Considering Allah During the Jewish High Holy Days

MONTCLAIR, N.J.--During these weeks of Jewish High Holy Days, coming on the heels of the latest war in Lebanon, my mind returns to a Rosh Hashanah of 24 years ago, a day that changed my life. It was 1982 and my 17th birthday. The Israeli army invaded Lebanon that summer and occupied Beirut. That holy day, its soldiers stood guard while the Lebanese Phalangist militia roamed through the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, killing between 300 and 1,200 Palestinians. My family heard the news before heading to synagogue.

In his sermon, our rabbi in Great Neck, New York said Israelis were innocent -- he used a particular Hebrew expression: "Their weapons are pure." He said the world was again scapegoating the Jews, slandering us with "blood libel," the vicious lie that says our rituals require the blood of gentile children.

My father, upright lawyer in his conservative suit, somehow sensed what an Israeli judicial commission would later rule: that Ariel Sharon, then-defense minister, was "indirectly responsible" for the slaughter. And by extension the army, the Jewish nation, to some extent we Jews in America -- were all "indirectly responsible." So he stood, midway through the sermon, and led our family out. Unimaginable! Walking out on the rabbi's Rosh Hashanah sermon!

At home, he said to us, three teenage siblings, "The rabbi should have been leading us in prayer, begging God to forgive us for what we have done."

The second invasion of Lebanon this summer brought it all back. Lebanon 1982 as Israel's Vietnam, an unpopular quagmire that shattered illusions. The war that led many Israelis of my '70s generation to expatriate, and Hezbollah to be born. Lebanon as the site of America's first suicide attack, when truck bombers killed 241 Marines. Lebanon as the birthplace, even, of the Islamophobia that's permeated our nation since Sept. 11, though the terrorists violated just about every essential Islamic principle. Bias crimes against American Muslims rose 29 percent in the United States last year. Even as the Ramadan moon rose, a gunman fired at a Florida mosque.

My father's stand that day has echoed throughout my life. At 19, I went to Israel for a year, and I noticed that intense political debate is the national pastime. Yet we Jewish Americans can't seem to criticize Israel without being branded an anti-Semite. (Organizations including Human Rights Watch -- led by the son of a Holocaust survivor -- were branded "blood libelers" this summer for describing Lebanese civilians' deaths.) At 25, I moved to the West Bank town of Ramallah as a journalist covering the first Intifada and Gulf War. I traveled the Muslim world, learning to find my comfort zone there as a believing Jew.

At dinner once with Faisal Husseini, the prominent Palestinian leader, I couldn't help staring at the men's shoes -- burnished yellow, buttery tassel loafers, just like the ones my father wears.

My Hebrew name, Zahavah, is after Golda Meir, and for a while I worked on her kibbutz, near Gaza. Sometimes I'd visit Gaza, and I got friendly with a young Palestinian in the town of Deir el-Balah, who ran his family's orange grove. I learned, over lots of tea, he'd been a PLO guerilla in Lebanon.

"I felt like someone came and stole my house," he said, explaining his politics. But he had his ancestral house -- he even had land. Later I learned his large clan are notorious collaborators with Israel's secret services. The longer I stayed, the more black-and-white turned to gray. Later my friend would emigrate to the Bronx, and end up like so many Palestinians do -- working in an Israeli felafel shop.

One Friday during the first Intifada, midday prayers at al-Aqsa mosque were especially overcrowded and tense. Jewish ultra-nationalists had announced plans to lay the cornerstone for a Third Temple. At some point, Palestinian youth began raining hundreds of stones down on worshippers at the Western Wall. Amazingly, no one was seriously hurt. The army responded with machinegun fire, which resonated for miles. Seventeen Palestinians would die in that courtyard. My office was a few blocks away, in a Palestinian neighborhood outside the Old City walls. At a loss about what to do, I trudged up the Mount of Olives to Makassed, Jerusalem's Arab hospital, to give blood. The scene up there was utter chaos and blood, with nurses weeping openly. The guy who finally drew my blood said, "Arab-American?" "No," I said. "Jewish-American.'

And I thought: Great Neck. Long Island. Lake Success Jewish Center. Poland. Minsk. Pinsk. Miami Beach. Essex Street sweatshop. Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Lenny Bruce, Lenny Bernstein, Woody Allen, Allen Ginsberg, Jerry Seinfeld. My grandma's first cousin was David Ben Gurion, founder of the Jewish State, whose soldiers are on the other side of this bloodbath.

When he finished the procedure he looked at me. "It's interesting," he said. "You have the most common blood type in the Middle East."

This week, my rabbi honored me with an invitation to address High Holy Day services, and I shared these personal stories and thoughts. When I finished, a well-respected elder stood up. "I hope Muslims in their mosques are praying for us, today, too," he said loudly.

Well, there's a way to find out. I sat in the prayer hall of an elegant Manhattan mosque the other day, for a journalism course I teach on religion reporting. All my women students wore scarves, seeing how that felt. The imam didn't discuss Judaism specifically. He described to us the pillars of Islam. Giving alms. Monotheism: La ilaha illa Allah -- There is no god but God.

It was a good way to begin the New Year. I only wished my very young children, indeed their whole Hebrew school, could have been there, too.

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