This summer our ‘Israeli Salad’ format continued to bring together women who otherwise would never meet. On an Ashkelon beach in July, WWP members spoke heart-to-heart with women from the Resiliency Center of Ofakim, a development town near Gaza with many religious Jewish families. Over 100 women participated, along with quite a few male fans of the Salad.
Because we live in a post-traumatic society, it is all too easy not to acknowledge our own pain and try to wall ourselves off from the pain of others. WWP feels that the key to a different future can be found in our human ability as women, mothers, daughters, to find the courage to share our pain by sharing our own story with others. Only in this way can compassion arise and healing begin. Embracing our pain, we can transform it so that we lose our insularity and fear, which in turn changes our encounters with others. On that beach, settlers, orthodox and secular women, temporarily freed from bias and barriers, dared to dream a shared dream of peace, security, joy, and love for ourselves and for our children and grandchildren. The sound of a shofar cracked open the sky to let prayers soar – and to remind each woman that we are all called to action that leaves the world a more peaceful, secure, loving place.
Arab and Jewish women from Kiryat Shmoneh and the Galilee panhandle recently followed a similar recipe when they met at a northern kibbutz. Read more here.
