A Healing Rosh Hashana

In the two weeks I spent in Israel and Palestine with Christian Peacemaker Teams, I became accustomed to the chatter of lively Arabic wherever we stayed or visited.  There was a comfort to what sounded like babel to me, and joy at the occasional word I could understand–Hamdilah, Hibibi, Shukran, Salaam.

Hebrew was a different kind of babel.  I recognized that it was a different language from Arabic, because I’d taken just enough Hebrew in seminary to know that it was Hebrew but not enough to retain what anything meant.

But I spent enough time in Israel and Palestine that I have to admit–I began to bristle at the sound of Hebrew.  Having a machine gun pointed at my head a few times while someone barked Hebrew words at me formed an unconscious reaction.  I can remember my blood pressure rising then, and could feel the urge to hold back tears of sadness and anger.  I could feel the urge to respond, to yell back.

I saw oppression in the West Bank that cannot be unseen, by people who believe a theology and ideology that destroys one people group while elevating another.

A week after returning from Hebron, Rosh Hashana services were being held in my church’s building.  A new Jewish community was forming an needed a place to worship.  We welcomed them into our worship space, but I felt myself bristle when I heard Hebrew again for the first time.  The last time I heard Hebrew–in the West Bank–someone was screaming at me, “Go to Egypt!  Go to Syria! There are murderers there–not here!”

But in the Rosh Hashana service, held in my church’s building, I saw my Jewish friends wearing the Palestinian keffiyeh as their prayer scarves while they prayed in Hebrew.  I heard them praying–in Hebrew and English–for oppression to end.  They understood the oppression I’d seen, and were holding that in prayer as they entered the new year.

And in that service of prayer and song, after weeks of hopeless stories in Israel and Palestine, I could envision the wall of the Al Ibrihimi mosque in Hebron–a wall that now separates the mosque and synagogue; a wall of tension and hurt–coming down.  I imagined the Hebron checkpoints unused outside the Mosque, the machine guns abandoned, the fear wiped away.

There is hope.  There can be peace.

The words of our Jewish, Christian and Muslim ancestors are words of hope, drawn from our loving God, who longs for our wholeness and peace.  Peace, Salaam Shalom.  May God’s peace be made real in the Holy Land this year.