Ottawa Citizen
May 31, 2004 Monday Final Edition
Montreal school bombing sparks inter-faith concert for peace:
Synagogue chooses to ‘do something practical’;
will raise money for books
by Bob Harvey
Ottawa faith groups hope to sow a little more peace in the world.
On Sunday at 7 p.m., Jews, Mormons, Roman Catholics, Armenian
Christians, Hindus and Muslims will join in a Concert for Peace at
the Beth Shalom Synagogue on Chapel Street.
Daniel Benlolo, the cantor at Beth Shalom, and the event’s
co-chairman, said that after the fire-bombing of Montreal’s United
Talmud Torah School on April 5, “we decided we wanted to do something
practical.”
Some of the money raised by the concert will go toward buying books
to replace those destroyed in the school library, and the rest will
be doled out by the participating groups to any project that might
help make peace.
Mr. Benlolo said “people think all Jews and all Arabs are the same,
and we’re trying to prove otherwise. We hope people will stop and say
there are some good people in the world.”
A note found at the scene of the fire-bombing linked it to Israel’s
killing of the founder of Hamas, a Palestinian resistance movement.
Mr. Benlolo said that when he met Palestinians, he sang his songs,
and the Palestinians sang theirs. “That way, camaraderie was
established.”
He said it is not just the Middle East that faces conflict today.
“We’ve learned that there is terrorism in cities all over the world.”
Mr. Benlolo said the concert will be strictly entertainment and “is
not going to make a huge difference in the world, but it is
definitely going to make a difference to some people, and these
people are going to be speaking about it to other people.”
The choirs, the musicians and the synagogue are waiving any payment,
and even the synagogue’s custodian is working for free.
Tickets for the peace concert and the dessert reception that follows
are $10. The synagogue’s auditorium has 740 seats, and there are only
125 seats still left. But Mr. Benlolo says that, if necessary, he
will open the doors to the synagogue and provide more seats.
Tickets can be obtained from the participating groups: the Jewish
community at 789-3501; the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints, 832-0101; the Roman Catholic Cathedral at 241-7496; the
Diocese of the Armenian Church of Canada, at 224-8117; the Hindu
Temple at 822-1531; and the Ottawa Muslim Association, 722-8763.