Examining 3 Faiths in Quest of Spiritual Solutions to Religious Wars

Seldom has a religiously themed book been as prescient and deserving attention as “At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden,” a fervent examination of the religious wars of the Middle East presented through the eyes of one man searching for peace in the name of God.

While writing this prayer-filled journey of his encounter with Islam and Christianity in the Holy Land, Yossi Klein Halevi, an American-born religious Israeli Jew, could hardly have known how hungry his native country would be for such insight.

“At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden” takes on one central and compelling question: Can prayer, tolerance and faith solve conflicts that have proved immune to military and diplomatic efforts?

In his courageous quest for an answer, Halevi begins a two-year pilgrimage into the two faiths, urged by a heartfelt desire for reconciliation and unity among those who share his adopted homeland.

“My journey into Christianity and Islam,” he writes, “was an extension of that search for alternate forms of peacekeeping. If the political peace had betrayed us, perhaps we believers could create a peace not yet of this world.”

With this thought in mind, Halevi, a devout believer who is fascinated by the mystics of his own tradition as well as those of other faiths, begins exploring the devotional life of his neighboring Christians and Muslims.

He follows their holiday cycles, stays at Christian monasteries, visits mosques, joins in the ecstatic Muslim dance zikr and ventures across religious and geographical borders from Jerusalem to Gaza to Galilee. He does this not to heal political divisions or to argue theology, but to understand the devotions of others and to pray with his brothers and sisters in the community of faith.

In doing so, he introduces readers not to the concepts of each religion’s theological foundations but to individual believers: Sheykh Ibrahim, who welcomes Halevi into the world of Islam; Sheykh Abdul-Rahim, who teaches him the Muslim dance of controlled ecstasy; Eliyahu Charanamrit McLean, half-Christian, half-Jew, former convert to Islam, who now works, as an Orthodox Jew, to foster interfaith encounter groups; Sisters Anna and Teresa, Catholic nuns belonging to a silent convent community in Israel, who pray daily for peace; Sisters Gabrielle and Miriam of a different Catholic order, who celebrate Shabbat as a kind of reverse mission, “bringing Judaism to the Church, rather than Christianity to the Jews,” and Father Yaakov, a monk who lives on an isolated hilltop in Galilee, trying “to help unite Arabs and Jews in a common Israeliness.”

Halevi imbues his text with a sense of deep honesty, especially when he struggles with his own fear of the other faiths, as well as his suspicions of his fellow believers’ intentions toward him.

He is the son of a Holocaust survivor who’s been well versed in the historical Christian oppression of Jews. And living in Israel, he has also seen the hatred of certain Muslims for his people.

Building trust is a slow, uneasy process. He wonders at raw moments if those he prays with are just trying to convert him, and he can’t help but pose trick questions, which even he sees are unfair.

Halevi’s intention isn’t to blur the differences between the faiths but to discover and celebrate the point of commonality.

“I wanted to test whether faith could be a means of healing rather than intensifying conflicts in this land,” he says.

By choosing to pray and meditate with Christians and Muslims, he consciously contradicts the way religious people of different faiths have traditionally judged each other: by what they believe about God, rather than how they experience God’s presence. “Theology distinguishes between truth and untruth; prayer knows only different measures of depth.”

Initially, the book sparks hope that the painful troubles of the world might be surmountable by prayer, understanding and mutual respect rather than threats and bombs. But as the narrative unfolds, it becomes obvious that this approach is no quick fix. Politics, history, mistrust and absolutism repeatedly intrude.

As Halevi’s journey into these faiths intensifies, he no longer views himself as “an Israeli with a kipah [yarmulke] in a Gaza mosque, but part of the great human wave of surrender,” and his words echo with the possibility of transcendence.

His narrative ends with an epilogue plagued by uncertainty and sadness as violence in the Middle East rages anew. Yet hope for peace and religious understanding cannot easily be extinguished, not after he’s lived and prayed and shared life with his neighbors, and come to love them.

Though holding fast to his vision of peace amid such violence and hatred is difficult, he knows “that it is precisely in times like these that the beautiful teachings of faith become either real or mere sentiment.”

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Bernadette Murphy is the author of “Zen and the Art of Knitting,” a book of literary essays to be published next year by Adams Media.