In the New York Times Book Review of August 24, there was an article entitled, “A Palestinian Neighbor Responds.” It’s a review of Letters To My Palestinian Neighbor by Yossi Klein Halevi. The reviewer describes Klein as “…a New York Jew who grew up in the right-wing Zionist youth movement Betar, and …who then decided in the summer of 1982, during the Lebanon War, to…join the Jewish people ‘in the greatest dare of its history.’”

After living 36 years in his adopted country (Israel), Klein believed that the greatest challenge facing his generation of Israelis is “to turn outward: to you (Palestinians), neighbor, because my future is inseparable from yours.” Klein’s book is designed in the form of ten letters to his hypothetical Palestinian correspondent.

The Palestinian reviewer wrote his response to the ten letters from his perspective as one who has lived on the West Bank all his life.

In Jerusalem

Three years ago Melinda and I spent over three weeks in the Middle East. While in Jerusalem, we spent time at the Western Wall and at the Dome of the Rock. I lingered hours at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. I watched Kenyan Christians sing and baptize each other in the Jordan River. I walked the streets that Christian pilgrim traditions say were the streets that Christ walked. I walked the beaches of the Sea of Galilee and stood on the hill overlooking it where, according to tradition, Christ preached the Beatitudes.

I did something else, too. Before I left, a close Muslim friend urged me to seek out Muslims and to get their perspective while I was in Jerusalem.

All over the world where working people live there are barbershops where old men sit around and talk. One Sunday afternoon, I walked from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and into the Arab Quarter looking for that barbershop. In the Arab Quarter, the streets are so narrow that at some places you can reach out and touch buildings on both sides. Hawkers stand in the middle and urge you to come into their stores. Around one corner, I found one of those barbershops.

The Barbershop

As I walked into that old barbershop (it looked just like one here), I saw a man sitting in the chair, a white sheet draped over him, getting a shave. Three men sat on the edge of their chairs along the wall, waiting. They were involved in a heated discussion (about what I couldn’t tell), but when I stepped in they stopped and all stared at me.

“Can I help you?” said the barber, a straight razor in his hand.

“I’d like a shave.” I sat in a vacant chair next to the others along the wall to wait my turn.

The barber ripped the sheet off the man in front of him, shoved a towel in his chest so he could wipe the lather off of his half-shaven face, and told him to get out of the chair. The man quickly took a place along the wall.

“Come on.” The barber gestured to me and pointed to the chair.

“I’ll wait,” I said, looking around at everyone staring at me.

“No. Come. Come.”

So I sat in the barber chair. The barber wrapped a sheet around my body, then a towel below my chin and lathered me up. As he gave me a spectacular shave, we all discussed where I was from, and how they lived, and what they thought. They were intrigued that I’d just walked in off the street and they were happy to talk. The barber gave me five shaves in a row before we were finished.

The Bazaar

As I shook my new friends’ hands and wished them well, an old man sitting in a rocking chair in the store just across the narrow street began yelling at me and signaling me to come over. It surprised me, but I went to his side.

“Sit. Sit,” he said. He wanted to talk, too. He ordered his middle-aged son to go get his shopkeeper friends, and when they arrived he ordered his son to go get us coffee. Then, his son served us our coffee in china coffee cups.

We sat there for three hours, talking. It was mostly small talk about their day-to-day lives. Charlie (that was the old man’s name) was born in Chicago, but emigrated from there decades ago to live in Jerusalem because Jerusalem was his city. When he said it, his friends shook their head in agreement. They were kind and gentle, but they were determined to live in Jerusalem and no where else.

When I left them late in the afternoon, I walked alone along the streets of the old city believing I knew the people around me a little bit better. It was one of the best parts of my trip.