Monthly Prayer Services and Educational Workshops

Campaign Goal
To provide opportunities for individuals and organizations of diverse faiths and ethnicities to collectively engage in activities in the United States that help to create measurable and documented improvements in conditions on the ground in Palestine and Israel, thereby increasing the chances for a successful negotiated peace settlement that fairly addresses the needs and concerns of both sides in the conflict.

Background
A small group of Sharing Jerusalem and WIAMEP (Washington Interfaith Alliance for Middle East Peace) members met in February 2008 to discuss different ways to implement the campaign goal as stated above. A consensus developed to hold monthly prayer services and educational workshops at different churches, synagogues, and mosques in the Baltimore-Washington area until a final settlement is approved by a majority of the people in Israel and Palestine.

Recruiting Religious Institutions
Religious institutions will be asked to participate in the campaign by hosting a prayer service and educational workshop at their facilities, with the assistance of Sharing Jerusalem and other potential co-sponsoring organizations such as WIAMEP, local chapters of MFSA, ADC (Arab-American), AAPER (Arab-American), Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation, United Methodist Women, Pax Christi (Catholic), Love Thy Neighbor, CAIR (Muslim), Brit Zedek v Shalom, Rabbis for Human Rights North America, Muslim American Society and the Baptist, Episcopal and Lutheran Peace Fellowships. The hosting churches, synagogues, and mosques will be solicited by co-sponsoring organizations and selected based on religious and geographic diversity.

Dates and Times for the Services and Workshops
The services and workshops will be held on the second weekend of each month. This will help individuals to both plan ahead and remember the date. The hosting religious institution will determine whether to hold the event on Saturday or Sunday, but this will be posted on the SJ website well ahead of the event. Attendees will have the option of attending only the prayer service, only the educational workshop, or both the prayer service and workshop. So that attendees will know exactly when to arrive, the dates and starting times will be posted on the campaign calendar. Unless otherwise posted, the prayer services are planned to last only 30 minutes and the workshops one hour, and both are expected to start on time.

Prayer Services
Sharing Jerusalem and the co-sponsoring organizations will work together to develop a generic prayer service “template” and tailor it for each of the participating religions, i.e. Protestant, Roman Catholic, Unitarian, Jewish, Muslim, and generic. This tailored template will provide the structural outline of the service, but each religious institution will select its own prayers, liturgy, and songs for its prayer service, which should not be longer than 30 minutes.

The prayer services will reflect the different theological traditions of the hosting institutions, including the actual prayers that are offered. However, over time, as we come to understand one another better, our services and prayers may take on a more common, shared form. Because participants will not always be of the same faith as the hosting institution, everyone will be invited to join in worship as they feel comfortable. Those who might find worship together difficult can choose to attend only the educational workshop.

Educational Workshops
Each participating religious institution will hold an educational workshop after the prayer service. The workshop itself should not exceed one hour, but it can also include an optional 30-45 minute DVD. Optional activities that are planned for a workshop will be noted on the campaign calendar for the event. Each workshop will concentrate on a specific current condition on the ground in Israel or Palestine (such as the siege of Gaza, rockets fired from Gaza into Israel, West Bank checkpoints, the growing security barrier/wall inside the West Bank, settlement expansion inside East Jerusalem, etc.) and describe how it is undermining the peace process and diminishing the chances that a negotiated settlement will be successful.

Sharing Jerusalem and its co-sponsors will come up with a tentative schedule of the specific conditions to be discussed each month, which will be posted on the web site. They will help each sponsoring religious institution to research current “facts” on the ground from various websites, newsletters, articles, etc. They will also recommend specific DVDs relevant to the condition selected by the sponsoring religious institution. These DVDs are meant to provide overall background and context for each selected condition and not necessarily to serve as documentation for the current conditions on the ground. Specific proposed advocacy activity may also be discussed and agreed to at the end of each workshop.

Optionally, food, music, and arts might also be incorporated into the workshop, depending on the preference of each sponsoring religious institution. If so, the optional activities and expected time will be noted on the campaign calendar for the event. Sharing Jerusalem and other co-sponsors will be encouraged to provide technical assistance and suggestions for these events, as well as financial support, if needed.

Support for Parallel Services/Workshops
In addition to the calendar of scheduled workshops and specific condition to be discussed each month, Sharing Jerusalem will provide on its website the prayer service templates and the background information, books, DVDs, research, links, etc. for each of the conditions on the ground.

The goal is to make it easy for additional religious organizations to hold similar services on the same weekend in solidarity with our goal of supporting the peace process. These additional religious organizations might be in other regions of the country or world, in other areas of this region (for example, in both a suburban Maryland and northern Virginia church on the same Saturday), or in different faith traditions (for example, a Jewish synagogue might want to hold a Sunday event on the same weekend that a Christian church holds a Saturday event, or Muslim mosque might want to hold a Saturday event on the same weekend that a Jewish synagogue holds a Sunday event).

Publicity
Sharing Jerusalem and the co-sponsoring organizations will provide the metro-wide publicity for each monthly event via email, our respective websites, flyers, etc. However, the religious institutions hosting each event will also be responsible for publicizing the prayer service and workshop to their congregations and nearby religious institutions. Media may be contacted to cover these events.

Planning and Coordinating Committees
The following committees will help plan, coordinate, and implement the campaign activities.

1. Steering Committee – overall program coordination and planning (each co-sponsor)
2. Worship Service Committee – help plan and coordinate different worship services
3. Educational Workshop Committee – help plan and coordinate different workshops
4. Publicity Committee – help plan and coordinate publicity for each workshop

Rev. Monroe Wright, Sharing Jerusalem’s Facilitator, will provide staff support to each committee as time permits.