tshuva100 friends, I know a lot of West Bank settlers, Hebron hilltop youth101 types, students at Bat Ayin Yeshiva102 in the West Bank. Not all of them know about the work I do, because I only reveal what I do to somebody who has the vessel, to people who are ready to receive.

Most of my friends in those circles know what I do. A lot of times I find I have a different level of legitimacy because I’ve made the decision to live in Israel; I’ve made aliyah.103 I’m a Jew living in Jerusalem-- that gives me a certain standing of legitimacy. When I go abroad I hear a lot of right wing, cynical, antagonistic voices. It’s hard for them to dismiss me because I’m religious, shomer Shabbat,104 and living in Jerusalem. What more credentials do you need than that? I also find that a lot of the radical West Bank young people, the hilltop youth, have an appreciation for the radicalism. What I’m doing is in a sense so radical, that they almost respect the fact that I’m doing this work, even if they disagree. I have one friend though who often says, “You’re a tool of the Arabs, you’re just naive, you’re being used to promote their propaganda,” that kind of thing.

My work is not politically oriented, does not promote a specific political agenda, even though I have my own personal beliefs that would probably be considered more to the left. People always ask me if I’m right wing or left wing and I always say, “It takes two wings to fly.” I hang out with settlers and spend Shabbat in the settlements, and I hang out with Palestinians and work for peace and understanding with Palestinians.

Tich Nhat Hanh105 says, “I am the pirate and I am the rapist and I am the raped. I am the criminal and I am the police…” I really try to hold the whole picture, and that includes the experience of the hilltop youth and the right-wing settlers, and the experience of the disenfranchised refugee and the Palestinian who supports Hamas. That seems like an almost impossible place to be politically-where does that leave you? But I think that’s where my spiritual roots come in, to somehow be able to hold all of that and then to organize meetings, events, projects that somehow connect to that. The Sulha has a flavor of that, bringing in people from different sides.

On some days, like when I was in Baghdad, I felt very Zionistic. I felt that with this much hatred in the Arab world, yes, we do need a homeland, we do need to defend ourselves. When I heard what Israel was doing in Gaza, I felt like an anti-Zionist. I always find myself swinging between both and end up coming back to trying to sort of hold it all.

Have you gotten people from those very extreme sides together?

Yes, on an individual level, just in my house. Coming over for Shabbat dinner I’ve had this guy who’s definitely one of the hilltop youth. He’s been arrested in Hebron--even in Hebron106 he’s considered a radical--and he considers Baruch Goldstein107 to be a saint. He gave me a big hug once when we were bringing a group to Hebron, and one of my left wing activist friends said, “What, you’re talking to that guy?! How could you?!” I’m able to maintain friendships on all sides of the fence. It’s kind of hard to explain, but it’s bridge building work. That guy met Palestinians in my home. He would say, “Oh yeah, I know Arabs.” A lot of the settlers will say, “I have a favorite Arab” or something like that. There are a lot of contradictions, and nothing is black and white. There is no “settlers are this and Palestinians are this.” Across the spectrum there’s no black and white; reality is much more complex, much more diverse, much more interesting.

What are you trying to achieve through your relationships with people who hold extreme ideologies, such as the person who considers Baruch Goldstein a hero?

What can I gain with them? It’s a good question, and I always ask myself that. I have a heart connection with some of these people. I guess I hope that by knowing me it’s not so easy for them to dismiss the humanity in Palestinians. I guess I’m as radical as they are, from a certain perspective. They often say, “Kol ha Kavod.”108 They sometimes ask me questions that they wouldn’t ask a left wing protester. I don’t know if knowing me and what I do softens their political views, but it does mean they can’t just dismiss all Arabs. It opens up their worldview a little. Ultimately they say, “Well, we respect Eliyahu, and he respects the Arabs, so they can’t be all bad.” You know, I never asked them how knowing me affects their opinions about Arabs.

How far are you willing to push people, in the sense of trying to get them to hear each other’s perspectives?

Well, sometimes if dialogue can’t work-sometimes I find that straight, face to face dialogue about politics can’t work-we can sing together, pray together, dance together, or something like that. Sometimes doing something in a third way, bringing people together, like when Rabbi Menachem Fruman’s son was married six months ago, a sheikh came to the wedding and the sheikh got up and gave a blessing in Arabic and danced with hundreds of West Bank yeshiva settler students of the rabbi, dancing with the Sufi sheikh. That, to me, should be front-page news.

What do you think that accomplishes?

