A Mother’s Call for Peace

On Tuesday, March 24^th, thousands of women and men marched in the streets of Rome to support the Mothers’ Call for peace, an initiative of Women Wage Peace and our Palestinian partners, Women of the Sun.

The war meant that we did not have the planned parallel event at Jaffa Gate but we did have a small gathering at the YMCA and were joined by hundreds of others on Zoom.

I had the privilege of addressing the event.

Here are my words.

I speak to you from Jerusalem – the city of peace – ir shalem – or al-Quds, the place of sanctity.

Just last week, this city was full of the holiness of Ramadan. Next week, we will have Pesach and Easter. These are festivals of freedom, of hope, of justice and of peace. We dream of a transformed world. On a “normal” year, we can feel the vibes of the festivals – our own and others’. We have seen the vision of the prophet Zachariah – old and young, praying and playing in peace in the streets of Jerusalem. We have had glimpses of what it could be like. We have had days of co-existence. But we have not been able to hold onto those times.

As the names of the city imply, peace and sanctity have resided here in potential from the time of creation, but the creator of the universe decided not to create a perfect world. He chose to create human beings – the great disrupters of perfection.

And we, human beings, have a job to do. We have to undo all our destruction and begin to build a better world, gradually, through tikkun olam, to reach the perfection that is not given to us but is ours to create.

Peace does not drop down from above. When we pray for peace, we are praying for the strength to bring peace ourselves. We are praying to be transformed into peace-makers.

In all our traditions, humans have free will. Do we choose to look backwards and blame the other for our pain? Do we choose to take revenge, even though our holy books forbid it? Do we choose to dehumanize the other and look only at our own interests?

Or do we choose to see the image of G-d in each person? Do we choose to forgive? Do we choose to look forward to a shared future?

I am a mother and a grandmother. I have a responsibility towards the children I chose to bring into this world. I cannot abandon them to a divided world, dominated by hatred and in a cycle of revenge. I MUST try to leave them a positive future.

The name of Yerushalayim is in the dual form but not because it should be a divided city. Tradition teaches that there is heavenly Jerusalem and earthly Jerusalem but, contrary to expectations, it is not heavenly Jerusalem that determines what happens here on earth but earthly Jerusalem that affects the heavens.

Our prayers and our actions here can have cosmic implications.

So let’s strengthen our efforts to bring peace, let’s raise our voices louder, let’s embrace each other firmer. Let’s dream of a better world and then, work to make our dreams come true.