Talking about the Israel-Hamas war is difficult. This Baltimore group is bringing religious communities together to try.
Knowing that she and her husband shared strong and opposite feelings about the Israel-Hamas war, Siddeeqah Sharif Fichman kept mostly quiet on the matter until Oct. 25.
That’s when Sharif Fichman attended an event called Visions of Peace at Light Street Presbyterian Church in Federal Hill. During the first hour, participants could relieve tension by receiving massages, participating in yoga or building flower bouquets. After that, everyone was invited to share their feelings on the latest escalation of violence in the Middle East.
Participants like Sharif Fichman and clergy leaders from Christianity, Judaism and Islam said the two Visions of Peace events held thus far have allowed for an open dialogue on a complex, charged subject while emphasizing shared humanity. The event’s two leaders are hoping to spin those vulnerable conversations into a group that will dive deeper on the issue and form long-lasting connections among faith communities beyond Visions events.
“I think that was actually the first time I had been able to speak about it at all,” Sharif Fichman said. “I had been walking around with all of this stuff just stuck in my throat for a couple of weeks.”
Sharif Fichman felt that among the group of 60 people gathered at Light Street, she could share how sad she was about “the sheer loss of it all.” Sharif Fichman is an Afro-Indigenous Muslim and her great-grandmother was part of the Chickasaw Nation. She said the current situation is like “watching what happened to my people happen in real time,” so “it feels very personal.”
At the same time, her husband is Israeli, with family members, whose safety they both fear for daily, in the Israeli Defense Forces.
“I still have compassion for those people, too. They’re human. And I think that’s what’s lost here, is that on both sides of this conflict, there are human beings,” Sharif Fichman said.
She wasn’t the only one grappling with intense, often conflicting, feelings. Pastor Tim Hughes Williams at Light Street Presbyterian said for many people there was a disconnect between what they were feeling, which “was full of pain and uncertainty,” and gratitude for having a place to talk about it.
“People were in shock. It was like a new and really raw reality,” Hughes Williams said. “It felt like we were just creating a space that was safe for people to come and be open about their grief and anger and their uncertainty.”
Visions of Peace was organized by Sumayyah Bilal, a 33-year-old Black American Muslim and owner and executive chef of Codetta Bake Shop at Light Street Presbyterian, and Rebekka Paisner, a 30-year-old Israeli-American and Ph.D. student studying intergenerational trauma at the Johns Hopkins University.
Paisner’s mother was in Israel on Oct. 7, when the terrorist organization Hamas launched rockets into Israel and killed and abducted thousands of Israelis. According to Israel, Hamas killed 1,400 people during its ground incursion; Israel has killed over 25,000 Palestinians during its response, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
On Oct. 8, Paisner found out her mother had been hospitalized during the rocket launches and the first thing she wanted to do was call Bilal. Paisner’s mother has since returned to Baltimore.
“We’re all feeling tense,” Paisner said. “And we’re all not taking a second to just take care of our bodies.”
Paisner reached out to Bilal, who has been pro-Palestine on social media. Paisner pitched the idea of gathering wellness experts to help people relax, and Bilal was immediately on board — so long as the event also involved a discussion about the war. Paisner agreed, saying that sounded hard but necessary.
“It was really hard to conceptualize ‘How do we do this?’ without people just getting in fights,” Paisner said.
After the first event, Bilal said she could tell everyone “just needed it.” She and Paisner worked to “create a space that was inclusive and that was not politicized.” As a result, people bared their souls in a cathartic, interfaith conversation that kept them coming back for a second event Nov. 15, held at the Muslim Community Cultural Center of Baltimore on North Avenue.
“The first event that we had, I was just in tears, like the whole time. And much of it was like, I felt such an outpouring of empathy,” Bilal said. “I think people need a space where they can be heard. … And that just fosters so much connection between people and it makes them feel less alienated, less isolated.”
That was true for Ruth Farfel, who attended both Visions events. Farfel, 31, was raised Jewish but doesn’t currently practice. Her partner is a Muslim who was born and raised in Jordan.
By the second event, Farfel was feeling angrier and more tired than before. In a blog post she wrote about her experience, Farfel noted that one of the ground rules for the event was that after each person spoke, the room would respond, “We hear you.” But Farfel wasn’t interested in hearing voices promoting Zionism, a movement supporting Israel.
Still, Farfel knew how embraced and cared for she felt when speaking and therefore extended the same courtesy to others.
“I knew how it feels to be heard, like I know how wonderful that is in any context,” Farfel said. “So yes, I was annoyed; yes, I was like frustrated; yes, I was confused and wanted to respond. And at the same time, I knew that listening and telling them they were heard might just have an impact on them or might just have an impact on how we interact with people who are different from us.”
Pastor Hughes Williams, Imam Earl El-Amin with the Muslim Community Cultural Center of Baltimore and Assistant Rabbi Tyler Dratch from Beth Am Synagogue all attended both events. While the three faith leaders hail from different religions, and share differing opinions on solutions to the Middle Eastern conflict, they agreed on the importance of bearing witness to pain and emotion across the religious and political spectrum.
“Maybe not everyone in the room has a shared understanding of what should happen in the region, but we were able to listen to each other’s deep feelings about how this is hitting us,” Dratch said. “I think that brought us closer together as a Baltimore community.”
Hughes Williams echoed those sentiments, saying that a “community that knows each other and trusts each other and learns to talk across difference is a community that will be more prepared when the time is right.”
El-Amin, who has been facilitating interfaith conversations as the imam at the Muslim Community Center for 20 years, said he was particularly interested in Visions because it gathered primarily young people.
“My perception was that people were looking, their soul was longing for peace,” El-Amin said. “You could feel their souls were longing for peace, for human respect, for one another, which would transcend religion and race.”
Focusing on young leaders is the future of Visions of Peace. In early January, Bilal and Paisner hosted a third Visions event, though it was primarily invite-only and held at Beth Am. Instead of the usual opening hour focused on relaxation, the event was a catered dinner and conversation about what steps participants could take individually and collectively to foster more connection amongst their communities.
“I think it’s time that we establish more connection between the people who come to these events,” Paisner said. “It’s one thing to share your grief and have people hold it. It’s another thing to have a dialogue with someone.”
Paisner is seeking grant money to pay a cohort of young adults of various religions to “form connections with each other” and “have difficult conversations.”
Since the Israel-Hamas war was the catalyst for Visions, it will likely still be part of the conversation, Bilal said — but they’re also ready to move beyond words.
“We want to move towards, ‘What are we going to do about it?’ This is happening. It’s very close to home for some of us, not so close to home for others. But it affects all of us,” Bilal said. “How do we enact healing in our communities here, given what’s going on halfway across the world?”