Reflections of Tantur
Prof. Scott Appleby
Silent eyes
Weeping in the desert sun,
Halfway to Jerusalem.
Silent eyes
No one will comfort her:
Jerusalem weeps alone.
And we shall all be called as witnesses,
Each and every one,
To stand before the eyes of God
And speak what was done.
- Paul Simon, “Silent Eyes”
How do we overcome wars and rumors of war, in order to speak a word of comfort to Jerusalem—and to a world weary of violence?
This is a question we struggled with this week at Tantur, a voice for peace crying to be heard above the din of conflict. Perched atop a hill on the road from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, Tantur is a great gift to all manner of pilgrims who would renew and deepen their faith by encountering the faith of others.
A quietly beautiful place of study, reflection, conversation, and occasional disputation, the Institute offers a breathtaking, and nowadays heartbreaking, panorama of a Holy Land divided by inter-religious, religious-secular, and ethnic conflict.
Not much more than a stone’s throw away, the recently constructed wall of partition snakes along an arbitrary border between the two cities hallowed by the presence of Jesus. From the rooftop of Tantur, this week’s company of pilgrims from Notre Dame, Britain, France, Rome, and elsewhere gazed down upon the scandalous scene, in silence born of sorrow and something approaching despair.
Inside Tantur’s conference hall on May 30, however, the theme was not despair, but hope. In a successful effort to articulate the source of our conviction that peace is possible, if elusive, Rabbi Michael Marmur of Hebrew Union College, Jerusalem; Dr. Markus Bockmuehl of the University of St. Andrews, Scotland; and Dr. Janet Martin Soskice of Cambridge University, England, presented finely reasoned, and often moving, theological and political reflections on the theme: “Perspectives on Hope—The Perspective of Hope.”
Conference organizer John Cavadini, chair of Notre Dame’s Department of Theology, opened the conversation by observing that hope is the theological virtue most needed and, to the discerning eye, most evident in the Holy Land.
Underscoring the point, Professor Bockmuehl invoked Czech poet and politician Vaclav Havel’s musings on hope. Expressed in the determination and resilience of those who refuse to be undone by the sad fact of persistent deadly and dehumanizing behavior, hope is rooted in the conviction that doing good—sustaining dialogue, empowering economic development, fostering reconciliation—is an end in itself.
One strives to sow peace in a field of war because this is the right thing to do, not because one expects unambiguous “success.”
Related to but different than optimism, hope is a signal of transcendence, a human quality that points beyond our strivings to an infinite horizon of possibility.
For Christians, as Dr. Soskice emphasized, that infinite horizon is the God who created the heavens and the earth, raises the dead to new life, and thus surely redeems our troubled world.
For Jews, Rabbi Marmur explained, hope is a thread running through time and space, embodied in the community of the faithful and erupting into history in the saga of Israel—at once promise and peril to Jews tempted by religious and secular messianisms.
For Christians, Muslims, and Jews alike, various speakers confessed, our hope ultimately lies in the absolute sovereignty of a merciful and compassionate God.
Precisely the good news sought by pilgrims from Notre Dame, here to celebrate and support the ecumenical and inter-religious work of Tantur, a place redolent of mercy, compassion—and hope.
Prof. Scott Appleby
Director, Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies,
University of Notre Dame
Member, Advisory Board, Tantur Ecumenical Institute
31 May 2007