I think it helps humanize the other, and it helps break down stereotypes. Here’s a Muslim sheikh willing to come to our wedding, here are settlers willing to welcome me. It helps to break down stereotypes and boundaries and shows that in reality on the ground there’s much more interaction. We think there’s only conflict. Those are the explosive events that happen, but on the everyday level there is so much interaction even between, for example, the “militant right wing” and “angry Palestinians.” I think that if we could start to expose that more, that this is actually happening, that could help give people courage and hope to believe, well, this is how it should be. It already is on a small scale; let’s make this happen on a wider scale.

You talk a lot about bringing people with disparate viewpoints together.

People with extreme positions are the people you want to work with. Here’s a good example: Middleway109 organized a trip to settlers’ homes in Neve Dekalim in Gush Katif.110 We brought Arabs and left wing Israeli activists and had a listening circle and dialogue circle. That was definitely along the lines of bringing people with disparate viewpoints together.

What did you have to do to build trust with your group before the visit with settlers in Gaza?

Well we had to do a lot of work, especially for the Arabs who were going in. We had a whole circle just amongst ourselves, for two hours just before we went in to Gaza.

What came out during that conversation before the visit? What did people want to know before they went?

Well, I remember that Ibtisam111 for example, wanted to know if she could be honest and express her feelings on things. She wanted to know whether she would be silenced because she was in the home of a settler. She wanted to be sure she could speak her mind and that we could create a safe space. Another issue was whether we were supporting and honoring the settlers of Gush Katif just by being there, were we strengthening their cause. Our intention, and I think what came out of it, was acknowledging the humanity of people in situations of suffering--losing their homes. Even if politically everyone who came in there didn’t leave saying, “okay we want the settlers to stay” and the settlers didn’t say “okay we’re going to leave now,” there was a shared humanity in honoring each other that did come out of it, and I feel that was important.

Do you feel like you were, as you say, “supporting and honoring the settlers of Gush Katif” presence by visiting?

My personal feeling is that if I had gone to participate in a rally or a protest against disengagement in Gaza, that would be legitimizing, but this was a different way to come in and I feel like there was a level of integrity.

What gave this visit to Gaza integrity?

For one thing, having-- I wouldn’t say radically pro-Palestinian-- but definitely Israeli Arabs, Muslims who identify as Palestinians there with us, and there was a Bedouin Imam from the Galilee, Abu Amim, who brought a very powerful presence. It was a respectful dialogue. There was an acknowledgement and a feeling that in another six months we wouldn’t have this conversation, these houses may be evacuated.112 In that moment the path of empathy and compassion was greater than the slogans or the question of whether or not it’s politically correct to be there. The path of empathy for human beings is greater in any situation, on any side. For me it felt like that was the path of true peacemaking work. And there were definitely some Arabs even within the organization Middleway who said, “How could you go to Gush Katif?” there were others who questioned that. But when we were there it felt very powerful and something positive came out of it.

What came out of the meeting in Gaza?

I would say it was the first time any of those settlers had Arabs in their homes. Maybe they’d met with workers in Gaza, but they didn’t have Arabs in their home on an equal basis, acknowledging their humanity. Also, there was a lesson about not demonizing settlers in Gaza, even if we politically oppose them being there, not making any group into the “monster” no matter who they are…whether it’s Hamas or the settlers. That for me is an important thing.

How far does that go, when you talk about humanizing the other? Is there a limitation on that? Do you feel that you need to see some kind of reciprocal action in exchange?

I’m not sure. I wasn’t expecting that those settlers would commit to coming to a peace demonstration in Tel Aviv, or that they’d say they would come to the Sulha this summer. But they did find themselves having to modify their language. They would say something like “Am Yisrael-the people Israel” and there were Arabs there who were not part of Am Yisrael, so they had to open up their “we.” I saw one settler rabbi correct himself and use different language right on the spot. I don’t remember exactly what he said instead, “kol ha enoshut-all of humankind,” maybe.

Does it ever seem like a contradiction to have gained people’s trust and then orchestrate such a contentious meeting?

It does seem like a contradiction. It seems like a huge paradox. But it’s in the contradictions that peace should be made--the places that don’t fit into the neat categories. Reb Nachman113 says that peace is between the opposites. Arab peacemakers and settlers in Gaza definitely seem like opposites, but I think it comes down to finding the underlying place of unity and shared humanity.

Are you looking for a change in reality, or in opinion?

