About Eliyahu McLean

<BODY><H1>About Eliyahu McLean</H1> <H2><A HREF="about1.html">It Takes Two Wings to Fly</A></H2> <P>Walk along Rehov HaTamid in the Jewish Quarter, overlooking the Kotel on a Friday between 12:00 and 1:30 noon. You will see the pious hurrying to pray at the Kotel. You will hear the imam in the mosque on the Temple Mount preaching to the faithful.</P> <P>And you will see a small group sitting in a circle on the ground in the open area facing the Western Wall and the Temple Mount. Maybe you'll see a Japanese Buddhist priest among them. Maybe you'll see a Sufi sheikh in the circle of Jews and non-Jews. One face you'll see there regularly is Eliyahu Charanamarit McLean.</P> <P>"<I>We gather here every Friday at this hour since the outbreak of violence in September 2000,</I>" 33-year-old McLean says. "<I>We started then with a three-day fast and prayer vigil for healing and mourning the loss of life on every side and we study the holy books of all wisdom traditions.</I></P> <P>"<I>We pray for understanding, tolerance and reconciliation between Palestinians and Israelis. Come and join us,</I>" he adds with a broad, guileless smile.</P> <P>Eliyahu McLean's background serves him well as a bridge between warring nations. His mother is a Jew from Brooklyn; his father, a Christian, the son of a Baptist priest.</P> <P>His parents, flower-children of the 1960s, met in California. They raised McLean in Sant Mat, a mystical branch of Sikhism on the Hawaiian Island, Oahu. Then, his first name was Olan, akin to the Norse god, Olaf. They gave their son the Punjabi middle name, 'Charanamarit', meaning 'the pool of nectar at the feet of the Lord'.</P> <P>"<I>I began searching for my own spiritual identity from a very early age. I could connect with the universal teachings of Sant Mat but I wanted a connection with my own heritage.</I></P> <P>"<I>I enrolled in a Japanese-language Cultural School, but I realized very soon that I was not Japanese.</I></P> <P>"<I>When I was twelve, I discovered Judaism when I went to a friend's bar mitzvah in a Reform Temple. The moment I walked into the synagogue, something resounded deep within me, and I knew I'd come home. I made every effort to learn enough Hebrew so that I, too, could be called up to read from the Torah.</I></P> <P>"<I>My mother's father, Oscar, flew in from New York for my bar mitzvah and bestowed upon me the most precious gift, my Hebrew name, Eliyahu.</I>"</P> <P>In 1987, McLean came to the one-year Young Judea Program at Beit Riklis, on the Hebrew University's Mount Scopus campus. He spent part of that year living on Kibbutz Gadot in the Galilee, and with an Israeli family on Moshav Liman.</P> <P>On his return to the University of California at Berkeley in 1988, he became involved in pro-Israel activities, the Israel Action Committee and at the same time started his bridge-building efforts on campus with the Moslem and Arab students.</P> <P>He returned to Israel in 1990 for a year at Hebrew University, but when his program was canceled because of the Gulf War in January 1991, and despite his great disillusionment at this time with secular Zionism, McLean stayed.</P> <P>He found a job with Palestinian Moslem construction workers building Jerusalem City Hall on Jaffa Road, living on the site. After his day's work, he would go to the Jewish Quarter in the Old City, a short walk away, to study with Rabbi David Aaron in the Isralite Institute, thereby deepening his spiritual search.</P> <P>That search continued when he traveled to Egypt for two months and met a West African Sufi who became his spiritual study partner. They taught each other the inner dimensions of Judaism and Islam and McLean went deeply into Islamic practice.</P> <P>However, on his return to Jerusalem, McLean found that his Egyptian sojourn and entry into Islam was but a stepping-stone in his return to and deepening commitment to Judaism.</P> <P>A turning point for him was living on Moshav Me'or Modiin where he was embraced by a community of deeply committed and colorful English-speaking immigrants.</P>  <script type="text/javascript" language="javascript1.2"> </script><script type="text/javascript"> </script><noscript><img height="1" width="1" alt="" src="http://nht-2.extreme-dm.com/n2.g?login=jpeace&pid=eliabout&j=n&jv=n"/> </noscript>  </BODY>