A Jewish Quaker Speaks On Pacifism

This week’s guest, who wishes to remain anonymous, describes herself as “a pacifist, a poet, a Jewish grandmother, [and] a bubbe.” She became a Friend in 2006, when the Israeli-Hezbollah war began. “I couldn’t sit back and watch the carnage of that war and do nothing,” she recalls. “I had witnessed pacifism with awe among Quakers. I saw them walking the talk.”

“The Quakers served the oppressed,” she says, “and I was impressed.… I wanted to be part of a place that honored pacifism. I did not, do not, have a conscience for war. It is not the answer.” Since October 7, she has been absorbing everything she can about the war in Gaza, “trying to figure out… why are more people not outraged witnessing this carnage? Where are Quakers now?”

7 thoughts on “A Jewish Quaker Speaks On Pacifism

  1. I am also a Jewish Quaker and I stand with this “bubbe”. You can see a piece I wrote grappling with my Jewish identity in the face of the current hostilities in the Winter 2024 edition of the Northern Yearly Meeting Journal: https://northernyearlymeeting.org/publications/nym-journal/ My wife, yet another Jewish Quaker, was instrumental in the creation of the public minute on Israel and Palestine that you can find in the Social Justice section of the Madison (WI) Friends website: https://madisonfriends.org/ She and other Friends have been actively raising their voices about this issue in our community. Thank you for sharing your heart.

  2. This was an especially powerful witness to me on this Maundy Thursday. Although I do not observe the occasion as I did for many years in Protestant Christianity, its themes continue to penetrate my heart and animate my mind, and those themes of painful parting from those we love, including both those who give themselves to us and for us and those who betray us and seek to take life from us and from others, are echoed in the testimony of our Jewish Friend. Let us wail and moan tonight for all the children of every age who are being taken from their loved ones and loving ones in this season. But let us also live in the hope that is the rising of Spring from the darkness of Winter’s night.

  3. We’re wrestling with what it means to live the peace testimony in my monthly meeting and in the veterans oriented organization I serve.
    This Jewish friend speaks my mind.

  4. There is no answer to mans inhumanity to man. So good to hear this woman speak! My political self is on Israel’s “side,” & I hurt for ALL who’ll not get to experience life, & the beauty of this world. Century by century, war goes on…May God forgive us! Shalom! Let’s “do peace,” in our daily walk, right here & now. Namaste. (87th birthday yesterday.) Dale

  5. Zionism is not equal fascism, and I take strong issue with all who say that it is. I am a Jewish woman, a mother, a grandmother, and a Zionist. I believe Jews have the same right to a sliver of land as a homeland but since the birth of Israel, after the Shoah, the rallying cry of Israel’s Muslim neighbors has been “from the river to the sea” with the sole intent to drive Israel, and Jews, from the face of this planet. Hamas’s charter calls not only for the destruction of Israel, but all Jews.

    Do not mistake the crimes of Benjamin Netanyahu as the belief of all Jews, nor all Israelis. Do not compare numbers of dead between Gaza and Israel. Do not call the carnage an ethnic cleansing. Talk about how Hamas has held the citizens of Gaza hostage by using funds earmarked for schools, hospitals, and infrastructure for weapons purchased from Russia. Talk about how Hamas has for decades stored those weapons in civilian locations, those schools and hospitals, and housing complexes.

    Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal and he has used the October 7th terrorist attack by Hamas as fodder to out-crazy crazy.

    But do not, do not equate the actions of a criminal as Zionism or equate Zionism with Nazism. That rhetoric is violence in itself.

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