Encounter

After a few days of processing, I think I am ready to write a bit about my experience in Bethlehem. For those of you who don't know, Bethlehem is located in the West Bank and is under the control of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA). To make things more complex, the West Bank is broken up into Areas A, B, and C each designating the level of control under the PNA. Area A is under full Palestinian administrative control, Area B is under Palestinian administrative control with Israeli security control, and Area C is remains under full Israeli control. Parts of Bethlehem are Area A and parts are Area B. For us, it didn't make much difference, but it means that Palestinian authorities or police cannot enter Area B even when domestic disputes or the like occur.

Anyway, a little background about Encounter. The purpose of the program is not to have a dialogue with Palestinians or to present a "balanced" portrayal of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the goal is to show American Jews another side. We were there to listen and to see how Palestinians in Bethlehem actually live and what they experience on a daily basis. There was a lot of conversation and dialogue among the participants in an effort to grapple with what we witnessed and to examine how it fits into our lives and our Jewish values.

Many of the participants on the trip were in Rabbinical school or attending yeshivot. It certainly changed the conversation and the emphasis as compared to my discussions with other students at the Arava Institute. There was an explicit Jewish focus to how we approached and dealt with what we experienced.

I certainly did not come to any conclusions; no questions were answered, in fact many more are now present; the more I learn and see, the more complex and massive the conflict appears to me, and the less clarity I seem to have. That being said, the purpose of the trip was not to find answers, it was to learn, to explore, to start figuring out how to bring this conversation back to the American Jewish community.

I was struck by some of the Talmudic and Rabbinic ideas brought into the group that were used to help us approach and process the experience. Unfortunately, I do not remember who said this, but a rabbi taught his students that when studying Talmud, one must be able to demonstrate understanding of another's perspective by repeating it back to them before stating their own view. Without doing so one has not really learned any Talmud. This form of study goes beyond simply a way to learn Talmud, it should be applied to other aspects of life. I have thought a lot about this idea and am saddened by the fact that so few Jews (including learned, religious Jews) fail to take the ideals of studying Talmud into their everyday lives. Thinking about the resistance we face in the mainstream Jewish community to even acknowledge the wrongs being done to Palestinians, much less to listen to their perspective, really saddens me. So it was encouraging and gave me some hope to see American Jews, who have a strong religious identity, truly engaging and struggling with the reality of the occupation and of how to become leaders within the Jewish community to start addressing such issues.

I know that I haven't actually said anything about what I saw or heard yet, but one of the really powerful things about Encounter is its emphasis on processing and questioning among the participants. The acknowledgment that these issues are very difficult for Jews to confront and providing a safe environment in which to do so made the program successful. I promise to give some of the nitty gritty details (with pictures!) in my next post, which will follow shortly.

- M