Building bridges

Valley women join interfaith group reenacting Exodus from Egypt to Israel

LEISAH NAMM
Staff Writer

Participants in "peace pilgrimage" deliver message at Pyramids of Giza, where they began their journey to Israel. Photo by Jan Briski

Two Phoenix women recently returned from a "peace pilgrimage" retracing the route of the Israelites' Exodus from Egypt through the Sinai Desert to Jerusalem.

Jan Briski and Sharon Yofan joined 34 other participants in Festival of Freedom 2000. The travelers engaged in interfaith dialogue, shared stories of personal liberation, and celebrated both Passover and Easter during the April journey, which culminated in a "Universal Peace and Freedom Seder."

The objective is "to bring people together from widely different religious, cultural and racial backgrounds, to create bridges for understanding and world peace," says Ruth Broyde-Sharone, tour originator and Los Angeles-based Jewish documentary filmmaker. This was the fourth such trip Broyde-Sharone has organized.

The group consisted of 30 Jews, five Christians and one Muslim, from Canada, Mexico, Israel, Egypt and eight U.S. states. Rabbi Marcia Prager and her husband, Cantor Jack Kessler, of Philadelphia, brought their son Aaron, 10.

Tour director Mohamed Ali, the Muslim participant, helped make connections with religious and governmental dignitaries in Egypt.

En route by plane from North America to Egypt, the group had a stopover in the Netherlands, just long enough to visit the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam, where Frank and her family had hidden from the Nazis during World War II.

Once in Cairo, group members held a ceremony - to celebrate the "rites of freedom" as free men and women - in the shadow of the Pyramids of Giza, one of the seven wonders of the Ancient World. They toured the interior of the Pyramids, which are usually closed to the public.

They attended a reception as guests of the Ministry of Tourism and participated in a traditional Muslim Salah (prayer service) in the El Alazhr Mosque.

From Cairo, the group traveled by bus through the Sinai desert. Some members of the tour hiked Mount Sinai.

"We left at 2 o'clock in the morning and climbed up to the top and watched the sun rise," Briski says.

Kessler ascended the mountain carrying in his backpack a Torah believed to be 300 years old, that his father smuggled from Nazi-occupied Paris during World War II.

"We unrolled the scroll and raised it aloft and my son Aaron chanted the Ten Commandments from the scroll on the top of Mount Sinai," Prager says.

The next stop was the Dead Sea. "You just bob around like a cork," Briski recalls. "I could hardly get my feet down on the ground."

At Kumran, they visited the cave where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, before continuing to Tiberias, where they stopped at several Christian sites, then stayed at a nearby kibbutz.

After a prayer session at the Sea of Galilee, the group journeyed to Jerusalem, where they planted trees in the Jerusalem National Forest.

Father Michael McGary, a Catholic priest; Jacub Ali Saleh Hussein, a Muslim from Ramallah; and Rabbi David Rosen, the director of the Jerusalem office of the Anti-Defamation League, participated in the tree-planting ceremony.

The group remained in Jerusalem for the rest of the trip, exploring the Old City and other sites. Some members attended an Easter Mass in the Christian Quarter.

On the first night of Passover, participants held a "Jewish Renewal-style/traditional-style" Passover seder, Prager says, which included "lots of singing and dancing" and a "collective telling of the Exodus story."

At the culmination of the tour, the group hosted a Universal Peace and Freedom Seder, which Broyde-Sharone describes as "an improvisational, lyrical experience - something like a jazz riff - which takes its energy and direction from the participants, using the template of the Passover seder."

The seder is held during the week of Passover and is not meant to replace the traditional seder, Broyde-Sharone says.

"Even the ritual foods on the seder plate may be different - this year we had almonds, milk and honey, dates and olives, representing the symbols of peace."

The Universal Peace and Freedom Seder, which drew about 80 guests, serves as an outreach to the larger community. Israelis, Palestinians and peace workers from organizations throughout Israel were invited to "celebrate the vision of peace and the future which we all long for," Prager says.

Valley residents Briski and Yofan met 2 1/2 years ago. Both are members of the Jewish Center for Spiritual Growth, Scottsdale Torah Institute, a spiritual community led by Michael Shapiro.

"Although I am not of the Jewish faith, that's where I've chosen to be and have (Shapiro) as my teacher at this stage of my life," Briski says.

Briski, a real estate agent, was raised in a Catholic home and practiced Catholicism until about 12 years ago.

"(The trip) was fascinating for me, I had been part of this Jewish community but I didn't know much about Jewish history, even though it's essentially the history of the Christian religion as well," she says.

"I had been out of that arena for so long, in terms of learning, and I felt that my background is not strong where those things are concerned so there was much that I didn't know, " she said. "But I look pretty much in my heart, and I think that compensates for the head knowledge that is not there.

"The richness of the trip was about the connection, both with the people that were on the trip as well as the people that we had the chance to meet."

Briski's experiences strengthened her belief in a God that "encompasses all of us," she says. "We are all one and we all worship the same God. It may look a little different from time to time but I believe in that oneness."

Yofan, a harpist at Hospice of the Valley, was raised in a Jewish home and describes herself "more of a cultural Jew rather than a religious Jew."

She says she is now studying Hebrew and is exploring Judaism from a spiritual rather than a traditional religious perspective.

She is optimistic about future peace efforts in Israel.

"Seeing all the people that we actually met, especially young people, involved and committed to peacemaking, was very hopeful," Yofan says. "I think the challenge is huge to help people overcome the differences."

She recalls a lecture by Sheikh Abu Aziz Al-Bukhari, leader of the Sufi order of Bukharian origin. He spoke of his sadness about people focusing on the "3 percent difference" between the three major western religions - Christianity, Islam and Judaism - instead of the "97 percent" similarity.

From various conversations she heard during the course of the trip, Yofan believes that "the source of the problems is when everyone thinks their way is the only way, that their religion is the religion."

Conversations stopped once it got into "my way is the only way," she says.

For Prager, "The trip expressed the extraordinary longing for compassion, understanding and peace that is felt by all of the real and spiritual children of Abraham - Jews, Christians, Muslims. We are all branches of the same family.

"For so many centuries, very real historical hurts have kept us from easily speaking with one another. The time has come now to heal the wounds of the past and to together co-create a future that is filled with blessings for all of our people."