Eliyahu McLean plops down in a chair at the offices of the Jewish Bulletin and flips through three albums filled with photos of what seems to be an alternate universe.
The photographs, taken recently in Israel, where tensions between Arabs and Jews are at an all-time high, depict black-hatted rabbis with long gray beards embracing imams with woolen skullcaps.
As the former Berkeley resident living in Jerusalem tells it, sometimes it’s easier getting together with his imam and sheik friends than it is with his fellow Jewish peace activists, who are despondent over current events.
McLean discussed this “burnout” phenomenon among Israeli peace activists since the Palestinian uprising began in the fall. He will be speaking Sunday at Chochmat HaLev, a Jewish meditation center in Berkeley, and hopes to raise some money for his grassroots projects. And there are many.
Wearing a large, multicolored kippah, McLean looks very much a part of what he describes as the “Orthodox hippie” crowd. The son of a Protestant father and a Jewish mother who was more into Sikhism and hippie-ism, McLean was drawn to Judaism after attending a bar mitzvah in his youth. At his own bar mitzvah, his Jewish grandmother gave him the name Eliyahu.
He has lived in Israel for the past four years, two of them with the Interns for Peace program followed by two as a new immigrant. He now serves as director of the Israeli chapter of the Peacemaker Community, an international, interfaith group founded by a Buddhist of Jewish origins.
The Peacemaker Community has three core tenets: giving up fixed ideas about oneself and the universe, bearing witness to the joy and suffering in the world, and healing oneself and others.
“It really struck me how much of these three points can be applied to the complete breakdown of relations between Palestinians and Israelis,” he said.
McLean speaks from experience. Fluent in Arabic, he has devoted much of the past 10 years to coexistence projects. Many people he works with have spent longer at it.
“Everyone felt that everything they had done for the past 20 to 30 years devoted to coexistence was completely shattered,” he said. “Both Israelis and Palestinians returned to a primal place of hatred toward each other.”
Even those who used to be optimistic are wringing their hands in despair, he said, admitting they no longer know the solution.
Furthermore, “no one is willing to listen and hear and feel the pain of the other side.”
So where does this lead them?
Small groups of Jewish and Muslim leaders continue to meet at the Tantur monastery, which happens to be one of the only places in the region easily accessible for both groups. The monastery stands between the Jerusalem Jewish neighborhood of Gilo and the Arab Christian neighborhood of Beit Jallah, which have been at war with each other since the fighting broke out.
McLean says he’s not political, adding that all of his efforts toward peace are spiritually based, and he meets often with rabbis, even some from the settler communities.
“Sometimes the secular approach to peace works,” he said, “but sometimes, it’s really lacking. People need healing with an interfaith perspective.”
With some other Israeli jews, he has founded a group called Circle of Sanity, because “everything feels so insane around us,” he said. The idea is not only to focus on Palestinian suffering, which many on what is considered the “extreme left” are accused of doing. The group also stood to bear witness at the site of the Tel Aviv nightclub bombing, and visited teenage survivors in the hospital.
McLean has a head full of ideas about how to keep Israeli peace activists engaged, including vigils, retreats and instruction about increasing their spirituality. Such approaches, he believes, can sustain activists at this difficult time.
He sees young Israelis returning from travels in India, turned on to yoga and meditation, as prime recruits for his movement. He hopes to set up a Shlomo Carlebach-inspired “House of Love and Prayer,” with the musical form of worship the late rabbi was famous for, at the festivals young Israelis are drawn to.
“We want to offer them an alternative Jewish observance that’s non-dogmatic.”
McLean knows two people indirectly who have been killed since the violence escalated in September, and he believes most Israelis do as well. “It tests me, too,” he said.
But his group continues to meet with Palestinians who also have seen their fair share of suffering. “The idea is to support each other even if we don’t agree.” One Palestinian he knows distributes books about Gandhi to Palestinian children, to teach them about nonviolent forms of resistance.
Another effort brings the voice of moderate Palestinians like these to the Israeli public.
He told of one Muslim he meets with regularly. Khalil el-Baz, the sheik of Tel Sheva, told him, “I want to go to Auschwitz to see with my own eyes how the Jews have suffered.”
A Peacemaker Community project could make that happen: It involves holding interfaith gatherings at concentration camps.
“He wants to understand on a deeper level the pain of the Israeli people and wants to educate Palestinians and Muslims about that,” McLean said.