{"id":679,"date":"2018-05-31T13:40:40","date_gmt":"2018-05-31T10:40:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beresheetlashalom.org\/?p=679"},"modified":"2018-05-31T13:40:40","modified_gmt":"2018-05-31T10:40:40","slug":"she-teaches-peace-to-mortal-enemies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beresheetlashalom.org\/?p=679&lang=en","title":{"rendered":"She teaches peace to mortal enemies"},"content":{"rendered":"

In war-weary Israel, a teacher is helping Jewish, Christian and Muslim teens become emissaries of hope\u2014and rekindling Mariane Pearl\u2019s optimism about the Middle East.<\/strong><\/p>\n

One-woman catalyst for peace: Angelica Edna Calo Livne<\/p>\n

While researching this column for Glamour<\/em>, I read these words penned by a woman in northern Israel. \u201cWhat if there were more than one truth?\u201d she wrote in her book, A Yes, a Beginning, a Hope<\/em>. \u201cWhat if we embraced our many truths and found our common ground?\u201d The author was not a politician but a schoolteacher who promotes understanding across religious and ethnic boundaries. Her suggestions for ways to heal wounds between warring neighbors drew me back to Israel.<\/p>\n

Angelica Edna Calo Livne, a 52-year-old Italian-Jewish immigrant, is a force of nature, an impassioned woman with black curls and sparkling eyes. Born in the library of a hospital in Rome because the delivery rooms were filled, she was named Angelica for her Italian grandmother and Edna for a pioneering Israeli woman her mother read about in the makeshift maternity ward. Edna, as she is known here, now lives in Kibbutz Sasa in Upper Galilee, a communal settlement of 80 Jewish families set in a bucolic landscape of apple orchards and grapevines. For working in the kibbutz\u2019s fields or in its factory, which makes protective gear like bulletproof vests and plates for armored vehicles, Sasa\u2019s inhabitants receive food and shelter.<\/p>\n

Surrounding Sasa are small villages where Christians, Arabs and Druze (members of a non-Muslim Arabic religion) live\u2014an intriguing scene for those of us who see our world as a global village. The diverse communities are separated by little land but by great gaps of understanding fed by ancestral conflicts. Two miles from Sasa is Israel\u2019s volatile border with Lebanon. Just 18 months ago, bombs fell from the heavens during the four-week war between Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Israeli army. \u201cYou would see missiles fly across the sky,\u201d says Edna. \u201cThe war made me fight even harder for peace.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2000 Edna was asked by a charity group to escort 50 Israeli children who\u2019d been wounded in terrorist attacks to Italy for therapy. Moria, 15, had been eating pizza with friends in a town near Jerusalem when a suicide bomb exploded. Just before fainting, Moria\u2014a flutist, guitarist and dancer\u2014had said, \u201cWhere is my arm?\u201d When asked whether she hated the man who killed her friends and crippled her, she replied, \u201cNo. If I hate, I can\u2019t live.\u201d In those children, Edna witnessed quiet, heroic strength. \u201cFrom then on,\u201d she says, \u201cI knew I couldn\u2019t go on without trying to bring us all together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two years later, Edna, who has a master\u2019s degree in arts education, started the Arcobaleno-Rainbow Theater. Under her guidance, young Jews, Muslims, Druze and Christians perform plays that explore the rifts splitting their people. They simulate war and pray for peace. Some might hold the Koran, others the Torah or the New Testament\u2014but they all feel the same fear. \u201cWith theater,\u201d Edna says, \u201cyou have to be open, listen and reckon what people have in common.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the theater\u2019s first year, terror strikes killed people all over the country. \u201cI felt like a drop of hope flowing against the current of war,\u201d she recalls. She also faced funding shortages. One day Edna sat at her dining table and scolded her God. Moments later, the phone rang. It was a man announcing that the theater had won a monetary award from the Vatican for promoting peace through education. \u201cAre you an angel?\u201d Edna asked the caller. \u201cNo,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m a priest.\u201d That money helped Edna keep the theater going; it\u2019s now thriving and tours both Israel and Italy. Her work has even gained international recognition, including Italy\u2019s Assisi Peace Prize in 2004 and a Nobel Peace Prize nomination one year later.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, one of the beautiful things about being Jewish,\u201d Edna says, \u201cis about rebirth\u2014the capacity to start over when all has been destroyed.\u201d But there is also the pain, made tangible when Edna takes me to the kibbutz art gallery to meet Varda Yatom, a renowned sculptor whose work can be unbearable to look at. In one piece, some tormented characters vomit flames, while others are doubled over in pain wearing gas masks or display their faces frozen in horror. \u201cI sculpt the fear of the Israeli people,\u201d Varda says. Later I learn that on the day she finished that sculpture, one of her five sons almost lost his eye in a skirmish with Hezbollah. With two of Edna\u2019s own four sons already in the army (military service is compulsory here), Edna is pragmatic about the contradictions in her life. \u201cPeople say I\u2019m naive to push for peace,\u201d she says. \u201cBut you can\u2019t be naive when you have to send your sons to the front line.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cooking an Italian dinner one night, Edna puts too much food on the table, just as it should be. As the sauce simmers, she whistles like a truck driver to call her husband, Yehuda. (\u201cHe\u2019s my dearest supporter and my wailing wall,\u201d she says, grinning.) When we sit down at the table, she commands, \u201cYou eat. I talk and you eat!\u201d My new friend is not only a Jewish mother but an Italian one, and her children include all fellow warriors for peace. Right now, that means me. I stop writing and eat the lasagna.<\/p>\n

