To Ask Nothing in Return: Father Emile Shoufani's Theology

By Jonathan Reiber

It is an hour after sunrise in Nazareth on June 15, 2003, and three members of our Episcopal peace delegation are crossing town in a taxi. The ride from St. Margaret's Guesthouse to St. Joseph's Seminary School traverses cypress-crested hills, affording a view of the entire valley. The morning is crisp, and cooler than previous days. The author sits in the front seat; in the back sits the Rev. Kenneth Arnold, a deacon who serves as communications director for the Diocese of Massachusetts, and the Rt. Rev. M. Thomas Shaw, S.S.J.E., Bishop of Massachusetts and a leader of our 29-person delegation. We three are going to meet Father Emile Shoufani, Archimandrite of the Melkite Catholic Church in Israel, who has just returned from leading a trip to Auschwitz of Israeli Jews and Arab Christians. We are excited to meet him; during times of terrible violence and despair, his trip was a small but powerful sign of hope in the Middle East.

At 7:30 a.m. in the school's lobby, Father Shoufani emerges from amidst the din of children. With a wide smile he leads us down the hall towards his office. He is handsome and full of charisma, distinguished with his white beard, green eyes, and black frock. Once in his office, he seats us in two brown leather coaches and orders us three cups of Arabic coffee. Children's voices continue to echo from down the hall.

"I have had a 20-year exchange with the Jews through school," he tells us, "and we have always spoken about peace and democracy." . . . If the Arabs truly understood the Holocaust, Shoufani wondered, maybe the Jews wouldn't be so afraid. This unexpected insight is what led him to Auschwitz and Birkinau.

As the conversation begins, we ask Shoufani what lead him to consider such a complex pilgrimage. "I have had a 20-year exchange with the Jews through school," he tells us, "and we have always spoken about peace and democracy. After 2000," when the second Intifada began, "They said 'I am afraid, I am a Jew. We don't know with whom we are sitting or we are speaking or we are dealing.'" If the Arabs truly understood the Holocaust, Shoufani wondered, maybe the Jews wouldn't be so afraid. This unexpected insight is what led him to Auschwitz and Birkinau.

Father Emile Shoufani is an Israeli Arab, and a Christian. He is from the Melkite (Greek) Catholic Church, an Eastern Rite church in Ecclesiastical Communion with the Holy See of Rome. The Melkite Church has its historic roots in Lebanon, but over the centuries it spread throughout the region. Over the last few years in Israel, Shoufani has become one of the leaders in the Melkite Church and in the Christian community as a whole. He is such a respected leader that the Jewish members of the delegation he led to Auschwitz came to use the diminutive Christian-Arabic term "Abouna," meaning "Father," to address him. Such a term contradicts the norm. Throughout their history, Israeli Arabs have been treated with disdain by many of their Jewish countrymen.

Unlike the Palestinians in the occupied territories, Israeli Arabs are legal citizens of Israel. As such, they enjoy rights and freedoms far greater than their cousins under occupation, yet they still remain second-class citizens. In its 2003 Human Rights Report, the United States' State Department criticized Israel, saying: "The [Israeli] Government did little [in 2002] to reduce institutional, legal, and societal discrimination against the country's Arab citizens, who constituted approximately 20 percent of the population but did not share fully the rights and benefits provided to, and obligations imposed on, the country's Jewish citizens." One of the Israeli Arabs that we met, Fathi Ashoud, who works for the development organization "Shatil," told us: "In general, the Arab community is not well-funded by the government. Things are better now, because we can lobby and advocate for ourselves. But we are still seen as second-class citizens."

"We went [to Auschwitz and Birkinau] to hear about pain." Shoufani tells us. "As Arabs, we are citizens of the State of Israel, and we don't just want to live in Israel, we want to be with Israel. We are talking about what it means to be a human being."

In the months before the trip the Israeli and Arab media scrutinized Shoufani. Some Israelis expressed fears that he was politicizing the pain of the Holocaust, and that he would compare the horrors of genocide to those of the conflict. Some suspected he would use the trip as an opportunity to promote Israeli Arab rights. This was to be expected. Politicization of the Holocaust has become so frequent and such a danger that Yad Vashem, The Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority in Israel, was compelled to make a statement. On its website, under the section "Middle-East Conflict and the Holocaust", it states: "As tragic as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may be, it cannot be compared to the Holocaust. Using terms taken from the history of the Holocaust to describe the situation in the Middle East does more to obscure than to clarify the events and their consequences." Reflecting the latent fears of Israeli society, a March 25^th article in the Jerusalem Post asked, "Will this visit to Auschwitz be a photo-op? Will it become an occasion for Israeli Arabs to stay in front of cameras [as] they stand next to the remains of gas chambers, [and say that] the Palestinian suffering now, in the West Bank and Gaza, is the same as Jewish suffering in the Holocaust in Europe?"

