I met the rabbi in an Indian restaurant in north London. We took a short walk to the Wembley mosque, where our Muslim hosts and a clutch of Christians watched quizzically as the rabbi led Jews in Sabbath prayers amid the accoutrements of a Muslim place of worship. Then the meeting began.
People from three faiths had gathered to discuss the holiness of water and how to use their shared concern for the elixir of life to rehabilitate a Middle Eastern river reduced to a trickle of sewage effluent. That pathetic, putrid trickle, hidden behind military cordons, is what remains of the River Jordan, a river that has watered civilisations for 10,000 years, has been the scene of countless baptisms, was once the lifeblood of Palestine, and is sacred to half of humanity – Christians, Jews and Muslims alike.
As we met in early April, the news media was reporting the near-collapse of peace talks between Israel and Palestine. The assembly wondered if ecological concerns about the river might help to break the political deadlock and result in the release of water into the Jordan Valley once more. Could hydrology and spirituality succeed where politics failed?
Faith lab
The meeting was instigated by two north London leaders: Frank Dabba Smith, the voluble American rabbi who heads the Harrow and Wembley Progressive Synagogue, who said "the water professionals can lead the way to peace in the Middle East", and Shahab Hussein, the urbane secretary-general of the Wembley mosque, who said that Sharia law was originally a water law, including the idea that "you can't refuse to give water, especially to a traveller".
Yet water's spirituality has not stopped the River Jordan becoming a hostage to conflict, or its baptismal waters turning to sewage.
The unlikely pair had met while giving talks about their respective communities at a nearby London police station. From trying to bring together traditionally hostile communities in north London, they now had a far wider agenda: peace in the Middle East itself. And they told the meeting that the key, on the River Jordan, as in north London, lay in inter-faith meetings where science, politics and shared spirituality could come together. It was an experiment. A faith lab, if you will.
Coming together
For many, religion seems to be the cause of conflicts around the world. For Smith and Hussein, it may be the key to defusing them.
The first Wembley inter-faith meeting to discuss the River Jordan took place two years ago, and has since been repeated among communities in New York. Recently the pair travelled together to the Middle East, where they linked up with another remarkable body pushing the dream of ecological peace in the Jordan Valley: Friends of the Earth Middle East, whose leaders also joined them at the Wembley event.
FoEME has offices in Tel Aviv in Israel, Bethlehem in the West Bank and Amman in Jordan. The organisation, which is 20 years old this year, is drawing up three national plans – Palestinian, Jordanian and Israeli – for managing the river Jordan. It hopes governments will adopt and then merge the plans.
River's end
Rising in Lebanon and Syria, the sacred river passes through the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel and the Palestinian territories bordering Jordan before running into the Dead Sea. Or it did. Since the 1960s, its waters have been captured – especially by Israel, which takes the contents of the Sea of Galilee to fill its giant National Water Carrier and supplies most of Israel and many of its settlements on the Palestinian West Bank. Nothing now passes downstream from there.
FoEME's Bethlehem boss, water engineer Nader Al-Khateeb, told the meeting that with the Jordan's flow piped to Israel, and Israeli soldiers in charge of wells on the West Bank, an average Palestinian gets 70 litres of water a day, while an average Israeli gets 300 litres. The country of Jordan sees none of the river that bears its name. And the Dead Sea is dying.
But all must share responsibility, says Munqeth Mehyar, a planning engineer and FoEME's Jordanian director. "Yes, Israel took a lot, but Syria dammed the Yarmouk, a tributary, and Jordan has blocked side wadis," he says. "We want to get away from the blame game."
Cup runneth over
The Wembley meeting agreed that there may now be a moment for reviving the forgotten river. A decade ago, Israel began desalinating sea water. It also now recycles most of its urban sewage to irrigate crops. Suddenly Israel has more than enough water, even in the current drought, says Tony Allan of Kings College London, an advisor to FoEME.
Last year, Israel agreed to put a regular dose of treated sewage back into the river. It was only effluent and only the equivalent of about 1.5 per cent of its former flow. "We hope they will deliver more in future. Our rehabilitation plan needs 400 million cubic metres a year," says Gidon Bromberg, FoEME's co-founder and Israel director. That's one-third of the former flow. Half of that should be from Israel and the rest from Syria and Jordan. If all contribute, all can share the benefits of a revived river. But it is more than that, says Bromberg. "If we get it right on water, then we can get it right on refugees and Jerusalem and the settlements and the rest."
US-chaired peace talks aimed at reconciling Israelis and Palestinians ran into trouble in recent weeks and finally foundered on 24 April. A new approach is now needed – something that starts from small beginnings rather than grand diplomacy. Something practical, but meaningful. Something, says Smith, like bringing back the River Jordan.