Another night, at the theater\u2019s weekly rehearsal, 32 young actors exchange high fives, hug and warm up as Edna plays an Arabic rap song. Donning expressionless white masks, the kids start in on Beresheet (In the Beginning)<\/em>, a play that dramatically interprets the region\u2019s conflicts. At first, the actors separate into two clashing groups, but their aggression ebbs away until finally the opponents touch and entwine. Only then are the masks removed\u2014all but two, \u201cbecause some people are unreachable,\u201d Edna explains. The first actor to slowly reveal himself is Moussa, a 21-year-old Christian Arab. \u201cWe not only take off our masks as Arabs or Jews,\u201d he tells me. \u201cThe most difficult thing is to take off the mask and be yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

It required a lot of courage for young Muslim actors such as 17-year-old Nidaa to remove their metaphoric masks. Nidaa, an Israeli Arab, faces resentment from members of her community for participating in plays with Jews. During her five years acting for the theater, Nidaa has often performed in an adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank<\/em>. \u201cBefore, I didn\u2019t even know who Anne Frank was,\u201d Nidaa says. Then she read the book in Arabic and was given a tough role, the Nazi soldier who seizes Anne Frank from her refuge. \u201cIt was very difficult, but it taught me so much about the human condition,\u201d she says. During the war last year, missiles fell near Nidaa\u2019s home. Stuck there, she e-mailed her theater friends, \u201cI miss you very much. Thinking of us helps me through this difficult time.\u201d Her mother, Balkis, a Rainbow Theater supporter, says that during the war her heart bled twice, \u201cfor the people of Israel and for my Muslim brothers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite continuing tension in the region, the theater is helping to loosen long-held grudges. Sharif, a young Arab actor, told Edna how he and his friends had been sparring with local Jewish boys. \u201cThere was gang warfare,\u201d Sharif said to her. \u201cThen one day, one of the Jewish kids came to our play. I went up to him and said, \u2018Friend, remember me?\u2019 We made a sulha<\/em>, which means reconciliation\u201d in both Arabic and Hebrew. Of the truce, Edna proudly says, \u201cIt was an outbreak of peace, real peace.\u201d<\/p>\n

At a Sasa disco on a Saturday night, I see that Edna is right\u2014there is more than one truth here. Girls wearing midriff-baring tops and skinny jeans sway to a Shakira tune as guys sit watching them, drinking beer. One almost forgets that the disco doubles as a bomb shelter. The kibbutz kids dance their worries away, but in the morning some are leaving for the army. Yotam, 22, Edna\u2019s second son, must report to the Lebanese border. \u201cIt\u2019s nerve-wracking,\u201d he tells me. Though Yotam\u2019s eyes sparkle like his mother\u2019s, he is tense. Watching him pack candy and a poetry book into his military bag, I think of Edna, who must balance her optimism with the realities of being a mother in a perilous land.<\/p>\n

In 1994 Shimon Peres closed his Nobel speech by saying, \u201cWe have reached the age where dialogue is the only option for our world.\u201d Maybe now we\u2019ve reached an age when peace talks should be led by ordinary citizens: people like Edna, who do not believe in religious or ethnic labels but in humanity\u2019s ability to learn, care\u2014and change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In war-weary Israel, a teacher is helping Jewish, Christian and Muslim teens become emissaries of hope\u2014and rekindling Mariane Pearl\u2019s optimism about the Middle East. One-woman catalyst for peace: Angelica Edna Calo Livne While researching this column for Glamour, I read these words penned by a woman in northern Israel. \u201cWhat if there were more than one truth?\u201d she wrote in her book, A Yes, a Beginning, a Hope. \u201cWhat if we embraced our many truths and found our common ground?\u201d [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[24],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beresheetlashalom.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beresheetlashalom.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beresheetlashalom.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beresheetlashalom.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beresheetlashalom.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=679"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beresheetlashalom.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":680,"href":"https:\/\/www.beresheetlashalom.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679\/revisions\/680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beresheetlashalom.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beresheetlashalom.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beresheetlashalom.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}