Water - 2nd Meeting of the Environmental Students' Group for Interfaith Encounter - 22nd of March 2005:

Me, You and the Environment

The 2nd meeting of the Environmental Students' Group for Interfaith Encounter took place on Tuesday, 22nd of March - the World Water Day, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The theme of the meeting was "Water".

We started with a round of introductions, as new members have joined us, and every participant shared an association that the word "water" rings to him or her. Then Reut brought a source from the Talmud saying that if a person sees a well in his dream - it is a symbol for peace, wisdom or life. This brought us to the biblical story about the conflict between the slaves of our father Yitzhak and the slaves of the king of Grar, over water wells. Eventually Yitzhak gave up the wells and his slaved dug a new well. We talked about how water can also be a cause for war, but also a symbol for peace and compromise. Salah mentioned that in conflict zones around the world, including ours, usually agreements around water are kept, even when other agreements are broken. The importance of water is very clear and evident across cultures, borders and also territorial and religious conflicts. Salah also mentioned the role of the wells in the Bader fight, as an example for their essentiality and the impact they had on Muhammad's victory.

During the conversation we mentioned several times that both the Torah and the Koran refer to areas where water is a scarce resource and therefore need to be treated carefully.

Later in the meeting we dealt with the division of the Red Sea waters, a story in which water play another role - not of drinking water but of sea water in which people can drown.

During the meeting many further stories and examples were brought Judaism and Islam that demonstrate various references to water. The discussion was flowing and vivid and for that it is difficult to write all the stories and associations contributed by the members of the group. They were students of different and diverse fields and each one of them added input from his or her field and enriched the group.

Due to the richness of the theme of water - we will dedicate also the next meeting to it. The 3rd meeting will take place on 5 April and will focus on the Muslim perspective on the significance of water.

We would like to take this opportunity and thank again the Institute for International Partnership and Peace for the conference in Taiwan on "Water - Spirituality and Continuity" - the conference that gave the inspiration for this meeting in particular and for the formation of the environmental interfaith group in general. We also wish to thank them for their continued moral support also now.

Following on this conference - and as this report goes to many places around the world and is read by many people - we would like to use this in order to remind people to save water, treat them with sensitivity and keep their purity.

Reported by Noa Milikowsky - ilimaon@yahoo.com


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