This summer, I went back home to Jerusalem for a two-month visit. I have lived in the Holy City for twenty-five years, working in interfaith education and Jewish-Arab peacemaking. When I arrived on June 9, the Aqaba Summit that brought together Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, and President George Bush had just taken place. The day after I landed, Israeli attack helicopters almost assassinated Hamas leader Abdulazziz Rantisi. And on the following day, Hamas retaliated through a suicide bombing on the number 14 Egged (public) bus, filling our TV screens with the all-too-familiar scene of carnage in downtown Jerusalem. It has been a demoralizing last three years. The slaughter of innocents and the political impasse have engendered crippling despair on both sides.

My previous visit to Jerusalem was equally distressing. Last November I came back on a break from my teaching duties to be with my wife and teenage son and to celebrate the Chanukah festival with them. On the second day of that visit, I recall still experiencing jet lag when I was awakened by a friend's phone call. "I just wanted to make sure you're all fight," he said. "I heard on the radio that a bus had exploded near your home, on Mexico Street." It was 7:20 in the morning, and I knew that my son's school bus had just passed through our neighborhood of Kiryat Menachem. So my first thoughts were on him and his bus. I turned on the TV, and I felt a mixture of relief and horror as I saw the gruesome aftermath of the terror attack. The bus targeted was not a school bus, but rather the number 20 Egged bus. The suicide bomber had detonated his explosives as the bus was taking on passengers at a Mexico Street bus stop.

The bus, which follows the route between my neighborhood in southwest Jerusalem and the city center, was crowded with school children and adults going to work. The bombing claimed the lives of eleven Jews from the adjacent neighborhood of Ir Ganim, ranging in age from eight to sixty-seven, including a mother and son, and a grandmother and grandson.

The Hamas movement claimed responsibility for the bombing, which was carried out by twenty-two-year-old Na'el Abu Hilayel from the village of El-Khader, next to Bethlehem. The military response by the Israeli government was to send troops back into Bethlehem, from which they had withdrawn under the "Bethlehem first" redeployment agreement of the previous August. The political response was to declare that agreement "null and void."

We see the political responses to violence every day. What about religious responses to this kind of atrocity? As a religious educator, I am particularly interested in how people find spiritual meaning in life events, including tragic ones. In the days following the attack, I visited the Mexico Street bus stop several times, watching it become an improvised shrine commemorating the victims. Newspaper photos of the dead were posted, along with handwritten notes by teenagers to their murdered friends. There were memorial candles lit by passersby, wreaths placed on the seats of the bus stop by the European Union and different embassies, and signs posted all around the bus stop conveying a range of messages. As of this writing, the bus stop remains a shrine, with photos of the victims, prayer books and Psalters, and hand-written poems dedicated to the eleven human beings whose lives were so cruelly cut short.

What caught my eye and imagination last November, however, were the signs posted on and around the bus stop, most of which conveyed messages combining religion and politics. Whether professionally designed or hand written on paper and cardboard, these signs drew on stories and precepts within Jewish tradition to communicate their message about Israel's political crisis.

First it should be said that there were no humanistic or universalistic expressions visible around the bus stop, although they are represented in Jewish tradition and Israeli society, as I indicate toward the end of this article. The heinous act of indiscriminate slaughter perpetrated there elicited partisan statements that were meant to reassure Jews that they are in the right and that God is on their side. Sadly, there were no attempts to communicate a healing alternative to the cruel war of attrition being waged by both sides. In the face of raw pain evoked by terror attacks, it takes profound sensitivity and a lot of courage to confront the simplistic ideology of "it's us or them." The wisdom of Judaism offers such transformative remedies to the rampant spiritual pathology, but those teachings are, for the most part, suppressed by fear and ethnocentrism.

