Rosh Hashanah Infused by Joys, Doubts of Peace

In the entryway of the Tifereth Israel Congregation in Washington, 8-year-old Ezra Moses Galston was troubled. He had just listened to his rabbi speak glowingly of peace between Israelis and Palestinians but he remained skeptical. “What about Arafat,” the fourth-grader demanded, convinced that he had scored a telling debating point.

Bill Galston, a White House staff member, tried without much luck to persuade his son to give peace a chance. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, he said, “has been a general his whole life. He knows war. This is a man who makes peace with knowledge, not naivete.”

In Atlanta, Rabbi Alvin Sugarman, inspired by the prospects of Middle East peace, invited Fahed Abu-Akel, a Palestinian who is now an Atlanta Presbyterian minister, to give the holiday benediction at his synagogue. “May the peace that started on Monday continue to bless Israel and the Palestinians,” the Palestinian pastor said. “Here we stand together to make hearts touch,” the rabbi declared. “For he is truly my brother, as he is God’s child.”

As they observe Rosh Hashanah, their honeyed bread and apples symbolizing the hope for a sweeter new year, American Jews are savoring a rare delight--the prospects for Middle East peace. But as they gathered in synagogues, suburban dining rooms, nursing homes and countless other locations Thursday to mark the start of the year 5754 on the Hebrew calendar, also in evidence is a strong strain of skepticism.

Can Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat really be trusted? If Arabs regain control of Jewish holy places on the West Bank, will they keep Jews away like they did before?

Still, Rosh Hashanah is a holiday when miracles can be contemplated, as they were at Jewish gatherings across the nation. Here are a few snapshots.

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Hamzi Moghrabi, a Palestinian who is president of the Colorado chapter of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, drew a standing ovation after delivering a five-minute plea for coexistence in Denver’s largest reformed synagogue, Temple Emanuel. Rabbi Steven E. Foster, pleased that his gesture toward Middle East peace proved to be so popular with the 1,700-strong congregation, remarked: “I’ve never heard of applauding during service, especially during the High Holy Days.”

Auschwitz survivor, Bernie Sayone, 71, joined in the applause.

“I’m happy he was here,” said Sayone who lost 33 family members in the Holocaust. “All people must be brought together in brotherhood and understanding.”

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Sophia Bolin, 93; Annie Barskin, 93; Rose Kite, 88, and Mildred Zomick, 89, shared a holiday meal at the William Breman Jewish Home just outside Atlanta. Although they dined in a drab conference room on bare folding tables, the four friends were happy to be together to usher in the new year. And, of course, the conversation turned to the events in Washington.

“No choice,” said Kite. “There is no choice but to make peace. I think it is going to work.”

Zomick is not quite so sure. “I have mixed feelings,” she said. “It’s such a big step. So unexpected. I get goose bumps now just talking about it.”

Kite said that she fears something will happen to Arafat and Palestinian leadership will fall into even more radical hands. “He is writing his own destiny,” she said. “There’s nobody going to tell him what to do. (Egyptian President Anwar) Sadat didn’t know he was going to get killed. (President John F.) Kennedy didn’t know he was going to get killed. I only hope they don’t get (Egyptian President Hosni) Mubarak.”

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In Washington, Rabbi Gerald Serotta discussed the significance of the peace agreement with about 300 worshipers, mostly students who were born after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, in a service at George Washington University. He turned to a cartoon that showed Moses parting the waters of the Red Sea while the people of Israel ignore him and focus on a table where Arafat and Rabin sit. “Moses, you think that’s something with your water trick,” the caption said. “Look over there. That’s a miracle.”

Some in the congregation do not appear to share the rabbi’s optimism. “When you’re dealing with the PLO, can you really trust them?” asked Melissa Jurman, 23, a graduate student in international affairs from Long Island, N.Y. “I’m hoping peace is going to happen, but I don’t know if it will actually occur.”

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Shulamit Decktor said that she was so caught up in the events of this week that she was attending Rosh Hashanah services at the Temple B’Nai Torah in Seattle for the first time “in many years.”

“I must tell you, I have such a good feeling about it, it made me come here tonight,” she said. “I felt that this year I wanted to be with a large group.”

Then doubt crept in: “I don’t have reservations, so much as concerns. I’m very much part of the thrill of this moment. But as I look ahead, ‘scary’ is not really the right word. I guess there are so many ways it can go astray. But I think it’s the right thing.”

Decktor said that her father, an official of the opposition Likud Party in Israel “is not for this at all.”

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In suburban Evanston, Ill., Rabbi Frederick Schwartz presided over a holiday meal for his family and friends. The rabbi notes that the talk at his synagogue in Chicago is optimistic. “There seems to be a sigh of relief,” he says. “They’re saying ‘We’re out of a deadlock situation.’ They’re not very hawkish. They see great possibility, although no guarantee.”

His son, Jeremy, an attorney, said that Americans should quit second-guessing Israel.

“I’m very hopeful,” he said. “I’m very hesitant about a lot of Americans telling Israel what to do. It’s easy for me to say give back the land. . . . To me the whole thing is win-win. To me, the Gaza Strip is the most Godforsaken piece of land. If they want it, let them have it.”

But will it work?

“If it doesn’t work, then they’ll go in like Lebanon and clear them out,” said Jeremy Schwartz.

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In Mercer Island, Wash., Henry Friedman, who runs a Holocaust information center, was overjoyed by the Israel-PLO accord.

“For all these generations, these Palestinian kids have been taught that they need guns to be liberated and Israeli children are taught not to pick up strange toys on the ground,” Friedman said. “Do you have any idea what that does to a person?”

Friedman was an 11-year-old boy in the Ukraine when he and his family went into hiding from the Nazis. Along with his mother and brother and a friend, he lived in a neighbor’s cramped attic for 18 months.

“As a Holocaust survivor, people always say to me, you must hate,” he said. “When I say no, I don’t, they can’t comprehend it. I tell them, hate begets hate. It eats you up.”

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In Miami Beach, Rabbi Gary A. Glickstein presided over a holiday meal in his Art Deco-style house. Among the guests are his cousin, Yoav Meir, whose family moved to the United States from Israel eight years ago. The family’s 13-year-old daughter, Noa, attends a religious school in the Miami area.

“Do you know what Noa asked me when she came home from school?” Meir said. “ ‘Why do we give up Jericho?’ ”

Noa protested that the question was not really hers, that she was repeating what other students were saying at the school.

“Half the students at the school said we shouldn’t give it back,” she said. “It’s a religious school, and we were told that the religious parties (in Israel) are definitely against giving back any part of Israel.” But she discounted the opinions of her schoolmates and other “Jewish people who have never even traveled to Israel.”

Miki Meir, her mother, added: “Give all the land you need to, to have peace.”

This story was reported by Times staff writer Elizabeth Shogren in Washington and researchers Anna M. Virtue in Miami, Doug Conner in Seattle, Edith Stanley in Atlanta, Tracy Shryer in Chicago, Lianne Hart in Houston and Ann Rovin in Denver. It was written by Kempster.