By Dr. Yehuda Stolov | Executive Director
The encounter took place on Tuesday and the subject was Peace in Judaism and Islam. An Italian TV crew was also present during the encounter.
During the free conversation, before the encounter began, one of the Rabbis shared an interesting discovery of his: the famous Mishnah from tractate Sanhedrin (4,5): The reason that a single person was created is to teach that if anyonewho causes a single life to be lost, it is as if he has lost a whole world, and if anyone saves a single life, it is as if he saved a whole world. These words are also mentioned in the Quraan inSurat Al-Ma'idah 32 (5, 32) as a wisdom from God to the Jews, it says : Because of that, We decreed upon the Children of Israel that whoever kills a soul unless for a soul or for corruption [done] in the land - it is as if he had slain mankind entirely. And whoever saves one - it is as if he had saved mankind entirely.
We started our conversation about peace with quotation from tractate Berachot in theGemara: Rabbi Hanan mentioned three kinds of peace: river, bird and cauldron. We tried to bring up different approaches to those three different images. For example we spoke about the free bird which travels to so many different places without limits, and the protective mother bird which uses its wings to protect its fledglings and cares for their safety. We talked about the making of the cauldron which is made out of melting all the compounds into one final product – the cauldron makes water and fire work together to create a shared target.
Another quotation that we discussed came from Rabbi Nahman of Breslav (Torah 80): What is the peace that which binds two opposites. As our sages, may their memory be blessed taught about the verse He who makes peace in His high places, because that is an angel of fire and that is of water, who are opposites as water puts out fire, and God makes peace between them and combine them together . One of the participants noted that the world shalom (peace in Hebrew) starts with the Hebrew letter "shin" which represents fire and ends with the letter "mem" which represents water.
Another one of the participants shared a small amusing story about Rabbi Froman, may he rest in peace, which says that: someone turned to the Rabbi to ask him about how could secular and religious live in one place. He answered with his special sense of hummer "we have an even more special phenomenon: man and woman who are living not only in one place but even under the same ceiling …"
After almost three hours, we fare-welled and everybody went home
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By Dr. Yehuda Stolov | Executive Director
By Dr. Yehuda Stolov | Executive Director
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