SEEK PEACE & PURSUE IT

BS"D


Further to my fasting for peace, I received this in my e-mail. Although I'm not affiliated with Jewish Renewal, I respect & support their efforts to improve the world we're in. This is an example & I wish them well with it:

The Rodef Shalom School for Peace Joins ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal

A week after the 5th anniversary of the September 11 tragedy, the ALEPH Board unanimously and joyfully welcomed the Rodef Shalom School for Peace as one of its projects. The School is designed as a three-year training program with the potential for ordination as a Rodef Shalom/Pursuer of Peace, after successful completion of course requirements.

³It is said that a nation cannot simultaneously prepare for war and build peace,² ALEPH Executive Director Debra Kolodny mused. ³ALEPH is delighted to partner with Rodef Shalom, whose directors have been intentionally, systematically and quite effectively waging peace for years. Rodef Shalom is a much-needed part of the Jewish peace building landscape, and an important part of Rabbi Zalman Shachter-Shalomi¹s legacy. It will help ALEPH continue our commitment to inter-religious work, embodied by The Shalom Center (now a separate, sister organization) and the Sacred Foods Project. We are honored to be working with Eliyahu McClean and Ruth Broyde Sharon, masters both.²

Rodef Shalom plans to train 20 Jewish community and religious activists in its first class. Participants will learn specific techniques and models enabling them to: organize and facilitate dialogue; integrate the arts in interfaith community activities; study sources from the Jewish tradition that support a universal, peace point of view; and grapple with problematic
texts about the 'other.'

Eager to address the fierce tensions caused by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Eliyahu McLean, one of the foremost inter-religious peace builders in Israel, and documentary filmmaker Ruth Broyde-Sharone, an international speaker and interfaith activist from Los Angeles, who teaches "The Art of Interfaith," launched the Rodef Shalom/Peacebuilding Training program at
Elat Chayyim this summer. They co-taught ³Peacebuilding As an Art & Practice,² the first in a series of trainings that will aid Jewish religious and community leaders seeking tools to respond to current interfaith conflicts and to build constructive relationships with people of other faiths, especially in Muslim communities.

The inspiration for this program came from Reb Zalman Schacter-Shalomi in 2003 when he initiated and ordained Eliyahu McLean, as the first Rodef Shalom/Pursuer of Peace, and charged Eliyahu with the mission of creating a network of Jewish peace workers around the world. Eliyahu, in turn, ordained Ruth Broyde-Sharone as the first woman "Rodefet Shalom" this summer at Elat Chayyim. The Rodef Shalom Training Program, now officially affiliated with ALEPH, will also encourage Jewish peace builders to become a spiritual community for one other.

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