Last night I went to see a movie, Crescendo, part of the Violins of Hope Project co-sponsored by Congregation Kneseth Israel, Gail Borden Public Library, Elgin Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Music on the Fox and JCC Chicago, After the movie the EYSO Hansen String Quartet played a very complicated Shostakovich piece. 

The movie, too, is complex and it felt like it represented my entire rabbinate, my entire life. The premise is a world-renowned German conductor takes on a challenge to have a youth Israeli-Palestinian symphony perform a peace concert. Sounds simple, no?

He auditions various musicians and the rehearsals begin. He chooses the Palestinian girl violinist as concertmaster, angering some musicians from Tel Aviv. 

He brings them all to Germany to a manse to rehearse. It does not go well. And then it does. Maybe.

There is much in the movie about generational hate. Jews who are children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors not wanting to be in Germany. Palestinians who were displaced by Israelis. Israelis whose relatives were killed by Palestinian terrorists. Palestinians who can’t get through Israeli checkpoints. There is much hate and mistrust to go around.

My rabbinic thesis was written about intergenerational trauma, sins if you will, based on the 13 Attributes of the Divine. Are there some sins that carry on to the third and fourth generation? Can you interrupt these trends? I examined domestic violence, German-Jewish relations and the Israeli Palestinian conflict. 

At some point I took a class run by Abraham’s Vision, an organization dedicated to breaking the cycle of violence. It was an important class and I can’t find my syllabus or my notes. Not terribly surprising, Probably 15 years and four moves later, they are undoubtedly in an unmarked box in the basement.

Let’s be clear. My first finance was killed by a terrorist bomb during the incursion into Lebanon. His parents were Holocaust survivors. They lost their only child to new violence. Since then I have actively worked for peace. With organizations like Parents Circle and Abraham’s Vision. Like Rabbis for Human Rights and T’ruah. Habitat for Humanity. American Jewish World Service. The list goes on. It has been my life’s work.

And I worked in Germany. For 6 years I consulted with SAP, the German software company. And because I had to be in Germany during the High Holy Days, one of the highlights of my career was being a High Holy Day rabbi in Hamln, Germany. 

While at SAP there were many late nights talking over beers about German reconciliation. The SAP managers were aghast at what their families had done in a previous generation. They worked extensively for peace. Notably with Afghanistan. They were welcoming of people like me. And at one stage I thought maybe the business world would lead the way towards a better world. Imagine a rabbinical student, a guy from Jordan and a bunch of Germans sitting in a New York office trying to figure out how to reverse engineer a piece of software. Everything seemed possible. Or a newly converted Orthodox Jew and the guy from Jordan figuring out what they could eat for lunch at a board retreat in Germany. 

You will have to watch the movie to see how it turns out. It doesn’t end the way you would expect. (Gail Borden Public Library has it on their canopy selections!)

Throughout the Violins of Hope project I have been thinking about an article we read during that class from Abraham’s Vision. It talked about whether an exposure to or an immersion with another culture was really effective. Could people really stop being afraid of the other> Could it really change the nature of peace work? The jury was out. If you go to a summer camp experience at something like Seeds of Peace and everything seems OK, what happens when you get back to your regular, segregated lives in Israel? What kind of follow up do you need to prolong the experience and truly make it fruitful?

Dara Horn in the Atlantic recently had an article about whether Holocaust education actually helps break down anti-semitism. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/05/holocaust-student-education-jewish-anti-semitism/673488/

It is a critical question in this time of rising anti-semitism. If classes are mandated to teach Holocaust, and then kids get bullied after reading the Boy in the Striped Pajamas, are we really ahead. 

What writing my thesis taught me, is that it is possible to interrupt the cycle of violence. However, in order for it to work, people, on both sides need to have a sense of safety. You cannot make peace with a domestic violence perpetrator, if you are afraid you will be beaten again. You cannot reconcile with the next generation of Germans if you feel that this new generation is going to commit the atrocities of the Nazis again. 

One Sunday morning in my hotel in Waldolf near the SAP headquarters I was watching CNN (it was the only channel I understood!) and working on my thesis. Israel had just mistakenly bombed an apartment building in Lebanon. It happens, sadly. A young parent was clutching a 3 month old and explaining that it will be 20 years before anyone forgets. 20 years, a whole generation before anyone feels safe. It was a startling story.

I have staked my rabbinate, and my life on doing exactly that. I have been involved in Interfaith Dialogue since college. If they know Jews, they won’t hurt us, right? I have been president of the Greater Lowell Interfaith Leadership Alliance, and am now the co-president of the Coalition of Elgin Religious Leaders. I have opened our building for things like OpenElgin or a class that just wants to understand more about Judaism. That list goes on and on, too.

But what if I am wrong? After watching last night’s movie, I don’t think so. There has to be a place for things like a Israeli-Palestinian Youth Orchestra, or the group we met doing an Israeli-Arab theater or Seeds of Peace or Abraham’s Vision. 

There is a place for organizations like the Anti-defamation League to break down prejudice, to loudly proclaim there is not place for hate and to work to prevent those rising hate crimes.

But part of it does begin by bringing people together. To really see that we are all created ‘b’tzelim elohim, in the image of G-d.” That we all want that sense of safety and security. Because what I learned in writing that thesis, is that generational sins continue if there is not safety. I pray for a day when all will sit under their vines and fig trees and none will make them afraid. This line from Micah is one that George Washington quoted to the Jewish community of Newport, RI. But I have also learned that it is not enough to pray, we must pursue peace, actively run after it, work for it. I pray that we do this work speedily, so that little girl in Lebanon and the little boy in Tel Aviv and the ones in Elgin and the surrounding arear do not have to live in fear.