Still, there were some spiritually consoling and even uplifting sentiments expressed around the bus stop. For example, while the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement did post signs calling on fellow Jews to unite in order to "win," it also implored neighborhood residents to let the light of Chanukah prevail over the darkness. For the Festival of Lights, from November 29 through December 7, a huge chanukiah was erected near the bus stop by Chabad. At sundown for the eight days of the festival, the kindling of the gas-fueled lights and the sub dued singing of holiday songs became a ceremony bringing the grieving neighborhood together. This was one act of religious piety that did not convey anger, but deepened communal solidarity. One sign posted inside the bus stop was especially touching for me as an observant Jew. It asked anyone who wished to add a memorial candle to the scores of flickering testimonials to observe the Sabbath by not lighting a fire on the holy day. It was signed "the grieving residents."

In a similar vein, a moving appeal was posted on the neighborhood bus stops by the Ashkenazi rabbi of Kiryat Menachem/Ir Ganim, Rabbi Yisrael Yaakov Weissfish. He is a pious and learned man who has served the community for forty years. In a thoughtful and lengthy statement, printed and posted within a day of the atrocity, Rabbi Weissfish asserted that, in Judaism, there is no such thing as a random event without Divine purpose behind it. In all his years as the neighborhood rabbi, he wrote, there had never been such a violent attack in Kiryat Menachem/Ir Ganim, and he attributed this to acts of holiness by the residents. Conversely, now that the neighborhood had experienced such a painful attack, the residents should do whatever they could to grow closer to God, by repenting with a broken heart, by committing themselves more fervently to the study of Torah, which is the source of life and the bulwark against death, and by observing the precepts concerning modesty and generosity, for "charity saves one from death." The rabbi's statement reflects the apolitical (non-Zionist) stance characteristic of many strictly observant and pious Jews, for whom the spiritual welfare of the community transcends partisan ideologies.

This message urging readers to turn inward toward God was almost drowned out, however, by messages of anger and hate. The most brutal of these were some very simplistic stickers affixed to the bus stop which said, in Hebrew and English, "No Arabs, No Terror." (Those stickers are still there.) Aside from this chauvinistic fantasy of a country rid of its Arab population, most of the messages reacting to the bus bombing were more sophisticated in their mixture of religious tradition and politics. But all used religion to channel anger against Arabs and to support the claims of Israeli Jews. One hand-lettered sign, for example, said, "O People of Israel! This will not end until we cry out a great cry [to God]!!! And only then, God will hear and answer us." The acronym for "with the help of Heaven" appeared at the top and bottom. "God will hear" in Hebrew is "Yishma-El." Here the two words were hyphenated, signifying a wordplay on the name of Ishmael, Abraham's first son and Isaac's half-brother. The Genesis story of Ishmael and Hagar's expulsion from the household was conjured up as a precedent by a two-word addendum at the lower right of this sign: "The exile of Ishmael!" Evidently the sign maker believed this is how God will respond to our outcry. This is a more sophisticated way of conveying the "No Arabs, No Terror" scenario.

Most of the signs went beyond simple expressions of hatred to provide an explanation for their anti-Arab sentiment, either by asserting the Jewish claim to the whole Land of Israel, the threat posed by the Arabs to Jews, or the price in lives exacted by political negotiations. For example, the sign with the largest lettering, professionally produced for a variety of occasions and venues, said in Hebrew, "The entire Land of Israel is ours because God gave it to us." Underneath these giant blue letters was the proof text: part of the first entry in the famous Bible commentary by Rashi, the foremost Jewish interpreter of Scripture, who lived in the Middle Ages. Rashi's comment on Genesis 1:1 tries to explain why the Bible begins with Genesis. Why not Exodus, in which the Children of Israel have the Torah's precepts revealed to them, beginning with the Passover laws? Rashi asserts that the Creator, who brought the universe into being as described in the first chapters of Genesis, has determined where the Jews and all other peoples on earth shall live. The sign affixed to trees next to the bus stop quoted Rashi: "Thus, should the nations of the world say to Israel: 'You are thieves! For you have taken by force the lands of the seven peoples,' they (Israel) shall say to them: 'All the earth belongs to the Holy One, Blessed be He. He created it and gave it to whomever He saw fit. It was His will to give it to them, and it was His will to take it from them and give it to us'"

Every educated Jew recognizes this passage. But educated Jews also know that there is no single Jewish position on anything philosophical, and there are even arguments over practical legal precepts. When one interpretation of Torah is granted unequivocal status as the only truth, serious educational, and ultimately political, problems arise. As Bar-Ilan University Bible scholar Uriel Simon has written, "Israeli schoolchildren, today, are being overzealously fed on Rashi's commentary to Genesis 1:1. When this interpretation is applied to the demands of the present, it is taken to mean that the promise of the Land of Israel, within the borders mentioned in the Covenant with Abraham (Gen. 15:18), is a pledge of absolute Divine validity. No moral consideration can stand against it, and any Arab national rights have no weight against it."