Shoufani was clear about the trip. "We went to Auschwitz and Birkinau to hear about pain. We went to be with the other. Auschwitz and Jenin, yes, there is suffering in both, but it is not the same." The trip was about an earnest reaching out, "to touch the pain of the other."

Arabs also questioned his intentions, claiming that he had succumbed to the story of Jewish victimization and played into Zionist ideology. But from the beginning Shoufani was clear about the trip. "We went to Auschwitz and Birkinau to hear about pain. We went to be with the other. Auschwitz and Jenin, yes, there is suffering in both, but it is not the same." The trip was about an earnest reaching out, "to touch the pain of the other."

In Krakow, delegates gathered in a synagogue for an afternoon of prayer. Shoufani wore a yarmulke and joined in Shabbat prayers. Amazingly, Israeli Arabs, as well as some of the French Muslim participants that joined in the trip, stood shoulder to shoulder with Israeli Jews and Holocaust survivors. The BBC, which covered the trip, reported that for Gabi Salomon and Esti Niman, both Israeli Jews, the moment was breathtaking. "If this is not co-existence and peace for heaven's sake what is?" said Gabi, who then began to cry. "If we can create it here, why can't we do anything beyond the boundaries of this place? This is not a dream come true because I've never dreamt such things were possible."

But it was not a dream. And rather than inciting fear and criticism from the media, the trip was transformational for the Israeli participants, "a sign of hope," as one journalist put it.

"One can only imagine the level of emotion." Shoufani tells us. "It was a communion of compassion, a communion of solidarity. For four days we made a new approach to the Jewish people. It was a transformation of people. An act that can liberate us from the cycle of death. To break the cycle of violence and death, and to go out with each other. To understand, because we must be understood."

"On Wednesday, June 28^th, we were at Auschwitz -- there was a ceremony at the end of the day. It was the last day for us, the last day of Passover. We prayed all the prayers of Passover. Many of us wept; we cried in the town of death. We walked from Birkinau to the camp with the media while Muslim, Christians and Jews read with us. We were offering prayers of the ascension, and of forgiveness. Forgiveness means that you break down walls to go to the others."

Far from equating Arab pain to the Holocaust, which would have been a disaster, the trip was instead an earnest attempt by the Arab participants to come to grips with painful reality of the Holocaust . . . they had to focus on the Jews, and put their own victimhood aside, "asking nothing in return."

"We are challenged to carry the other on our shoulders," Shoufani says, "and to ask nothing in return." Far from equating Arab pain to the Holocaust, which would have been a disaster, the trip was instead an earnest attempt by the Arab participants to come to grips with painful reality of the Holocaust. In order for the Arabs to make such an effort, they had to focus on the Jews, and put their own victimhood aside, "asking nothing in return." This philosophy -- which Shoufani called a "theology of the cross" -- is what made the trip so remarkable.

One cannot compare the pain or the historical events of the Holocaust to the pain or the historical events of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as Auschwitz and Jenin are "not the same" as Shoufani said. Yet for the future of Israel, "to be a human being," whether Israeli Arab or Israeli Jew, will mean living with the history of both the Holocaust and of the occupation. If that is to happen, than Israel will need more people like Father Emile Shoufani. For he dares to ask his countrymen, how well do we know each other? How will we live together, now and in the future? What will we do with each other's pain? He says that each of us should take that pain onto our shoulders, and ask nothing in return.

Jonathan Reiber is a writer based in London, U.K. whose interests include the effects of globalization on religion, identity, and conflict; ancient and early-Christian history; geography; and poetry. Jonathan was a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship recipient from 2001-2002, during which time he studied religion, peacemaking, and community in South Africa, Mozambique, Italy, India, Turkey, and Cyprus, worked in Boston, Massachusetts from 2002-03 on peace and justice issues with the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts. He may be reached by email at reiber@middlebury.edu.