I’m not hoping for a change in opinion no, but a change in reality, yes. It’s the path of bearing witness, showing compassion for human beings, the path of empathy, listening to people in difficult situations. I’m not one of the main people at Middleway, but I am active there, and for years they’ve been doing peace walks in the West Bank and in Israeli cities. For me going to Gush Katif added another level of authenticity.

What’s the connection?

Going to bear witness to people in all sides of the conflict, putting oneself in the shoes of the other, again I am very influenced by Tich Nhat Hanh, who talks about being both the pirate and the raped. It’s not the usual peace activism of opposing the occupation-- which is also very important. I’m not saying this kind of work should be done instead of that-- this is another level or another approach. My goal is also to reach the right-wingers in Israel.

You talk about legitimizing people’s perspectives--how can you tell people who have such seemingly irreconcilable views that they are both right?

In Gush Katif it came up, there was a rabbi who was saying this is the Land of Israel and God gave it to us. Some of the Palestinians were really uncomfortable. Whatever the arguments are, having the settlers acknowledge the Arabs as equal human beings in their own homes was very significant to me, and it is also important to acknowledge the settlers as human beings and not demonizing them, whether you agree with them or disagree with them. Learning to listen is very important, especially here in Israel where people are so strident.

Could you talk about some of the mistakes you have made… things you would have done differently?

I made a real mistake about two weeks ago. I helped Rabbi Fruman organize a conference of religious leaders to discuss the Gay Pride March coming to Jerusalem next summer.114 I wasn’t fully conscious of what the implications would be. When I saw what some of the people said there, I was horrified. I should have at least said to Rabbi Fruman, “Well, I’m giving you my phone numbers, but here’s my opinion on the matter.”

Now there’s hatred for these people in progressive and gay circles all over the world. I did a search of newspapers all over the world and headlines said, “Clerics in Jerusalem Show Bigotry, Imams and Rabbis in Jerusalem unite against gay people.”115 I should have been more cautious. I’ve been in a kind of depression since that came out. These are some of the most moderate religious leaders on other issues--they’re people who are receiving flack for their interfaith work from radical leaders in their own communities, who are appearing on the front page of the New York Times as hateful and super conservative. I asked Reb Zalman what I should do and his opinion was that I should stay out of it, that I shouldn’t make it my issue. I just realized how vast that subject is. The conversation about gays in the religious community is light years behind talking about interfaith stuff.

Another mistake I made is not building in more retreats and time-outs into my work. I’m so much needed on the ground to make sure things follow through, I should have found more ways to share the burden and share the wealth. It’s hard to stay whole within myself and not be subsumed by the work. Those of us who are doing this work are so passionate, and our work is 24/7--the work is encountering people in every situation we’re in, not just at a dialogue circle, but at the Shabbat table and everywhere you meet people.

I also wish there were a way I could encourage other activists to let go of their egos a little bit and cooperate more with other projects. There are turf issues--we’re all competing for the same funders, so why not cooperate more? There’s this idea people have that “my way of doing peace work is the best way to go.” That really pushes my buttons and I find it really weakens the whole cause.

You talk a lot about your own spiritual quest. Is there a difference between your personal path and your peace work?

That’s a very good question. In terms of my personal path, I’m almost internal and private, and in my peace work I’m a public personality. People know me and recognize me. For myself, I could be fine being alone. I have both sides within myself. I am a very good schmoozer, and then there’s another side of me that’s happy not interacting with people at all. The peace work is really about connecting with people, but I have an ascetic side also.

Also, I feel that I have sacrificed living close to my family. Because I am here doing this work, I have given up being in more regularly contact with my parents and siblings. I try to build in a trip to the States once or twice a year.

Please tell me more about the peacemakers program you are setting up.

We’re starting this August116 at Elat Hayyim117 with a weeklong training program. That’s going to be a testing of the waters to see if there is interest. So far we’ve gotten a lot of interest. The idea is still being developed. We are exploring the idea of setting up a masters program with Mark Gopin at George Mason University, which would include a three month practicum here in Israel in which participants would work on setting up events such as the Sulha.

Who is it designed for?

Is it designed specifically for people who want to work on the Israeli Palestinian conflict?

What can you teach people about this work when so much of it seems to be trial and error?

That’s a very good question. I was hesitant about doing anything for a long time because based on my own personal experience it is a lot of trial and error. But we’re not just teaching people how to be activists, we will be studying Jewish texts together and looking at theoretical texts from the field of peacemaking, doing prayer and spiritual work, and talking about how prayer within our traditions can guide us in doing peace work. The course is very much a work in progress.