The pursuit of peace: a personal recollection

In the first chapter of Pirkei Avot, Hillel teaches that we should be like the talmidim (pupils) of Aaron: "love peace, pursue peace; love people and bring them close to the Torah" (Avot 1:12). The oral tradition gives examples of how this can be done, examples that look simple enough in theory but which in practice are very difficult, if not almost impossible, for us to achieve (e.g. shuttling between two enemies and telling each how much the other wants to be friends).

I have only once seen anyone successfully put this precept into practice and genuinely succeed. This is what happened.

Back in the 1980s, the once-distinguished Jewish community in Sunderland had already began its terminal decline. The town's two synagogues had started to struggle with their minyanim and it was apparent that the community was no longer large and strong enough to support both.

The problem was that the two synagogues were very much in competition with one another and there was a great deal of antagonism, much of it long-standing, between them. One had a larger membership, the other a smaller but more religiously committed one. To make things more difficult, several members of each had left their respective shul following a bitter disagreement and had joined the other. The senior members of each synagogue accepted that Sunderland was now able to support just one place of worship, but the only other thing they agreed on was that it was the other shul, and not theirs, that should close.

This was the point at which Rabbi Shammai Zahn, who headed the Sunderland Yeshivah (now in Gateshead) stepped in. He was at first sight an unlikely peacemaker. Many members of the larger synagogue's board of management distrusted him since he was plainly Haredi and their membership consisted mainly of "middle-of-the-road" Jews. One said openly at a board meeting, "I'm not having that Ayatollah coming here to tell us what to do". The smaller shul with the more committed membership was however elated, convinced that R' Zahn -- who had long been sympathetic to their cause -- would somehow make sure that the other shul would close.

What happened next was quite remarkable. For getting on for half a year, R' Zahn shuttled back and forth between representatives of the warring factions. He gave his support to no-one and told no-one what to do. His principal tactic was to act as a sympathetic and patient listener to all of the concerns, real and imagined, that were articulated by the protagonists in both camps. He treated them with dignity and respect, asking them to forget the past for a while and explain what sort of future they envisaged. Eventually, it dawned on both sides that some sort of compromise would have to be reached, and at this point R' Zahn simply offered to help, in any way he could, to facilitate and implement whatever the two sides could contemplate living with.

The longed-for compromise was finally achieved. The shul with the smaller, more committed membership would be the one to go, but its members would play a highly active part in the running of the other shul. Honour was satisfied on both sides and the town was assured of a reliable minyan for several more years. R' Zahn sought no credit for his involvement but it was good to hear some very magnanimous things being said about him, behind his back, by those who a year previously would have regarded him as a hostile meddler -- including the gentleman who had previously insultingly labelled him an "Ayatollah".

I was particularly impressed with the outcome given that, when a shul disappears, its honorary officers and functionaries are left without title and status -- and that, on both sides, people with a substantial sense of their own self-importance were dangerously close to slipping into "over my dead body" mode.