On US campuses, religious students' ties cross faith lines (Boston Globe) (tradition, minority)

[NewsBot/WarnBot]

Their ancestors once killed one another, and in certain hotspots, some of their distant kin still do. But on American college campuses, traditionally devout students are forging close ties across religious lines that once seemed impenetrable.

http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss...+National+News

[Terrywoodenpic]

This is well worth reading.
Quite a hope for the future.

Terry
________________________________
Blessed are those who bring peace, they shall be children of God

[michel]

Originally Posted by Terrywoodenpic

This is well worth reading.
Quite a hope for the future.

Terry
________________________________
Blessed are those who bring peace, they shall be children of God

I agree; it reminds me of this article, which came out a while back, an extract of which is as follows:-

(from:- http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/43828-print.shtml)
"Music integrates everything in the human experience"PHIL MILLERAugust 01 2005Daniel Barenboim does not believe in hope any more. Hope, the Jewish conductor says, is a luxury he can no longer afford. Perhaps the hope he had in his youth died with his first wife, the cellist Jacqueline du Pré. Or perhaps it faded when his soulmate, the Palestinian writer and activist Edward Said, died in 2003.
Barenboim leans forward in his chair and puts one of his oddly small, smooth pianist hands on my thigh. "You know, when I was younger I was more concerned with hope," he says, in his heavily accented English. "Now I think it's a waste of time and a waste of energy and emotion. You have to do what you can do. And then, if there's hope? Well, good. But hope is not something you can aspire to. It's something you have to create. You have to do something practical."
He declares this, his watery grey eyes fixed and unblinking in the fierce Spanish afternoon, then taps his thick cigar into a silver ashtray and turns to look out over the courtyard. We are sitting in the bar of the Parador Hotel, part of the Palace of Alhambra in Granada. Tonight Barenboim will conduct a concert by the Staatskapelle Orchestra of Berlin, the city in which he lives; right now he is tired after a lengthy rehearsal. The 62-year-old likes to sleep every afternoon, but he has no time to doze today. He has too much on his mind. His wife's mother has been taken ill, and as he talks he repeatedly glances at his mobile phone, waiting for another call or text.
We have met on this feverishly hot day to talk of peace and reconciliation – the aims of his orchestra, the West-Eastern Divan, which he is bringing to the Edinburgh Festival. It is made up of Israeli and Arab youths, and represents détente, co-operation – even that hope of which he is now so suspicious. Earlier, he blew into the bar, a short, loud flurry of white suit, cigar smoke and beaming smiles, loudly proclaiming: "Ah, the Scottish are here!" He threw his panama hat onto the floor, and dropped a plastic bag full of fresh fruit beside it. Now, as he sits with a glass of cold orange and grapefruit juice, he is quieter, but still strident and firm in his language. Under his crinkled white Paul Smith suit he wears a white shirt with a green print of leaves and plants; he also sports a pair of natty white leather shoes. He has an olive-smooth face and large eyes; a small brown head topped with tufts of white hair.
The West-Eastern Divan was established in 1999 as the product of Barenboim's deep friendship with Said. It takes its name from a cycle of poems by the 19th-century German poet Goethe, which were inspired by – and modelled on – Persian verse forms. A fusion of idealism and music, it brings together young musicians from Israel, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt to create one harmonious whole. After Edinburgh, Barenboim will take it to perform in Ramallah, the West Bank town besieged by Israeli forces in 2002, for another public performance. Although he refuses to believe in hope, his belief in the power of music to transcend the limitations of humanity is unconquerable.
"There is so much lack of understanding in the world," he says. "The future of the two peoples, Israelis and Palestinians, is connected, and it is a symmetrical problem: they do not understand each other's narrative. They have to know the future is living side by side. There is no way the Israelis can make the Palestinians disappear; nor can the Palestinians make Israel go away."
Music is the centre of Barenboim's life: as strong as his friendship with Said; as strong as his now infamous marriage to du Pré, the formidable British cellist, who died in 1987. He was born in Buenos Aires, the only child of Jewish parents: Enrique, a pianist and music professor, and Aida, also a pianist. It was clear from an early age that the young Daniel was a prodigy. He began lessons with his parents at the age of five, and gave his first public concert at the age of seven. Fame and fortune followed, but only after a potentially traumatic move to Tel Aviv in 1952, when the Barenboims looked to Israel, then a state in its infancy, for a new life.
Although he had to learn a new alphabet, a new language and a new culture, his childhood was blissful. Israel was young and confident, and his family's new home was peaceful. There was no sign of the antagonism that would later scar the country and define his current life.
"I was not totally wrapped up in the music," he assures me. "My parents were very intelligent. They saw to it that I grew up as a normal child. The move was not traumatic – of course I was playing concerts, but I went to school like everyone else. My parents explained that the Jewish people, wherever they had lived across the world, had been a minority, but they wanted me to grow up like everyone else, as part of a majority. So we were not moving to Israel for economic or political reasons, but for ideological reasons. I grew up in a harmonious way – but of course the existence of the non-Jewish population of the former Palestine was practically ignored."

