Environmental Care Interfaith Retreat, Nes Amim 2nd-3rd February 2007:

On Friday and Saturday, February 2nd and 3rd, we came together in the wonderfully tranquility of Nes Amim for a weekend retreat of interfaith encounter around the theme of environmental care in the four Abrahamic traditions. The retreat was sponsored by Nes Amim's Center for Meeting and Dialogue and we are most grateful to them for that.

We were Jews, Muslims, Christians and Druze and for most of us this was the first experience in interfaith encounter. A unique characteristic of this retreat was that among the participants there were several whole families and their teenage children took active part in the retreat.

Despite the fact that only the Druze speaker arrived (others had last-minute emergencies that prevented them from coming) the retreat was very successful and enjoyable. Participants had very serious and sincere conversations in their small groups and all of them concluded that they learned a lot about other faiths' views, overcame prejudices and experienced growing humanization of the other.

The retreat started with welcome and introduction by Dr. Yehuda Stolov, executive director of the Interfaith Encounter Association, and Ms. Kaärina Loor, responsible for the Center for Meeting and Dialogue of Nes Amim, who also briefly described the special story of this Christian European Moshav. After the introduction participants went to small groups of four where they introduced themselves and shared personal experience of environmental care and appreciation.

Before sunset we gathered for a prayer session: the Jews prayed the prayer of the Eve of Shabbat, the Muslims prayed the evening prayer and the Christians prayed, in different languages, the prayer of Our Father in Heaven. Each of the prayers was performed as it usually performed and was accompanied by explanations for observing members of other faiths.

After dinner we came back for a social evening. We planned to have a Tu Bishvat Interfaith Seder but as the woman who was planned to lead it was ill and could not come we had to improvise. So the evening was gently flowing from informal conversations about trees and fruits of the land in the different traditions, to social games (like going around the room with a fruit and saying its name in the different languages known to people, which became a much bigger challenge than we expected as there were some 7 languages…)

In the next morning we started the joint study and conversation is our small groups of ten, while waiting for the Christian speaker, not knowing that he can not make it. But the conversation went so well that the time came for lunch we had to stop it before it really ended.

In the afternoon we began again our small-groups' conversation, not believing that the Druze speaker will arrive… However, Sheikh Nazem Sirhan did arrive and most of the afternoon became dedicated to a most fascinating conversation with him about a wide variety of themes from the Druze tradition – from environmental care to reincarnation and from the equality of women in the Druze faith to its prophets. Of course we also learned that the name Druze is a mistake that came due to one of the messengers of the faith, that did not even stay in it, el-Darazi, and that their real name is el-Muwahidun (= those who believe in one God).


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