When the former president of the world’s largest Muslim nation found out Marcia Jaffe was Jewish, his reaction was, at once, typical yet atypical.
“Some of my best friends are Jewish,” Abdurrahman Wahid told her.
While this is the standard line recited by people who have never met a Jew, it’s not usually uttered by the former democratically elected leader of well over 200 million Muslims.
Wahid is a public intellectual who attempted to normalize relations with Israel during his brief tenure as Indonesian president in the late ’90s to 2001. He will be a featured speaker, along with Bishop Desmond Tutu, Walter Cronkite and others, at the Quest for Global Healing conference to be held May 3-8 in Bali.
Conference producer Jaffe of Sausalito (she put together a parenting seminar that drew 2,000 people to the Albert L. Schultz JCC in Palo Alto six years ago) is happy to put her skills toward this “quest toward a more collaborative, peaceful and sustainable future for humankind and the planet.”
Jaffe also hopes to bring young Israelis and Palestinians to the symposium.
For more information, call (800) 577-BALI or visit www.questforglobalhealing.org.