Say Salaam to the Phantom of Ben's Blog

Salaam/Shalom/Pax!

The name's Christopher Schwartz. I met Ben back in September 2003 during a brief stint at the School of Oriental and African Studies. Ever meet someone with whom instinctively felt at ease -- someone you automatically knew would be one of your closest friends? Well, I've only met three people like that in my entire life, and Ben is one of them. To this day I regret that we could only be acquainted for three months. When the school's Fall term was done, I had to return to the States to complete my Bachelor's in Philosophy and Religion.

But now I'm done with undergaduate life, and thank Heavens! Now I can finally read the books I want to read and go to places I want to go -- that is, until my immense debt kicks in. You see, here in the US, students have to pay through the nose to attend school, and most of us can only pay with the help of the federal government, and it's a bit of a Faustian deal because the assistance comes to us in the form of loans. Thankfully the interest rates are tiny, and we are given a 6-month grace period to either find a job to repay the loans, return to school to delay repaying the loans, or stick ourselves in a situation which makes it too difficult for us to repay the loans -- which is sorta what I'm inadvertently doing: I'm going to the Middle East.

I've been studying Hebrew and Arabic for two years now, sometimes informally and sometimes academically (hence the time at SOAS). This past May I realized that it is high time I finally got my tuccus in gear and go over there, and that's just what I'm doing. From July through December I shall be a volunteer at an experimental Jewish/Arab village near Jerusalem that is called Neve Shalom/Wahat As-Salaam (NSWAS), the Oasis of Peace.

The village is something of a kibbutzim lite. It was started in 1972 by a Dominican Catholic priest as an attempt to prove that the two Semitic communities can live together in peace -- which was the original plan of Zionism as dreamt by Theodor Herzl in his book Der Judenstaat and was the on-the-ground reality for a millennium in the Abbassid Caliphate and Ottoman Sultanate before the Modern Age decided to bungle everything! However, unlike Medieval times, when Jews where dhimmi (an Islamic legal term meaning "protected" and "second-class citizen") and "Arab" was a slur Turks flung at each other when pissed and lookin' for a fight, in the Oasis of Peace the two Semitic groups are absolutely equal. The village's government is democratically elected, its communal religious building is simultaneously a synagogue temple, church chapel and mosque masjid, and the community operates a bilingual/binational elementary school. Despite attempts by the Israeli government to make life impossible for the villagers, the Oasis of Peace has thrived: from two families and the priest in 1972, the little village on a hill has expanded to fifty families, with three hundred more on a waiting-list for entry!

Which is where I come in. NSWAS needs a team of practically-free laborers to help maintain the operation. Thus the village has a small volunteer corps enlisted via the Internet and word-of-mouth. The job itself is anything but glamorous: I'll be digging ditches in the sweltering heat, babysitting the community's children, and tending the gardens. However, this is a golden opportunity to be part of a truly wonderful project, to enhance my cultural and linguistic knowledge, and understand the insane carnage which has gripped the Holy Land.

This opportunity is a dream come true. In little over a month I will be walking the streets the ancient prophets walked. I will breathe the air Jesus breathed, feel the winds Muhammad felt upon his face as he ascended to the seven heavens. I shall touch the wall that Solomon built, and pray in the dome that Umar built. But I am not an existential voyeur, a tourism-hound. I intend to give something back to the Holy Land, hence my service to the Oasis of Peace. Years from now when my children ask me, "What were you doing when the ravages of war were being unleashed upon the city of peace?" I can reply with pride, "Fighting for the cause of peace."

Ben and I thought it would be cool for two friends who met at SOAS and were now traveling to the ends of the Earth to share a blog. I just want to say thank you to my friend for taking me aboard.