Can faith end a war between faiths?

The violence between Israel and Hamas has stirred interfaith groups worldwide to rely on prayer and other actions to promote peace.

The Monitor's View

The hellish violence in Israel and Gaza has stirred many interfaith groups around the world – especially those of Jews and Muslims – to reach for a touch of heaven. Each in its own way has used dialogue, shared action, or prayer to heal the tense emotions around the war. One poignant response was a multireligious service on Friday in Poland, the country where all six Nazi death camps were built during the Holocaust.

More than a hundred people gathered in Warsaw’s Castle Square to pray for peace. The service was organized by the chief rabbi of Poland, Michael Schudrich, who has helped rebuild the Jewish community in Poland. “May the shared God of Jews, Christians, and Muslims be willing to hear our prayer,” read the invitation to the service.

During the Holocaust, one form of Jewish resistance was a reliance on prayer, or tefillah. Such moments of spirituality prevented the Nazis from breaking the faith of many Jews, as Victor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor, wrote in his book “Man’s Search for Meaning.”

Since the Soviet empire collapsed, Poland has built a tradition of interfaith harmony. The Roman Catholic Church, for example, has held an annual Day of Judaism to improve interfaith dialogue and remind Jews and Christians of their shared roots. Rabbi Schudrich has worked tirelessly to build bridges with leaders of other faiths.

In Israel this week, many Israeli Arabs and Bedouins worked with Jews to calm tensions or, in the case of the Bedouins, rescue Jews in areas hit by Hamas fighters. In the Asian nation of Azerbaijan, where the majority of people practice Islam, Muslims left thousands of roses at the Israeli Embassy in Baku.

In the United States, an Oct. 11 commentary in USA Today offered a specific prayer of petition to end the violence:

“We pray for the healthy return for all Israeli children, families and others taken hostage in the Gaza Strip as we pray for the cessation of collective punishment upon innocent Palestinian families,” wrote Rami Nashashibi, executive director of the Inner-City Muslim Action Network in Chicago, and Rabbi Andrea London of Beth Emet The Free Synagogue in Evanston, Illinois.

Prayer has a spiritual basis, as the late chief rabbi of Britain, Jonathan Sacks, often pointed out. He was a global leader in promoting religion as the solution for interreligious hate. In Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, he wrote, there is a spiritual force in the first book of the Bible when God says, “Let us make man in our image according to our likeness.”

If people of faith believe that, Rabbi Sacks stated, “the greatest religious challenge is: Can I see God’s image in someone who is not in my image – whose colour, class, culture or creed is different from mine?”