“I’m just so excited for there to be no more war. Can you imagine that?” says Nomi Kaltmann. The Orthodox rabbi is discussing the Jewish conception of peace, which for Christians is one of the central promises of Christmas.
Peace in the Judaeo-Christian tradition is much richer than merely the absence of conflict, though that is included. The Hebrew word for peace is shalom, which is derived from shalem, completeness or wholeness. It is used in the Hebrew greeting shalom aleichem (peace be upon you), and Arabic uses an equivalent.
On the cusp of Christmas, faith and hope entwine as thoughts turn to peace.Credit: Matt Davidson
The promise of an end to war that has Kaltmann excited is a verse from the ancient Hebrew prophet Isaiah, who says: “They will beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.”
Kaltmann says: “Just a quick look around the world today, it shows how destructive war is, how lacking in peace we are in so many places. Can you imagine? It’s going to be amazing. They’re not going to need any weapons, and all the money that goes to the arms industry is going to go towards agriculture and social programs.”
In the Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament), peace is presented as the perfect state of the world when the Garden of Eden was created in Genesis, Kaltmann says. Eden was the ultimate symbol of harmony between humans, nature and God, so throughout Judaism peace is one of the core values and highest ideals.
“It’s the ideal state of the world where there is harmony, completeness, balance, and it’s also spiritual wholeness where peace is integrally tied to perfection, unity and oneness with God,” she says.
Nomi Kaltmann at her ordination as a rabbi in Riverdale, New York.Credit: Jane Halsam
Peace is a common theme throughout the Bible’s 66 books but, as Greek Orthodox theologian Philip Kariatlis observes, it is particularly relevant at Christmas because it celebrates the birth of Christ, the pre-eternal Word of God. “So we have the angelic proclamation of peace (‘glory to God and peace on earth’ in the Gospel of Luke) – Christ is the one who is our peace.”
Kaltmann – who was ordained last year as one of only half a dozen female Jewish Orthodox rabbis in Australia, and is also a mother, lawyer, writer and founder and president of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance – notes that Orthodox Jews are still awaiting the Messiah whom Christians believe has already come in the person of Jesus Christ. Isaiah’s prophecy reflects the belief in the time of the Messiah as an era of ultimate harmony, she says.
We are discussing Isaiah because I mention that one of my favourite biblical promises is a later verse by the prophet, who says of God: “You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.”
From that day to this, there has probably not been a single day when people were not subjecting other people to war, subjugation, persecution and violence. In the eighth century BC, when Isaiah wrote, the Assyrians and Egyptians were the rival powers, and 2700 years later the Middle East is still ablaze. But in this verse Isaiah is speaking of inner peace, the harmony and completeness Kaltmann speaks of which is not shattered by suffering.
The Greek Orthodox Blessing of the Waters celebration is held every year at Port Phillip Bay.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui
Kariatlis, like Kaltmann, says peace is more than the absence of discord and dissension; it is to be in harmony with oneself and with God. The Bible teaches that humanity has lost its way – “we’ve wandered from our true destiny, our true purpose. So Christ comes – and that’s the Christmas message – to reorientate us so we can find ourselves in finding him.”
Kariatlis, the sub-dean at St Andrews Greek Orthodox Theological College, says the Greek word peace comes from a root to join or bind together, so unity is at its heart, and the word for man denotes a creature that is meant to look upwards (to God).
Moral philosopher Raimond Gaita’s book Justice and Hope.
“So in the fuller sense, peace is our restoration within ourselves, our restoration with God; it’s wholeness, integrity, harmony.”
And because God is the God of peace, he says, we are called to be innately peaceful peacemakers. As Jesus says in the Beatitudes, “blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called children of God”.
Kariatlis says everything God is by nature his people are eventually to become by grace – a distinctively Orthodox emphasis, as opposed to Roman Catholic or Protestant.
“So I suppose the Orthodox religion really stresses the transformation of the person within. And when that happens, then everything else can happen.”
