Would You Sit with the Hamas Sheikh in Gaza Today?

If you’re Jewish in these very crazy times, your heart is, like mine, probably alternating between total pain, total joy, and about eight other competing emotions. How do we fit in all these conflicting feelings – in this pivotal time of war, violence, and so much suffering, destruction and death?

I have been busy working on “Froman’s Way”, my feature documentary project on the unique Israeli Rabbi Menachem Froman, Z”L, and his peacemaker partners (many of them Palestinian). I followed Rabbi Froman the last five years of his life (he passed in 2013), and especially today, I feel he is a luminous figure we need now – often combining his absolute courage and creativity with his abundant humor.

The first part of “Froman’s Way” (extended trailer above) tells the incredible story of Froman’s activities: he was an Orthodox Jew, and was the Head Rabbi of Tekoa settlement for many years until he passed (and he also taught weekly in various West Bank yeshivas). But he became notorious in Israel when he decided that, as part of the path to hasten the messiah’s arrival – he was obligated to reach out to his Palestinian neighbors. On this path, he also became friends with Yasser Arafat, and even met many times with Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual founder of Hamas.

In the second part of our movie, which we are working on now, we follow some current peacemaker partners, on similar paths to Rav Froman (including members of Roots/Shorashim, the West Bank coexistence center founded by among others, Froman’s widow, Hadassah Froman; and also writer Shaul Magid). One central question our movie asks is, “What would Rav Froman do and say now, if he were still with us in these very challenging times?”

Froman often used religion as a bridge with his “enemies”. He joked with me, chuckling, when he said, “The first five hours of my meetings with Sheikh Yassin was always talking about the many names of G-d, in the Torah and the Koran.” Somewhat similarly, when I went with my videocamera – sometimes on the same day – from settlement to Palestinian village, I would talk with each person I met, for the first half hour or so, about our favorite movies or music.

I am an activist, as well as a filmmaker – and we are already presenting excerpts of “Froman’s Way” in events where we watch excerpts of him in action, and then discuss honestly our sometimes very different views on what we’ve watched.

Froman quoted Rebbe Nachman, who first used the term  עזות דקדושה (“Holy chutzpah”) – and Froman was blessed with an abundance of this rare, needed quality. His  extroversion motivated him to meet with leaders and activists from around the world – ok yes, he loved the attention, among other motivations 🙂

He apparently challenged Sheikh Yassin in one of their meetings, sitting quietly (no shouting or insults please, unlike the average Israeli MK or Hamas leader) – as he told Yassin that when Yassin died and got to the gates of Heaven, the angel Gabriel, would play,  “on a large TV screen”, videos of all the innocent Israeli civilians Yassin caused to be killed.

And Yassin responded, quietly as well, “It was because of the Occupation”.

My team is very looking forward to stirring up a little trouble with “Froman’s Way”. Already, when I tell a “leftist” peacemaker friend about our project, they smirk, stopping the conversation with, “But he was a settler!”

And other friends argue with me on Facebook, when I suggest that maybe we Jews/Israelis need to use more than 100% threats and force with Hamas in Gaza (suggesting the carrot of, if Hamas members leave Gaza, then we will push strongly, internationally, for a Palestinian state). Their response: “Hamas do not accept rule by anyone other than fundamentalist religious Muslims. There is nothing to negotiate here.”

Froman often said he wasn’t “political” – but at the same time he loved talking about his meetings with Arafat – including their agreement that Froman (as was his dream as a passionate Jew) could continue to live in Tekoa. And that Arafat told him, “You will be the wazir (the minister) of Jews in Palestine!” Hmm… sounds a lot like an innovative confederation, before that term was used much.

In the second part of “Froman’s Way” we focus on, among others, the innovative student group Atidna, who are daring to form chapters on 10 American campuses, to create a context for Jewish and Arab/Palestinian students to meet and yes, practice talking with each other. The founder of Atidna, Elijah Kahlenberg, is working very hard to help his well-known Palestinian Atidna friend, Mohsen Mahdawi (who has a Green Card), to free himself from the lethal squeeze of Trump, who is trying to kick him out of the USA for his sometimes very vocal activism.

Yes, I’m aware that both many Jews/Israelis and Palestinians are experiencing trauma after the terrible events of Oct. 7, and the following two years of the Gaza war.  In my interview with Rabbi Andrea Cohen-Kiener (who was part of a group that visited Froman in his home in 2000), she says one key is grieving – and especially grieving together with those on “the other side”. Can we silently sit in sadness with those Jews who disagree with us, or even together with several Palestinians? OMG, where/how shall we try?

After Froman helped release Sheikh Yassin from Israeli prison, the latter, in appreciation, invited him to come to Gaza to sit with Yassin on a Hamas stage.

And yes, while there in Gaza City, Froman couldn’t resist publicly doing his Jewish prayers, on the street in front of a large hanging tapestry of that golden Dome of the Rock that sits on the Har HaBayit.  Several centrist Israelis have praised his visit to Gaza, dressed as an obvious Jew, precisely as a “kiddush haShem” (“sanctifying God’s name, sanctifying the Jewish people”).

One more Froman tidbit: in 2005, during the “gerush” (expulsion) of about 9000 Israelis from their homes in Gaza, by then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Froman actually returned to Gaza for the second visit –  this time, to protest this expulsion. He rescued a Torah from a Gush Katif synagogue (above), before the synagogue was destroyed by IDF soldiers (so Gazans couldn’t enter it afterwards). Froman simply didn’t believe that anyone should be forced out of their homes. He believed, as he often said, that “The Land doesn’t belong to us, we belong to the Land”. BTW, who knows that there are remains from an ancient synagogue in Gaza, from the 6th Century CE?

So yes, this guy didn’t take sides – or somehow, he took all sides. He had the utterly rare quality of being able to stand in anyone’s shoes for a few minutes, and expressing empathy for all suffering. Please consider learning more about him, checking out our movie project, and thinking about how we can tap into that rare universal compassion he had, in this impossibly conflicted and tough time we are living in globally. Maybe the messiah is putting on his/her shoes, ready to make a rare appearance?