His parents, he says, never talked about the Arabs. They might as well not have existed at all. Even Said, his closest friend, once said of Barenboim: "I think when he was growing up he never met a Palestinian. They may as well have been on the moon." No Arabs lived in Tel Aviv, the conductor says. "It was talked about in this way: that there was Palestine before the state of Israel was created, and then the Palestinians left. But it was not the true picture, or at least not the complete picture."
Unlike some of the players in his orchestra, Barenboim was brought up without the constant fear of attack and reprisal. His parents taught him not to hate; not to dismiss whole populations because of the actions of their most deranged members. "We despised the Nazis, obviously, what they did and what they stood for, but not Germany and German culture. Of course not. I was playing Haydn, Brahms and Beethoven: how could I?"
Life for the young performer was a whirl of concerts, orchestras, acclaim and adulation, and the exhausting travelling life of the musician. Professionally he moved from working primarily as a pianist to become a conductor, an orchestra director and an international star. He met du Pré in 1966 and married her the following year: the duo became a glamorous focus for classical music across the world, a golden couple combining beauty and artistry. But slowly his focus was moving away from the world of the lectern and the score, to the events convulsing Israel.
He admits he was "in anguish" in 1967 when, during the Six Day War, he thought the combined aggressive might of Egypt, Jordan and Syria would crush his adopted homeland. Instead he found himself looking on with increasing discomfort as Israel won the war, and took control of the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank, the Golan Heights and whole populations of people who lived there. "In 1970, Golda Meir [the then Israeli prime minister] pronounced that there was no such thing as a Palestinian people. I thought then: you can't say this. You can't turn a blind eye; say they don't exist."

[michel]

Pt2

As he speaks about politics, he gesticulates wildly. It's as if he is now on the lectern, in front of his orchestra, rather than sitting in a quiet hotel bar in the stifling Spanish heat. "After the Six Day War there was a sort of euphoria, but that euphoria could not last because it was based on the non-acceptance of the rationality of the Palestinian story. It's imperative to me that everybody accepts the rationality of their narrative: namely, that the region lived for 500 years under the Turks, 30 years under the British, and then when the British left, they left one part of that population to create a new identity for itself, as Israel. But what about the others: the many Palestinians in Jaffa and Haifa and Gaza? It is a fact that has to be dealt with."
Barenboim has never been afraid to speak out. Last year he even lambasted the Israeli government when he accepted the prestigious Wolf Prize for the Arts in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. "Unless the Israelis understand the Palestinian narrative, it will never be solved," he says. "That's not a even a political statement, it's a historical statement. You have to accept that the establishment of Israel was a catastrophe for them; that this is not a wilful anti-Semitic declaration, but an expression of the facts. Many of their lives were shattered. You cannot go back in time, obviously, but you have to accept that."
Perhaps he is too much of an idealist. When he talks of the West-Eastern Divan, he rigidly repeats that it is not a political organisation – even though bringing together Jews and Arabs in the Middle East is by its very nature a political act. "It is a human project," he maintains. "I don't think human beings can necessarily change or take away the suffering of somebody else, but we have to make the effort to try and understand and limit the suffering of the other, if it is in our power to do so. Music's greatest strength is that it can integrate everything in the human experience: so therefore when you take two people who are antagonistic, but they are able to make music together, they transcend the limitations of suffering and of joy."
He has attracted much criticism for his stance. His condemnatory speech at the Knesset, and his unapologetic performances of Wagner – a composer widely seen as anti-Semitic – have caused division and discord. "I cannot change the perceptions of others," he says. "But this conflict in Israel is not only a political conflict: it is a conflict of history and a conflict of social justice. And my faith in music has never been shaken. This is why Edward Said and I created this orchestra: not to make a political statement, but to create the conditions for people to come from all backgrounds and make music together."