Although Christmas emphasises a religious understanding of peace – of God entering human society as a helpless infant, later to die on the cross and reconcile believers to himself – neither Kaltmann nor Kariatlis suggest that only religious people can have peace. To the contrary, the possibility and the desire for shalom fullness are part of being human. Moral philosopher Raimond Gaita suggests this comes through an “unconditional love of the world”.
Gaita, an author, professor emeritus and non-believer, says there is a powerful strand in philosophy dating back to Socrates, with which he does not agree, that says ideally no misfortune you or those you love could suffer could cause you to curse the day you were born. (Similarly some Eastern religious traditions hold that peace is only found in the renunciation of all desire.)
But, Gaita says, the only way one could find this inner peace amid the most terrible circumstances would be if there was sufficient detachment from the people one loves, which he finds “ethically unsavoury”.
Peace, like happiness, may be elusive yet can creep up when one is otherwise engaged. Whatever else it is, Gaita says it must be “a kind of consent to whatever one has suffered in one’s life, and not to curse the universe or one’s misfortune, not to say ‘why me?’”
Gaita’s unconditional love of the world acknowledges there is good and bad in it, but it enables one to keep loving, to keep fighting for justice, to keep accepting one’s own suffering, no matter what afflictions strike.
He argues in his latest book, Justice and Hope, that an unconditional love of the world is the deepest form of hope and the truest source of our energies to honour the demands of justice. It’s also expressed in the powerful impulse to gratitude many people feel, even for those who don’t believe in God as the giver.
Professor Louise Newman has worked for years with victims of violence and trauma, including atrocities and genocide.Credit: Penny Stephens
“An unconditional love of the world is one form of gratitude for the gift of one’s humanity. And humanity is not something given in the way that species membership is given but something that one is called upon to rise to. And that call never ends even if one went on to live for a thousand years.”
One person familiar with the quest for peace in the face of affliction is Louise Newman, consultant psychiatrist at the Albert Road Clinic, who has worked for years with victims of violence and trauma, including atrocities and genocide.
For her patients, the opposite of peace is not so much conflict as utter torment.
Newman, also professor of psychiatry at the University of Melbourne, says: “They might have a clear concept of what inner peace is, of coming to terms with disparate parts of themselves, but they can be very tormented.
“It’s the time it takes to come to terms with what they have seen, the intensity of these experiences, what meaning they can find in these events. The inner turmoil may be life-long. It’s an existential problem.”
All of this is exacerbated, Newman feels, by the fraught times in which we live, the dissolving boundaries between what is real and what is not, between facts and “alternative” facts.
“Some people can believe utterly anything, no matter how negative, and that serves for them an emotional function. We’re certainly seeing people presenting with anxiety who were previously high-functioning, educated people, and especially young people.”
Children are particularly vulnerable, Newman says, and the silence surrounding trauma of the magnitude seen in war zones is very damaging. “The effects will last generations.”
It is recurrent, intrusive memories that really damage people. People are plagued with symptoms, she says. And then the psychological work is to re-establish a sense of self and meaning and personal efficacy when things seem to have dissolved, when humanity is gone. Victims may never gain a sense of meaning, but they may find a measure of acceptance.
Another destroyer of inner peace can be a bad conscience, particularly if it is never addressed but festers away underneath. As Macbeth tells his wife, in a brilliantly evocative image in Shakespeare’s play, after killing the king, “Sleep no more! Macbeth doth murder sleep” – his guilty conscience has left him in inner turmoil.
But conscience can be restored, at least in the Christian account, by remorse, rejection of one’s failure, and recompense to the victim.
A practical guide for inner peace is found in the so-called serenity prayer: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Attributed to Lutheran theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, it can equally be expressed as non-religious principles for life.
Having opened with Isaiah from the Old Testament, it may be appropriate to close with the New – Saint Paul’s famous words to the church at Philippi: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
Barney Zwartz, a senior fellow of the Centre for Public Christianity, was religion editor of The Age from 2002 to 2013.