AMBASSADORS FOR UNITY MEET JORDANIAN GENERALS
by Racheli Levi, Noar Lenoar group leader, Ambassadors for Unity 2001

For the past five years, the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland through its Cleveland-Beit She'an Partnership 2000 program has been sponsoring a teens exchange program entitled Ambassadors for Unity. This year, the program involves 16 teenagers from Cleveland and 18 from Beit She'an. The program has two major goals. The first is to bring together Cleveland teenagers from different backgrounds - orthodox, conservative, reform, students in public, private as well as day school students and from diverse geographic areas to begin to understand their unity as Jews. Same is true for the Beit She'an students. They come from diverse backgrounds - orthodox and secular, Beit She'an city, kibbutzim and moshavim, Eastern European, North African and Middle East decent. They all come from different backgrounds to explore what brings them together as residents of the Beit She'an Valley who share a similar fate as Beit She'anis and as Israelis. The second goal is to bring together the Ambassador groups from Cleveland and Beit She'an to get to know each other, recognize differences, share similarities and discover together the what unites us in the strong bond of Am Israel, Klal Israel.

The word "generals" (even retired ones) usually conjures up a picture of cold, hard, tough men. First impressions from the preliminary discussion were that the talk would be dry and pedantic. In reality, things were quite the opposite.

I felt that the seven men who entered the room, like us, did not really know what to expect and where our discussion would lead. It even seemed that they felt as unsure as we did.

In his opening remarks, the Jordanian general we met with explained the background for our meeting and discussed motives and expectations. He spoke with such honesty and good faith that the language barrier almost disappeared. In these troubled times, when the gap between Jews and Arabs seems unbridgeable and peace a far-off dream, it was encouraging to meet people from the other side who shared their feelings and hopes with us. After the talk there were a few moments of awkward silence but after the first question, the ice was broken. The rest of the discussion centered mostly on the role of youth in strengthening the peace between Israel and Jordan and what they have to contribute.

After the lecture we had some time for less formal and more personal discussions.

I think that even someone who did not understand every word said at the meeting could not miss the message, which was felt in the air - that peace is not far off, and with men like that Jordanian general and his friends on both sides, it is even closer than we think.

Adar 5762 - March 2002