Edward Said changed Daniel Barenboim's life. Their friendship became one of his most significant relationships, alongside his two marriages – first to du Pré, now to Elena Bashkirova, the Russian pianist, with whom he has two sons. Said made him think about the plight of the Palestinians more deeply, and inspired him to create something practical to confront the divisions in their homeland.
Until Said is mentioned, the maestro has been on a roll, talking loudly and confidently, smiling at passers-by and hotel guests as they salute and wave. Now, however, he grows quiet. Although a charming man, theatrical and emotional, he has an effective technique for not answering questions he does not like: he just says "no", shakes his head a little, and looks out of the nearest window until another question is forthcoming. It is unnerving, especially after his former candour. All that can be heard after I mention Said's name is the fountain dribbling outside. Ash falls from his cigar and it sounds like an avalanche. But this silence – unlike the one that falls when I later mention du Pré – does not signal reluctance to talk about Said. It is because he is close to tears. At last he talks, his voice low and his eyes filling. He speaks of his friend with love and tenderness.
He met Said by chance in a London hotel in 1991. They should have been diametrically opposed – the Palestinian activist and the Israeli hero; the introverted academic and the outgoing showman. But they bonded immediately. They realised they both wanted the same for their homeland: understanding, a dialogue, the acceptance that the future could not be defined by conflict and ignorance. Their friendship stimulated both men: Said took up his already accomplished piano-playing with new relish, while Barenboim began to think of practical steps to bridge the divides in their country. The Divan was born.
"He really was my closest friend," Barenboim says, slightly choked. "He was a very, very exceptional human being. He had great capacity to understand and to feel, not only for his people but for himself and others too. For example, he was one of the best agitators for the need of the Arabs to understand the Holocaust, to accept that part of history – and for the Israelis to accept the suffering of the Palestinians. He was a remarkable man. When I met him, he provided me with an intellectual stimulus that I had never had before."
He recalls meeting the man who "set fires in his brain" as follows: "I was checking into a hotel in London. He approached me because he recognised me. I knew who he was; I had read about him, but I didn't know how he looked. He approached me and he was fascinating. And after that we were inseparable."
Said died two years ago, after a long battle with cancer. But the West-Eastern Divan is the vision he shared with his friend – the vision of a united Jewish and Palestinian state – expressed in a single musical entity. The orchestra was the fruit of their friendship, and Barenboim carries Said's spirit every time the orchestra steps onto a stage.
The Divan took two years to establish, and brings together talented young musicians between the ages of 14 and 25. "The orchestra is really a mirror of society," Barenboim says. "You have people who are serious, you have people who don't care, people who are intelligent, people who are less intelligent, you have all that in there. You have people who want to meet people and resolve their differences; then there are others who come who just want to play music. It's incredible that people who have grown up in that society come together that way. I can say that the orchestra has changed people's lives."
It is far better, he says, spreading his hands wide, to have people coming together to play music than "sitting in Tel Aviv or Damascus, worrying about who is going to attack you".

[Terrywoodenpic]

Thyere is som insperatiomal good going on in the world,if people would only look.
And I hope help.


Terry
__________________________
Amen! Truly I say to you: Gather in my name. I am with you.