Interfaith gathering on the Middle East Crisis through the lens of the book, The Lemon Tree

Hosted by Temple Beth Torah and Sponsored by the Metrowest Interfaith Community

Rabbi Mimi Micner of Temple Beth Torah (left) and Shaheen Akhtar, Interfaith Liaison for the Muslim Community at-large. (right) lead the event

On Sunday, November 3, a diverse group of neighbors and friends gathered at Temple Beth Torah in Holliston representing Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Baha'i and Sikh faiths to engage each other on some tough but important conversations on the crisis in the Middle East and its impact for Israeli Jews and Palestinian Muslims, Christians and others. It was a time to listen to each other's stories. The Lemon Tree, by Sandy Tolan, was the vehicle by which we hoped to gather our different experiences of pain and hope in light of the war in the Middle East.

The extraordinary meeting of Bashir and Dalia is the starting point for a true story of a remarkable relationship between two families, one Arab, one Jewish, amid the fraught modern history of the region. In his childhood home, in the lemon tree his father planted in the backyard, Bashir sees dispossession and occupation; Dalia, who arrived as an infant in 1948 with her family from Bulgaria, sees hope for a people devastated by the Holocaust. As both are swept up in the fates of their people, and Bashir is jailed for his alleged part in a supermarket bombing, the friends do not speak for years. They finally reconcile and convert the house in Ramle into a day-care center for Arab children of Israel, and a center for dialogue between Arabs and Jews. 

Rabbi Mimi Micner welcomed our gathering and spoke of not only the extraordinary opportunity this gathering afforded us, but also to acknowledge how hard this conversation is. As difficult it is to watch the relentless violence and widening war, feeling as if we have no power to do anything about it, we all seek ways to share our grief, anger, and deep-seeded hope for peace.

From left to right, Shaheen Akhtar, Rabbi Mimi Micner, Dr. Eman Ansari, Chris Brumbach President of TBT, Hani Murad, Rev. Carlos Aoun of Wellesley Village Church, the president of the Islamic Soceity of Greater Milford, Nawaz Karim, and Cantor Vera Broekhuysen of Temple Beth El.

Although the war seems far from our country in the US, our spiritual, familial, and cultural ties to the land of Israel and Palestine are shared by many in our communities. We were grateful for the presence of those who shared their voices, helping us all to put words to our own grief. Dr. Eman Ansari, a doctor and mother in the metrowest area, is Palestinian with strong connections to that land, particularly through her father. Hani Murad, who worked with the United Nations many years and lived in Gaza, also recounted his life there through several wars.

Rabbi Mimi Micner of Temple Beth Torah shared the experience of her family and the trauma of World War II. Cantor Vera Broekhuysen, serving Congregation Beth El of Sudbury River Valley also shared her own family experience from the Netherlands to their migration to the United States.  As is the case in all interfaith relationships, we first seek common ground in grief and anxiety we all hold in these times, although for different reasons. The Irish poet Padraig O’ Tuama truly resonates when he says we need to "find a way of navigating our differences that deepen our curiosity, deepen our friendships, deepen our capacity to disagree, deepen the argument of being alive." 

Shaheen Akhtar, Interfaith Liaison for the Muslim Community at Large, in her remarks emphasized the need to come together, reach out to one another, and have a dialogue, especially at this particular moment in history.  This gathering of Palestinians and Jews, with the support of their co-religionists who are their neighbors and friends, is not an exercise in homogenizing distinct and painful histories, often driven by contradictory narratives and deep seeded bias. Instead, it is driven by something deeper and more profound, a need to listen and love in the search of a common ground to begin together, to be heard, and to begin to heal. It is what looms larger than our differences that beckons us all.