"We read to know we are not
alone," novelist C.S. Lewis said about stories.
But people deprived of needed
stories DO feel alone these days.
Jews, Palestinians, and other Arabs -- Muslims and
Christians -- with dreams of living together beyond war, read mostly
today's headlines of violent failures relished by traditional news sources who
cater to popular thought and advertisers.
Reporting what is predictable and sensational, today's
professional media leaves us without hope or vision for a better future.
Today, to gain a whole, clear view of life, we must
also look to a variety of non-traditional news sources, including the
Internet and each other -- even the narratives of "enemies."
One example on the Internet of
a shared vision of Jews and Palestinians -- Muslims and Christians -- is at:
This is one example of many dozens of similar groups
"dedicated to meeting monthly in each others living rooms, hearing one
anothers stories, practicing compassionate listening, and envisioning our
shared future. . .promote a model for healing, creativity, and cooperation for
Palestinians and Jews in Israel and Palestine, and for other peoples
worldwide."
The vision on that page forsees:
"Palestinians and Israelis live side by side, in cooperation and
friendship, in an ever-improving Middle East and at the heart of a growing
partnership between Jews and Palestinians worldwide."
Is this an "impossible
dream" in the midst of an "intractable" conflict?
The vision is possible, desirable, and doable -- with
dedication and courage.
Hundreds of real stories of living models of real
Arabs and Jews reveal intelligent, compelling human successes, over 300 of
which are titled at:
Today,
Jews and Arabs -- Muslims and Christians -- ARE living together intimately
for:
Read the present-day story below of exemplary,
sustained relationships in an Arab Muslim country, and remember that Muslims
and Jews have lived and thrived together mostly well for over 1,000 years.
Please pass on these stories to let humankind --
diverse, equally excellent peoples -- know that none of us is alone, and we
already are becoming better. . .together.
Published in The Chicago Tribune -- April 25, 2004
Tunisia's `miracle' isle shelters Jews, Muslims
On a lush bit of green off North Africa's coast, the problems of the
Middle East seem far away.
`We don't let it affect us here,' a resident says.
By Evan Osnos
Tribune foreign correspondent
JERBA, Tunisia -- Some call this "the
miracle island."
After dawn, before the streets stir, the painted signs
above the shop doors reveal the unusual fact of life here: Hebrew on one
sign, Arabic on the next, one after another, long after today's Middle East
rendered that a relic from a more peaceful age.
About 1,000 Jews remain on this dot of lush green land
off the Tunisian coast, living among nearly 70,000 Muslims. They live side by
side, as they have for centuries.
"Sometimes we talk about the situation between
the Israelis and the Arabs," jeweler Hai Haddad said as he burnishes a
piece of silver at his tiny shop deep in the market. "But we don't let it
affect us here. We know the situation in the Middle East, and we know the
situation here."
No one here said there haven't been problems.
But Jerbans have weathered them, and that coexistence
is all but unique in the Arab world.
"It is a total community--total Jewish and
total Arab," said Abraham Udovitch, a Princeton University professor
of Near East studies whose curiosity about the unusual island has lured him
here many times. "Very few of the communities in the Arab world were able
to do that. They are the last ones that remain in any number."
At the end of World War II, sizable Jewish
communities--some numbering in the hundreds of thousands--existed in the Muslim
nations of the Middle East, from Morocco to Iraq. Many Jews left with the
establishment of Israel in 1948, and many more moved to Europe and the U.S. as
the Israeli-Arab conflicts stirred tensions across the region.
Aging populations
Most Jewish-Arab communities ended up like
those of Egypt and Yemen, with only a few dozen remaining widows and retirees.
Jerba is different.
Here, Jewish families are young and growing, as are the
Muslim households next door. The Jewish temples are busy and in good repair.
When an outsider, later linked to Al Qaeda, drove
a gas truck into the historic Ghriba synagogue in April 2002, killing at least
15 people, Muslims joined Jews in a defiant march of solidarity.
"It was an attack against all the people of
Jerba, not just the Jews," said Ferhat Ma'anid, an Arab carpenter in a
Jewish-owned workshop just off Palestine Street, a short walk from the temple.