Professor Simon observes that there are other Bible commentators, including Ramban (Nachmanides), who dispute Rashi's interpretation. Ramban, says Simon, believes that the whole book of Genesis "is intended to teach us the principle that our hold on the land is conditional on our obedience to the word of God." After the Creation story, there is a series of expulsions from different territories, sanctioned by God, for misbehavior: Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden, Cain the murderer becomes a wanderer, and the Children of Israel end up in Egypt because of their forefathers' sins. This alternative reading, asserts Simon, seeks to preempt the self-righteous notion that God will bless the Jewish people unconditionally, so long as they conquer and settle the Holy Land, without concern for justice or fairness towards others.

An exclusivist Jewish claim to Divine favor, as conveyed by that giant sign with the Rashi text, mirrors the claim by Hamas to a Divine dispensation favoring Muslims and applying to all of historic Palestine. In either case, a serf-centered theology of land and history can easily bring about oppressive behavior, condoned by a double standard that denies another people the same national and religious rights claimed for one's own people. And while we Israelis are rightly demanding from the Palestinians that they stop anti-Israel incitement in their mosques and schools, we need to examine critically the ideological messages we are feeding our own school children, especially in the state-sponsored religious schools.

Other signs produced in printing shops were affixed to bus stops and fences throughout Kiryat Menachem last November. All had a religious message and most had the three-letter heading in Hebrew letters which stands for the Aramaic expression, "with the help of Heaven". One said, "The way to true peace: If someone comes to kill you, thwart him by killing him first!" (This was signed, "The Headquarters for Saving the People and the Land," with a phone number outside Jerusalem). That well-known rabbinic statement conveying the right and duty of self-defense appears three times in the Babylonian Talmud. It is a central precept in normative Jewish ethics. On this sign it paradoxically became not just a normative response to imminent threat, but also a prescriptive requirement for national security and, ironically, genuine peacemaking. The problem is in applying such a sweeping imperative. How does one discern a mortal enemy from an ideological foe whose needs might be accommodated in a compromise arrangement? If the whole Palestinian people is seen as an existential threat to Israel, then racist and even genocidal impulses may be given free rein and justified "religiously." In order to "preempt" violence on the part of Palestinians, some Jews may feel justified in using violence first, even when no real threat is imminent.

Such a danger was demonstrated in 1994, when Barukh Goldstein, identified with Meir Kahane's Kach movement, massacred 29 Muslims inside the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron/Al-Halil, which is part of the Makhpelah shrine holy to both Jews and Muslims. It was also a day holy to both faith communities: a Ramadan Friday for the Muslims and Purim for the Jews. Since Purim and the Sabbath before it resound with the message "Blot out the memory of Amalek!," Goldstein very likely projected onto these pious Palestinians the demonic image of Amalek, the archetypal enemy of the Jewish people. Goldstein's perverse desecration of holy time and place exemplified the murderous outer limit of such demonic projections onto our political foes and the consequent mystification of the conflict. Moreover, such pogrom-like behavior may be evoked in fringe elements of the population--I witnessed such an incident, described below--so long as religious leaders fail in their public duty to interpret Jewish tradition and its ethical norms properly. Another sign quoted the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, as saying (already several years ago, before the outbreak of the latest terror-war), "Political negotiations are the cause of the bloodshed." A similar statement, again from the "Headquarters for Saving the People and the Land," read: "Political Negotiations = A Security BOOM," with the word "BOOM" printed in fiery red within a yellow-colored animated explosion.

