Just beneath the list you will also find a Mourners’ Prayer -- Kaddish -- for Use in Time of War. It is rooted in a Jewish prayer, but the English interpretive version could be used by anyone.

You're encouraged to pass this on to anyone you know who might want to use it

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1. Ask your US Senator to urge an immediate cease-fire and the creation of a strong UN force guarding against attacks in either direction across the Lebanese-Israeli boundary. For convenient letter-writing, go to:
   http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/tsc/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=4668
    
2. Support Physicians for Human Rights in Israel in their work to take medical supplies to Palestinian hospitals in crisis. Go to http://www.shalomctr.org/ then click on the blue Donate Now button and be sure to write "Hospitals" in the "On behalf of" box.
    
3. Send money to a trustworthy Lebanese relief organization struggling to deal with the disaster:
   
   Beneficiary: Lebanese Red Cross (Lebanon)
   Bank name: Audi Bank, Bab Idriss
   Account number: 841500
   Swift: audblbbx
   Website: http://www.saveleb.org/
    
4. Donate to Magen David Adom, the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross, to heal those wounded in attacks on Israeli cities. Go to: www.magendavidadom.org/
    
5. Start receiving information from at least one of the American Jewish organizations dedicated to seeking peace through achieving a secure Israel, a viable Palestine, and an independent Lebanon. This list represents a wide spectrum of approaches within that understanding. Even if one disagrees with some aspects of their policy positions, they carry valuable information.

• Brit Tzedek v'Shalom (Jewish Alliance for Justice & Peace)  http://www.btvshalom.org

• Tikkun Community / Network of Spiritual Progressives   http://www.tikkun.org

• Americans for Peace Now http://www.peacenow.org

• Israel Policy Forum http://www.ipforum.org

• Meretz USA (affiliated with a peace-oriented Israeli political party, Meretz).     http://www.meretzusa.org

• The Shalom Center -- subscribe to the free on-line SHALOM REPORT: go to http://www.shalomctr.org/subscribe

• Jewish Peace News. On-line reports sent by Jewish Voice for Peace, more critical of Israel than those groups listed above, but conduit for useful news reports.
http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/publish/jpn.shtml

Second: Subscribe (free) to Uri Avnery's vigorous English-language on-line commentary on Israeli-Palestinian relationships.   http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en.

WebWeaver's note:  We've had trouble accessing the Gush Shalom website using the link provided.  One wonders why.  But the link above should get you there -- and it's worth a visit.

7. Subscribe (free) to the on-line news service of Israeli-Palestinian Center for Research & Information (IPCRI), a Jerusalem-based source for a wide variety of news, analysis, and ideas. IPCRI is rooted in concern for both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples. Go to --
   http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IPCRI-News-Service/ And click on "sign up."
    
8. Use the book The Tent of Abraham: Stories of Hope and Peace for Jews, Muslims, and Christians (Beacon Press, 2006) as a guidebook to bringing American Jews, Christians, & Muslims together for discussion and after deep connection, possible action for peace. You can buy the book at 10% discount and free shipping by going to --
   http://www.beacon.org/tentofabraham
    
9.  Begin planning now for the shared sacred seasons in the fall of 2006 that include the Jewish sacred month of Tishrei (Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, & Sukkot); the Muslim sacred month of Ramadan; the Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi; and Worldwide Communion Sunday for Protestant and Orthodox Christians -- bring the three Abrahamic communities together in prayer, learning, conversation, and if possible shared action. Look at: http://www.shalomctr.org/node/1117 and http://www.tentofabraham.org
    
10. Pray for peace, making explicit that you mean not only peace in general but also specifically peace among the families of Abraham. For example: In the Jewish prayer of the Kaddish, the last sentence traditionally asks for peace "among us and all the people of Israel." Some communities have been adding also "for all the children of Ishmael and all those who live upon this planet."

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MOURNERS' KADDISH IN TIME OF WAR

[This kaddish includes changes in the last line of the Hebrew text. The interpretive English addresses the meaning of "shmei rabbah," the "Great Name," which is interpreted as that name which includes all the names of all beings in the universe; It addresses why in the midst of saying we cannot praise, celebrate, or sing to God enough to meet the Reality, we also say we cannot CONSOLE God enough; it focuses the next-to-last paragraph of the Sh'ma on the loss of Jewish life;[and in the last verse prays for shalom for us and for the children of Ishmael and for all peoples.]

May the Great Name, through our expanding awareness and our fuller action, lift Itself to become still higher and more holy;

May our names, along with all the names of all the beings in the universe, live within the Great Name;

May the names of all whom we can no longer touch but who have touched our hearts and lives, remain alight within our memories and in the Great Name;

May the names of all who have died in violence and war be kept alight in our sight and in the Great Name, with sorrow that we were not yet able to shape a world in which they would have lived.
(Congregation: Amen)

May Your Great Name lift Itself still higher and more holy throughout the world that You have offered us, a world of majestic peaceful order that gives life to the God-wrestling folk through time and through eternity.

