– Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor by Yossi Klein Halevi
“Given our circumstances, ‘neighbor’ may be too casual a word to describe our relationship. We are intruders into each other’s dreams, violators of each other’s sense of home. We are living incarnations of each other’s worst historical nightmares. Neighbors?” In this taut and provocative book, Halevi endeavors to untangle the ideological and emotional knot that has defined the conflict for nearly a century. Using history and personal experience as his guides, he unravels the complex strands of faith, pride, anger, and anguish he feels as a Jew living in Israel.
Releasing conversation: Share your name and identify your home community.
1. “As the Qur’an so powerfully notes, despair is equivalent to disbelief in God. To doubt the possibility of reconciliation is to limit God’s power, the possibility of miracle – especially in this land. The Torah commands me, ‘Seek peace and pursue it’ ---even when peace appears impossible, perhaps especially the.” (18-19). Why is the author writing this as letters to a Palestinian neighbor?
2. “Israel exists because it never stopped existing, even if only in prayer…Need gave Zionism its urgency, but longing gave Zionism its spiritual substance.” (p. 34-35). What is Zionism? Did this book add any to your understanding of Zionism?
3. “So long as Palestinian leaders insist on defining the Jews as a religion rather than allowing us to define ourselves as we have since ancient times – as a people with a particular faith – then Israel will continue to be seen as illegitimate, its existence an open question” (52). How do you understand this distinction? Why does it make a difference?
4. “We live in such intimacy, we can almost hear each other breathing. What choice do we have but to share this land? And by that, I mean share conceptually as well as tangibly. We must learn to accommodate each other’s narratives. That is why I persist in writing to you why I am trying to reach out across the small space and vast abyss that separates your hill from mine.” (89). Can you imagine or have you experienced living in such proximity to people that so often see each other as “the enemy”? What does it mean to “accommodate each other’s narratives? How can the USA and other nations be allies to both sides?
5. “Sustaining the tension between the particular and the universal is one of the great challenges facing Jewish people today.” (61). What does this mean to you?
6. “The enemy of justice for both sides is absolute justice for either side.” (124). What does the author mean by this statement?
7. “Perhaps we can help restore each other to balance. Jews, I feel, need something of the Muslim prayer mat; my Muslim friends say that need something of the Jewish study hall. Can we inspire each other to renew our spiritual greatness? (152). How can we benefit from both the prayer mat and the study hall?
8. “I am the son not of destruction but of rebirth.” (179). What does this mean to you and why does it make a difference?
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