Rabbi & Spiritual Leader
  Stan Levy
Executive Director
  Peggi Sturm
Events Coordinator
  Eva Nathanson
Youth Education Director
  Rina Daly
Comfort Group Coordinator
  Linda Rubin

A Rabbinic response to the events in the Middle East

As human beings, as Jews and as Rabbis,

WE ARE HORRIFIED by the shedding of blood in our Holy Land. We mourn the senseless loss of life, both Palestinian and Israeli.

WE ARE MORE HORRIFIED by the emergence of mob violence on both sides of the ethnic divide. We appeal to all those responsible not to inflame or use the passions and anger of young people. This is a weapon over which you will ultimately have no control.

WE ARE STILL MORE HORRIFIED that blood has been shed at and because of the site holy to both Judaism and Islam. The Temple Mount is the home of peace, the place from which peace is to go foth to the entire world. This is the place of which the prophet Isaiah says “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations.” It is desecrated by shows of military force, by cries of hatred and the throwing of stones, and most of all by the shedding of blood.

IN THE FACE OF THIS HORROR AND DESECRATION, IT IS TIME TO STEP BACK AND REFLECT.

We applaud all efforts to end violence and bloodshed. After an appropriate period of mourning we hope and pray that peace efforts will go forward.

We have learned from recent events that peace cannont be made by leaders alone. We commit ourselves to teaching and spreading receptiveness to peace and changes of attitude, especially among the youth. We long for Palestinian partners, religious leaders and educators on all levels, who will make the same commitment. We understand that it will require great courage for you to come forth. We promise to support that courage as best we can.

As Jewish religious leaders, we do not want the site of our Holy Temple to be an obstacle to peace between our two peoples. Judaism does not demand exclusive Jewish sovereignty over this site, one we are not permitted to visit in pre-messianic times. Judaism has always respected Islam as a fellow monotheistic faith. The presence of Islamic holy places on the Temple Mount in no way desecrates the Temple Mount for us and we see it as a partial fulfillment of our prophet’s vision. We oppose any effort to harm or remove those shrines.

-- Prepared by Rabbi Arthur Green for The Jewish Peace Lobby

From Rabbi Stan

Gabriel Garcia Marquez has retired from public life due to health reasons: cancer of the lymph nodes. It seems that it is getting worse. He has sent a farewell letter to his friends, and thanks to the internet, it is spreading. I recommend that you read it. This short text, written by one of the most brilliant Latin Americans in recent times, is truly moving.

If for an instant God were to forget that I am a rag doll and gifted me with a piece of life, possibly I wouldn’t say all that I think, but rather I would think of all that I say. I would value things, not for their worth, but for what they mean.

I would sleep little, dream more, understanding that for each minute we close our eyes we lose sixty seconds of light. I would walk when others hold back, I would wake when others sleep.

I would listen when others talk, and how I would enjoy a good chocolate ice cream! If God were to give me a piece of life, I would dress simply, throw myself face first into the sun, baring not only my body, but also my soul.

My God, if I had a heart, I would write my hate on ice and wait for the sun to show. Over the stars I would paint with a Van Gogh dream, a Benedetti poem and a Serrat song would be the serenade I’d offer to the moon. With my tears I would water roses, to feel the pain of their thorns and the red kiss of their petals.

My God, if I had a piece of life. I wouldn’t let a single day pass without telling the people I love that I love them. I would convince each woman and each man that they are my favorites, and I would live in love with love. I would show men how very wrong they are to think that they cease to be in love when they grow old, not knowing that they grow old when they cease to be in love!

To a child I shall give wings, but I shall let him learn to fly on his own. I would teach the old that death does not come with old age, but with forgetting. So much have I learned from you, oh men.

I have learned that everyone wants to live on the peak of the mountain, without knowing that real happiness in how it is scaled. I have learned that when a newborn child squeezes for the first time with his tiny fist his father’s finger, he has him trapped forever.

I have learned that a man has the right to look down on another only when he has to help the other to get to his feet. From you I have learned so many things, but in truth they won’t be of much use, for when I keep them within this suitcase, unhappily shall I be dying.

-- GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ

Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez began his career as a journalist for a series of liberal South American newspapers in the late 1940’s. Although he toyed with fiction as a young man, his first true efforts were incited by the negative reviews of contemporary Latin-American writers. The result was a short story, “The Third Resignation”. The reviews of the story were positive and the impact strong.

Larger things came to Garcia Marquez in 1967. While suffering from writer’s block several years earlier, the author suddenly had a vision of his next novel – as he has said, the first chapter was as clear as if it had already been written. The idea was to tell the story of several generations of a Colombian family as his grandmother might have told it: supernatural occurrences and unbelievable events described with unblinking sincerity. After eighteen months of seclusion, Garcia Marquez produced his masterpiece, One Hundred Years of Solitude, which has been called on of the greatest novels in history.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1982.