(Congregation: Amen)

You who make harmony in the ultimate reaches of the universe, teach us to make harmony within ourselves, among ourselves -- and peace for the God-wrestling folk, the people Israel; for our cousins the children of Ishmael; and for all who dwell upon this planet.

In light of Israel's engagement with Hezbollah and the ensuing criticism of Israel's intense military effort, many fear a period of resurgence of anti-Judaism and its offspring anti-Semitism. How can progressive people of Christian faith play a part in combating this? I would like to suggest that we must respond by making efforts to combat anti-Judaism, not only as a result of this encounter, but consistently in the ways we choose to transmit our tradition. As "Witherspooners" dedicated to justice and the principle of semper reformanda, it is important for us to take a serious look at the way "we" can and do perpetuate anti-Judaism, with the hope of thus inspiring advocacy for necessary critical changes.

Witherspooners, along with most Christians and Christian leadership, would probably say that they would never promote anti-Judaism, in these times or any times. But Marilyn Salmon, writer, Episcopal priest, and seminary professor suggests, "even the most conscientious preachers (as well as educators and committed peacemakers) unknowingly transmit and perpetuate stereotypes of Judaism. Even sitting for the reading of the Old Testament and standing for the New can suggest supersessionism, she says. Negative portrayals of Jews, she asserts, are so familiar that many preachers do not even recognize them, thus unwittingly contributing to the long history of subtle communication of contempt. How many times, she asks, have we heard the phrase "they closed the door for fear of the Jews" (often on the Sunday after Easter), or read about the bad Pharisees and other Jewish leaders, which easily come to be associated with "all" Jews, or as writer Mary Boys points out, "how often have we considered what we are implying when we annually sing the Christmas hymn, ‘Oh Come Oh Come Emmanuel and Ransom Captive Israel’?"

In an effort to promote a new way of communicating our story, in her book Preaching Without Contempt, Marilyn Salmon underscores the importance of a nuanced reading of the Gospels as Jewish literature. These writings, she says, reflect intra-Jewish controversies rooted in the diversity of first century Judaism. She maintains that placing the writing of the Gospels within the context of late first-century Judaism provides a helpful interpretive reference for preachers to address biases against the Pharisees and the Law. She urges, for instance, that we consider that the Pharisees in the Synoptic Gospels relate primarily to the time of the Gospel authors and the communities in which the Pharisees were the primary contenders for defining the future of Judaism. The polemic against them thus indicates that they are opponents. It does not necessarily describe them as they were historically, and it does not support an anti-Jewish conclusion. It is always of utmost importance, she says, to consider that we are not always reading history, but history remembered and interpreted from a particular viewpoint.

This leads her to underscore the important point that the emphasis of our story should be on the proclamation of God in Christ. This must be our focus, "the good news of the one God who loves all Abraham's children, indeed all the families of the earth, instead of a Jesus seen as over and against the Judaism of his day."

Endorsing a theocentric perspective versus a Christocentric perspective, she underscores that the God of the First and Second Testaments is the same God, and that Jesus is the messenger, the Messiah, of that same God. God is the main focus in both sets of scriptures, she says. "We do not need Jesus to be over and against anything." We do not need to defend our existence by Christianity's triumph over an inferior Judaism. Judaism had and continues to have its own validity. "Our focus, the distinctiveness of Christianity, is Jesus’ vision of God." Thus she makes the important point that the God known through Jesus is also the God who can be known apart from Jesus and the Christian proclamation, a critical concept to entertain in our current pluralistic contemporary circumstances.

Peace in the Middle East must obviously be dealt with on one level by politicians, but on an a more profound level I submit that the church, its theologians, seminary professors, leaders, lay people and preachers, have an undeniably important role to play in the creation of a deep and lasting "theological peace." As progressive Christians, I urge that we are called to be champions of spiritual and theological justice as well as social justice. We need our thoughtful, informed liberals to commit themselves to telling our story in a fair way, informed by the best in contemporary scholarship, with the same kind of passion and commitment to justice that they have given to the Covenant Network and the ordination issue. A lasting peace in the heart of Israel and all of the Middle East requires more than drawing topographical borders and cease fire lines. The threat of anti-Judaism transcends its conflict with Hezbollah. It requires a lasting countering, on our part, of the definition of Christianity over and against Judaism or any other religion. It requires the end of the concept ot Christian supersessionism and the incalculable ripple effect that mind set has caused and still causes. Without theological peace, there will be no political peace. If "we" do not advocate for this issue, who will?