Not every summer camp reunion takes place at the Plaza, with actress Christine Baranski as emcee and New Yorker editor David Remnick as keynote speaker. But Seeds of Peace International Camp is not like any other camp. Set in rustic Otisfield, Maine, this camp brings together youth from the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Cyprus, the Balkans, and the United States to develop campers' conflict resolution skills.
“It gets you into your enemies’ shoes and changes how you see the world,” said alumnus Tamer Shabaneh at the reunion, officially the Seeds of Peace annual gala. Rashna Kharas, a camp alumna, added, “It’s a platform of opportunities.”
Clockwise from top right: David Remnick, Alex Remnick, Esther Fein, Gary Mayerson, and Lilli Mayerson; Anita Adelson and Leslie Adelson Lewin; Janet Wallach, center, and Barry Sonnenfeld; Darcy A. Bundy and Devon Cohen.
Most agree the key to fund-raising for Seeds of Peace is to let donors speak to campers; their presence at the gala helped the organization raise more than $1 million. However, the work is never complete. "The nature of our work is long term, and that makes it difficult for people to keep investing,” said Seeds of Peace chairman Richard Berman. Pointing out its far-ranging impact, Mr. Berman said the negotiating teams for Palestine and Israel each have a junior staffer who is a “Seed,” as alumni of the program are called.
“It’s slightly unnerving to hear your son described by someone else as your 'Seed,' but I accept it,” Mr. Remnick said of his son Noah.
Mr. Remnick — speaking on the stage of the ballroom, which was bathed in green light— joked about the limitations of his own camp experience. “At Camp Mordechai Runamok, multiculturalism meant that you ate mystery meats called the Taste of Vienna and retired to Bunk Iroquois,” he said.
Clockwise from top: Richard Berman, Dr. Livia Helmer, Francine LeFrak and Rick Friedberg; Hana Al-Henaid, Noah Remnick, and Caitlin Wachsberger; Harold Tanner and Nicki Newman Tanner.
Noah had a different experience. “When my own son came home from Seeds of Peace last summer, after just a few weeks of being in the comfort zone of his life in Manhattan, you could easily sense a subtle change in him: the new sense of questioning, the eagerness to learn from all angles, the eagerness to resolve conflict without rancor,” Mr. Remnick said.
Standing in the middle of the ballroom, surrounded by friends from camp, Noah, a high school junior, told a reporter, “I had a good historic understanding of the Middle East; this gave me a much more personal understanding." It is one he wants to share and develop. At school, he gave a lecture on Al-Qaida. He is also looking forward to a visit from his best friend from Palestine this summer.
Seeds of Peace was founded in 1993 by journalist John Wallach; when he died in 2002, his widow, Janet Wallach, filled his role. Last fall, Leslie Adelson Lewin became executive director. Lewin noted that 4,000 youth have attended the camp, and the demand for the program is great. This year, 800 youth from Afghanistan applied for a mere 10 slots, and 6,000 Israeli youth applied for 75 slots.
Rami Qubain; guests mingling in the ballroom; Christine Baranski; Mariam Bazeed. Bottom row: Sean Bradford and Frankie James Grande; Rashna Kharas and Hay Golan; Bobbie Gottschalk and Richard Levy; Jennifer Miller and Jason Feifer.
Guests at the event included “Men in Black” director Barry Sonnenfeld; MoMA chairman emeritus Robert Menschel; WNYC chairman emeritus Nicki Newman Tanner; Aaron Miller, author of “The Much Too Promised Land,” a book about his experiences in the State Department advising on the Middle East; and Mr. Miller’s daughter Jennifer Miller, a Seed and the author of “Inheriting the Holy Land,” a memoir that includes interviews with Israeli and Palestinian youth.
As guests dug into a decidedly non-summer-camp-like meal, Mr. Remnick turned his remarks to President Obama's openness to the "other," a theme he writes about in his new book, “The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama.” “The Seeds of Peace experience is an apprenticeship in civil society potentially no less powerful than the experience Obama had” as a community organizer, Mr. Remnick said.
One Seed still in high school said she would like her children to attend the Seeds of Peace camp. “Hopefully," she reflected, by the time she has teenaged children, the camp "won’t need to be around.”
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