This survey of responses to the bus bombing reflects at least part of the religious spectrum among Israeli Jews today. Each written statement is a window on a whole worldview that translates religious beliefs into communal norms and practices. Each is also a way of coping with a deeply painful and threatening reality, a reality which could easily lead to despair if one did not have some system of transcendent meaning. For Jews, the spiritual path of least resistance is to label our political foes "enemies of God" deserving Divine retribution. The Palestinians, in this worldview, become the latest incarnations of Egyptian taskmasters, Babylonian soldiers, and Roman torturers. In this mental system, the metaphysical consolation for present pain is the messianic dream that will reverse the sorry fortunes of the Jews in one fell swoop. But such an unrealistic approach to real-world challenges does not do justice to the pragmatism at the heart of the Zionist revolution, or to the Torah as a Tree of Life with practical guidelines for protecting and consecrating human existence. Jewish educators today, in Israel and the Diaspora, are faced with a tremendous historic responsibility: the crisis in which we are immersed demands that they extract from three and a half millennia of Jewish teachings the halakhah lema'aseh (concrete norms) that can help us transform our victim mentality, with its perceived monopoly on righteousness and holiness, into an inclusive worldview which enables us to consecrate the Holy Land together with our Muslim and Christian neighbors. Without this spiritual resourcefulness, we are condemned to continue the no-win war that will exact more and more needless casualties and imperil the future of Israel as a Jewish state worthy of such a designation.

To illustrate the dangers of inaction, of letting the political inertia go unchecked, I will describe a very troubling episode that occurred following the November 2002 bus bombing. For a small minority of Kiryat Menachem residents, writing statements or posting signs was not enough. A militant group of male teenagers and young adults, some holding the views of the now-outlawed Kach movement, needed a more tangible outlet for their anger and frustration. This they found in the presence of an Arab-owned bakery on the periphery of the neighborhood. The owner of the Taboun Al-Arz (Ha-Erez in Hebrew, the cedar tree) is Midhat Abu-Sa'en, a genial Palestinian from the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Hanina. He and his two brothers also own the Lebanese restaurant down the hill from Kiryat Menachem in picturesque Ein Karem.

The two businesses reflect the aspiration of these Palestinians to make a living by serving the Jewish community, since the vast majority of their customers are Jews. They are strong believers in peaceful coexistence, and I have had numerous conversations with them on the subject. Consequently it was yet another painful shock, in the aftermath of the November atrocity, to learn that their bakery had come under attack from a violent mob of Jewish rowdies. Scores of youths threw stones at the bakery, breaking the glass cases inside, while shouting curses and threats. Midhat told me two days later that he had feared for his life and had thought of his children suffering the loss of their father.

Fortunately, the Israeli police intervened to keep the mob away from the bakery. Police officers maintained their presence for several nights, as the rowdies kept returning to taunt the Arabs inside. I came a few times during that week to see what was happening and to demonstrate solidarity with my Palestinian friends. On one evening I tried to speak to the leaders of the mob, at least two of whom wore kippot (skullcaps), as I do. I insisted that these Arabs were not our enemy and that, if the municipality had issued them a license to run their business, they were certainly not a security threat. They were simply trying to support their families, and according to Jewish tradition (I cited the Rambam, Maimonides) we owed that to them. My arguments fell on deaf ears, for they retorted with all kinds of dehumanizing slogans about Arabs, and I found myself being cursed and threatened by these hateful youths. My Jewishness, and even my credentials as a long-term neighborhood resident, were called into question. I could share their anger over the incessant terror attacks, but I vehemently rejected their racist and hateful attitudes.

In the adjacent neighborhood of Kiryat Hayovel, an Arab university student was stabbed on the street shortly after the Mexico Street bus bombing, so the danger of violent retribution against Arabs by hotheaded Jews was very real. In the end the police arrested a few of the rowdies threatening the bakery, and that ended the immediate threat of physical assault. But the bakery's sales declined by 70 percent in the week after the bus bombing, and it took a few months for normal business to resume.