Two years after the attack, the synagogue's caretaker,
Khadir Hania, said the island has gone back to its carefully guarded seclusion.
"The problems in Palestine are far away," he
said, sitting in the hushed temple, collecting small donations from elderly
French tourists. "They are other people's problems."
The synagogue, among the oldest in North Africa, sits
like a monument to mixed heritage.
Its cantilevered walls are adorned with bright,
hand-painted Tunisian tiles. The old man swaying forward and back as he prays
in the dim light wears not a yarmulke but a crimson Tunisian chechia, which
looks like a crushed fez.
Every year, thousands of people come from abroad to
visit the ancient temple during the springtime holiday Lag B'Omer. Some come seeking
cures or miracles. Others come with grants and dissertation proposals,
searching for clues to the most vexing question of the modern Middle East: Can
Jews and Muslims ever rediscover common ground?
Jerban Jews trace their ancestors' arrival to 586
B.C., the time of Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar's conquest of Jerusalem.
Over the centuries, waves of others arrived, expelled
from Spain, Italy and elsewhere. At their peak in the mid-1940s, 5,000 Jews
lived on the island, concentrated in two neighborhoods known as the Large
Quarter and the Small Quarter.
In time, Jews and Muslims moved in among each other,
cultivating a careful coexistence rooted in a shared history that remained
embedded in their business, educational and religious life.
Muslim families frequently kept a small room in their
homes where Jewish farmers could stop work at sundown and prepare a Sabbath
meal when away from home.
"We were all farmers, no different. If sunset
came, we lived together," said Sadok ben Khamis, 80, a Muslim resident.
In town, roles were clearly defined: The Jews ran
small gold and silver shops, while Muslims handled the pottery, carpet and
spice trades.
After centuries, that social and economic architecture
is strong enough to defy the outside pressures of politics and hatred.
As the minority, the Jews honed "an ability to be
integrated, to be part of their cultural environment, but to manage the
boundaries well," Udovitch, the professor, said. "In certain domains,
they didn't mind the interaction--economics, for instance. But in others, it
was very limited and controlled."
Those limits remain today.
"We respect that we don't marry the Jews and the
Jews don't marry us," said Mohammed Assas, 53, a Muslim member of the local
business council.
In the 1950s, '60s and '70s, the Arab-Israeli wars
stirred tensions, and thousands of Jews sold their shops and moved to Europe
and Israel. In 1985, a police officer guarding the Ghriba synagogue opened fire
on the worshipers, killing three of them.
Despite that, today the population is stable. Some
young Jewish couples have returned recently, after their families left a
generation ago.
At al Souani grammar school, 130 of the 512 students
are Jewish.
`We . . . are cousins'
"We don't talk to them as Muslims or
Jews, we talk to them as Tunisians," said Principal Amor Bouzelma, whose
cluttered office is plastered with posters of Mecca. "In the Koran, it
said we and the Jews are cousins. . . . If we are cousins, why are we fighting?
Violence only creates violence."
But in today's world, where satellite dishes bring
a stream of distant disputes, many parents in Jerba worry that their children
will have a harder time defying the political pressures from the outside world.
"Of course the younger generation, they think
differently: On both sides, Jews are wanting to be with the Jews, and the
Muslims are wanting to be with the Palestinians," said Kriouane
Abdelfettah, an antiques dealer who recently returned from the pilgrimage to
Mecca.
So far, though, the region's angers have been kept at
bay. When Jerban schoolboys play soccer in the afternoons, they divide into
Jews versus Muslims, but that is flexible.
"If the Jewish team is not powerful, then we will
get a good Muslim player to join us," said Eliran, a bushy-haired
13-year-old.
To Haddad, the jeweler, the responsibility lies with
the men and women of his generation to inoculate their children with the belief
that "you can live with any person, if you don't deprive him of his
life or his opinion."
After all, he said, the world can't afford to
lose Jerba.
"To find a community like this, when
things are so difficult in the Middle East," he said, working a hunk
of silver with gnarled hands, "it means things are not
impossible."