Do you know the story of the two hungry wolves? One wolf is cruel, bitter, and yearns to create havoc. The other wolf yearns for compassion and to create peace. Both wolves are hungry. You have food to feed one. Which wolf will you feed?

Years ago (maybe 20 years ago now), when I tried my hardest to go to every one of our town’s annual Women’s Film Festival flicks, I saw a documentary about a peace movement happening in the area of Israel and Palestine. The film followed an Israeli mom whose teenaged daughter was killed while downtown, innocently caught in an act of violence by a Palestinian suicide bomber. The mother had been actively involved in a local peace movement and felt the need to walk her talk. She made a commitment to seek out and make peace with the mother of the young man who was the deceased suicide bomber, also a teenager. The film captured the two moms together in the Palestinian home, sitting in a small room, holding each other and shedding tears - for the loss of their own child, the loss of the other’s child - in shared grief. The shared grief was utterly heart wrenching. In the film, there was no blame, no hashing out the why of how such a thing could happen, no hatred. None. Just shared grief. The hashing out of why such a thing happens was in another documentary.

We don’t hear about these kinds of things in the news. We don’t hear of the back-and-forth pain thrown from one side to the other throughout history, and the equal amounts of suffering by all involved. We don’t hear about the extraordinary efforts by ordinary people to overcome their cultures of hatred, to find forgiveness and understanding, compassion, and shared grieving - to create peace. At least, up to that point, I hadn’t heard of this. I think the news at-large feeds the wrong wolf.

Every day I make an effort to feed the wolf who yearns for peace. I make plenty of mistakes, but just once a day, at least, I consciously nourish love. I listen to a sangha with Thich Nhat Hanh on You Tube, listen to healing music, watch James Baldwin’s “I am not your negro,” read from “The Anger Makeover” authored by my dear friend Walter Polt, or do something - anything - that opens my heart and brings me closer to compassion.

I lifted the following from today’s Brattleboro Area Jewish Community (BAJC) newsletter, to share more of the peace movement in Israel and Palestine. We need to know about these things. We need to feed the correct wolf. I hope you’ll join.

Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) marks the systematic destruction of European Jewry between 1933 and 1945. In Israel, at 10:00, a siren is sounded around the country for two minutes. Even cars on the busiest highways stop and drivers and passengers get out and stand silently for two minutes in memory of the millions who were murdered.

Yom HaZikaron, or Israeli Memorial Day, is sacred in Israel. Yet, the ceremonies that are held to honor this day most often serve to reinforce cultural narratives of pain, victimhood and hopelessness. The Joint Memorial, co-hosted by Combatants for Peace and Parents Circle-Families Forum, transforms this narrative by bringing Palestinians to the Memorial alongside Israelis, transforming despair into self-reflection, personal responsibility and ultimately hope. 

The Joint Memorial Ceremony is the largest Israeli-Palestinian peace event in history. Last year 300,000 people participated in the live broadcast event and over one million people streamed it afterwards. It has become a focal point for the entire peace community.

The Joint Memorial Day Ceremony sets the foundation for widespread cultural change by shifting public opinion on a mass scale. Joining together to mourn each other’s pain challenges the status quo, setting the foundation to build a new reality based on mutual respect, dignity and equality. 

Join us at this historic event. 

Register today https://afcfp.org/memorial/