In the months following last November's atrocity and its aftermath, my heart has broken many times as I confronted the deeply painful reality of my fellow Israelis, including my Jerusalem neighbors, being overwhelmed by fear, anger, and grief. Children throughout Israel have been traumatized, parents are anxious about their children's safety, and even frightened dogs were taking Valium prescribed by veterinarians. But in this hot summer of 2003, there are signs of hope that were not there last November. A new prime minister heads a new Palestinian cabinet. American and British troops occupy a post-Saddam Iraq, creating a new geopolitical reality throughout the Middle East. Whether the current negotiations will be more successful than previous rounds of diplomacy is anybody's guess.

I remain very worried about the conditioned attitudes and feelings reflected in the messages I have examined here. They reflect the self-absorbed "victim script" that pervades Israeli society, and much of the Jewish world generally. The abuses of Israeli power, especially since 1967, are rarely acknowledged. And the distortion of Jewish values that is the inevitable outcome of a prolonged occupation of another people is also ignored. These denials lead to ongoing human rights abuses against Palestinians (in the name of "security") and a betrayal of authentic Torah Judaism. In Israel there are prophetic voices offering an alternative understanding of Jewish tradition and what it calls us to be. For example, the Oz VeShalom-Netivot Shalom religious Zionist peace movement, the Meimad Party led by Rabbi Michael Melchior, and Rabbis for Human Rights are all struggling hard, with limited resources or access to the media, against the tide of chauvinistic pseudo-Judaism. In the United States there are also courageous Jewish voices conveying their outrage over what is being done in the name of Jewish survival or security, and their inclusive compassion for both Israelis and Palestinians. The Tikkun Community and Brit Tzedek v'Shalom are among the most visible of these American organizations, with a national base of support. There are also local initiatives, in synagogues and chavurot, offering American Jews a spiritual/political home that honors their humanistic convictions as faithful Jews.

All of these voices need to be heard, loudly and continuously, by Israeli Jews. Most Jews in Israel are inured by the daily dose of bloodshed and threats to the moral price paid by their leaders' political shortsightedness. We desperately need a spiritual counterweight to the misguided "realpolitik" that threatens the soul of the Jewish state from within. While most of us are quick to blame the Palestinians, especially the extremist Muslims in their ranks, few Jews, in Israel or elsewhere, are ready to look into the moral mirror. We all need to acknowledge, in pain and remorse, the injustice we have inflicted on this other nation, from 1948 until today. Sadly, the collective denial is compounded by the contempt that many Jews in Israel harbor toward their Arab neighbors. This widespread racism corrupts us, and it prevents us from perceiving the common humanity, as well as the deep spiritual and cultural affinities, linking these Abrahamic sibling peoples.

Unless the deep cultural and spiritual dimensions of the conflict are addressed, any peace plan, "road map," or framework for compromise is doomed to failure, just as the Oslo Accords failed. Genuine healing and reconciliation between these traumatized national communities requires an inter-religious and cross-cultural process touching the core of our identities. Many of us need the conflict, at least unconsciously, for our own sense of who we are in the world. In order to redefine ourselves, not as victims or warriors but as partners in consecrating the Holy Land, we need visionary spiritual leadership. Jews, Christians, and Muslims need to develop, together, an inclusive understanding of holiness that applies not only to Jerusalem, Hebron, and Nazareth, but also to Sarajevo, New York, Johannesburg, and Melbourne.

The rise of religious extremism in all faith communities should be enough to convince anyone committed to Middle East peace that a diplomatic paradigm which is rationalist and utilitarian, addressing only military and economic issues, will never work. In practical terms, "Track II" discussions among religious leaders and educators need to parallel the "Track I" negotiations between governments. Inclusive "Abrahamic" approaches to transcendent questions of meaning, value, and national purpose need to be articulated through the mass media by credible religious authorities. Only then can we move on to negotiating practical compromises that accommodate the conflicting claims over Jerusalem/Al-Quds, Hebron/Al-Halil, the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif and other holy sites. And only then can our souls be liberated from the dread, the anguish, and the hatred which contaminate our spiritualities and constrict our human potential as children of the one God, each reflecting the Divine image in a unique way.

PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE)

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By Yehezkel Landau

Yehezkel Landau is Faculty Associate in Interfaith Relations at Hartford Seminary. He is the former director of the Oz veShalom-Netivot Shalom religious peace movement in Israel and co-founded the Open House peace center in Ramle.