Last night Munzer Emad, a Palestinian man told
his story at a Sydney synagogue.
I felt grateful to be present, because I this was the first time I had seen
this dialogue in a Synagogue in my community in St Ives. Munzer spoke from the
heart, and his Jewish audience engaged with his story, despite the fact that
“it was very difficult to listen to”, as more than one audience member
reflected.
Rabbi Gad Krebs, who initiated this encounter for
his community, reflected on his own journey that led to last night. Around the
year 2000, the Rabbi, then a much younger man, was, by his own admission, very
right wing politically. The Rabbi told us that he was greeted by a stranger
with a pronounced Arabic accent, in Hebrew, while watching the Olympics on a
big outdoor screen in Sydney’s Darling Harbour. The two men engaged in
conversation. The Arabic speaking man initially said he was Egyptian, but later
told the Rabbi that if he had told him where he was really from that would have
been the end of the conversation. He then shared that he was actually a
Palestinian from Gaza, and that previously whenever he had disclosed this fact
in a conversation with a Jewish person that ended the conversation. Rabbi Krebs
did not run away and instead continued the conversation. The two men lost
contact, until a recent chance meeting when Rabbi Krebs and Munzer met, and
after a while Gad realised that Munzer was the stranger he met in 2002.
Munzer is a softly spoken man. He argued
passionately for connections between people. He argued that, although humans
were not meant to fly or swim, we have beaten nature to do both of these
things. On the other hand, despite being wired for connectedness, we override
our nature in order to be fragmented. He reflected on the way that groups in
conflict dismiss each others experiences and deal with the other as an enemy. He
shared a surprising anecdote about the time he was around ten years old and
Israeli soldiers marched through the street where he was playing; he felt
confused and angered by their forceful presence. He threw a soccer ball at an
Israeli soldier. The soldier smiled shyly and threw the ball back. A glimpse of
the soldiers humanity that did not fit the narrative of this young boy. But a
little connection happened anyway.
As a teenager, Munzer was mistaken for one of his
brothers who was very active in throwing stones, so Munzer was taken into
custody. When Munzer was interrogated, he was blindfolded. He asked his
interrogator to remove the blindfold and make eye contact. On Sunday night he
got much more than that, his generous spirit was mirrored back to him by his
receptive audience.
I don’t think religious texts are key to war or
peace, there are other significant drivers that I think are more central, but
they are not irrelevant either. The day before Munzer’s talk, I was confronted
with a text that seemed to suggest that God does not care about non-Jewish
people. Thankfully, there is usually more than one way to read a Torah text.
Moses told the Israelites that “when you look up to the sky, and behold the
sun and the moon and the stars ...you must not be lured into ...serving them.
These the LORD your God has set aside for all [the other?] nations everywhere under heaven” , but
as for you [the Israelites], the LORD took and brought you out of Egypt... to
be His very own people (1).
This has been taken to mean that God has set the
nations up to worship the stars, and it is only the Jews whose worship is
important to God (2). This seems wrong, surely God would not lead people astray
(3). As an Assyrian Bishop told me the other night, in his church they don’t
pray that God should not lead them into temptation, because surely God would
not do that. Instead they pray not to be tested by “trials”.
A story about this text is an early example of
the influences of interfaith contact on interpretations of text. A group of
Jewish sages were tasked by King Ptolemy to translate the Torah. When they got
to this verse they modified the translation to say that God set aside the sun,
the moon and the stars to provide
light to the nations (4).
Further commentary suggests that the planets are
so valuable for all the nations, that they can never be destroyed, and this
presents the risk of them being worshipped (5).
Alternatively, the nations of the world might believe in a fragmented
concept of the universe, so they see the sun and moon as being more important
than earth. However, the Jewish people are invited to think of earth as
central, as it is the place where humans worship God (6) and make ethical
decisions. Such decisions include to deeply honor and cherish all human beings
regardless of ethnic or religious identity. This was the invitation Munzer
extended to his audience. It was glorious being part of a room that transcended
the divide between the Jewish and Palestinian peoples, and filled with such
warmth and goodwill.
1)
Deuteronomy
4:19.
2)
Talmud, Avoda
Zara 55a.
3)
See Torah
Temima to Deuteronomy 4:19, notes 41 and 42.
4)
Talmud
9b.
5)
Chasam Sofer
on Vaetchanan.
6)
ibid.
