Women's Healing for World Interfaith Harmony Week

Dear Friends,

Israeli and Palestinian women - Christian, Druze, Jewish, Muslim -- have a legacy of suffering in the Holy Land because of religious intolerance. Our land is dripping with blood of combatants and innocents who have been sacrificed in religious violence in recent months as well as throughout the years.  

For World Interfaith Harmony Week we will embark on a day of healing and bonding among the women of different faiths. We will travel to Tiberias along the border with Jordan. We will visit therapeutic mineral baths to soothe and heal ourselves. We will lunch near the tripoint where the borders of Jordan, Syria, and Israel meet.  We will visit a unifying Holy Site - Nabi Shuaib - the tomb of Jethro - mentioned in the Hebrew Bible as the father-in-law of Moses and venerated by the Druze and Muslims -- where we will be received by a Druze sheik. We will offer prayers from each religion about religious harmony and strengthen our own interfaith sisterhood. 

We will be women with sons, daughters, and husbands serving in the Israeli Army -- some of whom have lost loved ones in the conflict. Women whose sons have been wounded by Palestinian terrorists or wounded by Israeli police.  Women whose friends and neighbors have recently been killed by terrorists or by soldiers.  Women whose mothers and grandmothers fled the Shoa to come and live in our land, and women whose mothers and grandmothers fled or were expelled from their villages to live in other villages in our land. We will heal our traumas and strengthen the harmony between our religions by spending a loving restorative day together. 

Please send healing prayers to us on Thursday for the healing of everyone in our region.  

Our trip has received support from Barbara Meislin in California, and from the MENA region and is part of the WIN MENA celebration of World Interfaith Harmony Week. 

Blessings and love,

Elana Rozenman

Ibtisam Mahamid

Siham Halabi