17 April 2008

Last night we had a workshop which was new, something I have never tried to teach before, based on a dream I had many years ago. The gist of the dream, what I was attempting to communicate last night, is that everything is love; all matter, all of the universe. I didn’t do a great job of communicating this, but the real reason for the workshop was something else, which became clear.

The promotion for the event was not particularly effective for a number of reasons. Only two people responded that they would come, so we ended up doing it at the home of one of the organizers rather than at the spiritual center where it had originally been scheduled to happen. The two women who came are Arab women. One of them has been working as a therapist. She is currently in the process of transitioning to different work. The other woman works as a professor at university teaching gender studies to jews and Arabs, which is no small thing!. This woman lives in the only village in Israel which is an intentional community of jewish and Arab people. It is called Neve Shalom, which means Oasis of Peace.

The discussion that happened, after I presented my material, was really amazing. I mostly sat and listened, realizing that I know nothing about Arab culture. I didn’t know about pre-Islamic Arab goddesses. I saw that I don’t even know what it is I don’t know about Arab culture and her/history. It was humbling and I feel so honored that these two amazing women came to a workshop taught by someone named Baruch, clearly a jewish name, to the home of a stranger, to learn about something relatively obscure. They had read the book of one of the people who host and organize my workshops, a priestess here in Israel who is of jewish ancestry. She teaches magic in Israel; not new age “pop” magic but Reclaiming and other practice of the craft, which is also very unusual in this “jewish state.”

We invited them to come to the Drumming for Peace event happening next week and the woman from Neve Shalom said she would come and would also invite people from her village. I am SO looking forward to this! This is what I was hoping would happen. I have been wanting to meet and connect with Arab people here, and not found a way to do that with my Israeli friends. There is such a deep racism here against Arabs, and the government promotes so much fear and maintains the sense of difference. Most of my friends here are afraid to cross the green line (the line drawn by the 1967 war) because they have been told they will be arrested, or they will be killed if the go to the other side of the line, so I haven’t found anyone willing to go with me across the line.

Last night was the beginning of friendships (I hope!) and connections. Now my dream of somehow participating in peace work here begins to manifest, to take shape. Where this will lead I don’t know, and I am very excited to find out! I am very small in this. Small as in young to it, and a small singular person, while there are actually many people here who live peace work.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

just to keep it respectful - the intentional community's name is Neve Shalom / Wahat al Salaam, affectionately known as "nswas" (pronounced like it looks, pretty much). Part of the everyday bias here is that Hebrew is used for everything.

8-),
Rena

Shakti said...

I guess it's all part of being in the right place at the right time with the right heart.

shakti

Anonymous said...

"There is such a deep racism here against Arabs,and the government promotes so much fear and maintains the sense of difference. Most of my friends here are afraid to cross the green line (the line drawn by the 1967 war) because they have been told they will be arrested, or they will be killed if the go to the other side of the line"

Baruch, I am so angry and so frustrated about your words. People who crossed the green line were killed. Two of them were publicly lynched by an angry mob. Others are "only" bruised and their car windows were shuttered with stones. This is not government propaganda. Not so long ago there were terrorist attacks on a weekly, even a daily basis. Busses exploded, restaurants, hotels, shopping mauls, pubs, clubs. Thousands of people were killed. Imagine that event like 9/11 was occurring on a monthly basis in the US (this is exactly the scale) and then someone from Europe would say what you said.
Yes there is racism. There is racism on both sides. A few ears ago I chatted with a Palestinian who lives in Saudi Arabia on the internet. The whole conversation he was convincing me that all of Israel belongs to Palestinians and I kept asking where I should go. What should I do? He kept saying "I don’t know it's our land".
Baruch, if there were a simple solution to the problem, there was no problem.

Mira