3 steps to build peace and create meaningful change

As she does in her talk, Bennett reveals the unlikely story of how sworn enemies — Syrians and Israelis — were able to rise above politics, mutual suspicion and hatred to form improbable but impactful partnerships to alleviate the terrible suffering of Syrian war victims. Part memoire, part reportage, part policy analysis, this book places the Syrian war and one activist’s response in the context of changing alignments in the Middle East. Driven by her own background as a child of the Holocaust and a refugee, Bennett shows how she applied lessons learned from Northern Ireland and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the war in Syria. She documents the obstacles she encountered and the steps she took to save lives and build bridges between communities. This suspenseful page-turner of a book is an inspiring tale of how one person can catalyze an effective response to crisis in the face of overwhelming odds.

Coauthors and activists Georgette Bennett and Jerry White give a name to this insidious strand of violence and propose a global initiative and set of policies to identify it, respond to it and prevent it. “We call it religicide,” Bennett and White declare, revealing how the systematic attempt to eradicate a religion and its followers goes far beyond genocide. “Absent a name, and absent appropriate laws and methods for dealing with religicide, it continues unabated, unrecognized, and unprosecuted.” Their book sets out to change that. As the authors make clear, religicide has deep historical antecedents — including the Spanish Inquisition and the Holocaust — as well as an evil kinship with human rights atrocities such as the Armenian genocide, the ethnic cleansing campaign in Bosnia, the massive slaughter of Tutsis in Rwanda and our own country’s centuries-long efforts to wipe out Indigenous Americans. It also has a clear pattern and early warning signs that are evident in the ongoing religicides against the Uyghurs and Tibetan Buddhists in China, Rohingya in Myanmar and Yazidis in Iraq.

This biography of Bennett’s late husband, Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum, relates the history-making career of the man who inspired her groundbreaking work on behalf of refugees, interreligious relations and conflict resolution. In his time, Rabbi Tanenbaum was ranked one of the ten most respected and influential religion leaders in the U.S. From humble beginnings in Baltimore, Rabbi Tanenbaum emerges as a towering figure in the Civil Rights Movement, Vatican Council II and human rights activism. But this is also a deeply personal story of a great love that was tragically cut short.

In this book, Bennett makes counterintuitive predictions about crime that have largely held up all these years later. Based on extensive research and her own groundbreaking career as a criminologist, she argues that crimes are defined relative to the climate of the time. The author terms each major displacement in present patterns a “crimewarp.” Her predictions are organized around six crimewarps which represent major social transformations. She also examines the link between religion and violence, which is so relevant to the hate crimes that dominate the today’s headlines and on which she focused later in her career.

Georgette founded the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding to build on the work of her late husband, Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum, a world-renowned human rights activist. The organization that bears his name is now the go-to organization to combat religious prejudice and the misuse of religion for violence. Unlike many organizations working in this space, Tanenbaum focuses not on dialogue, but on practical solutions to conflict and misunderstanding. Tanenbaum’s education programs have been designated an international best practice and its Peacemakers in Action program has advanced the field of religion and conflict resolution through its case study method and international network. Tanenbaum’s healthcare programs have pioneered the religious dimension of patient-centered care. Dozens of major corporations have worked with Tanenbaum on its pioneering religious diversity in the workplace programs.

The work of the Multifaith Alliance for Syrian Refugees, which Bennett founded in 2013, is the core of her TED talk. Made up of more than 100 partner organizations, MFA has delivered more than $260 million worth of aid, benefitting three million Syrian war victims. Headquartered in New York City, MFA has an office in Raqqa — the former ISIS stronghold — where it also runs a medical clinic that has served more than 40,000 patients in the last year alone. Among a number of cutting-edge efforts, MFA is bringing advanced technology to water-parched parts of Syria.

Georgette Bennett’s personal website, where you can learn more about her extensive career as a change agent and activist and hear some of her key talks and interviews.