Our Reading Group focuses on Pendle Hill pamphlets and other Quaker readings, gathering to consider queries about the reading in a spirit of worship sharing.

Following up on Pendle Hill’s 2024 Quaker Institute, which includes a focus on Quakers discerning together faithful responses on US policy, Zionism, and Palestinian rights, we will be reading our pamphlet, Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions? A Quaker Zionist Rethinks Palestinian Rights (PHP #445) by Steve Chase. This pamphlet, written in 2017, explores the author’s discernment journey from being a well-meaning, but ill-informed Zionist to someone who began listening to the voices of Jewish and Israeli dissidents, as well as the voices of nonviolent Palestinian resisters to the US-backed Israeli system of military occupation and apartheid.

It also explores how he came to support the international nonviolent Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement to move towards full equality and human rights for all Israel/Palestine. The discernment journey and rethinking described in this pamphlet offers some context and useful background for understanding and acting on the current crisis, and it was foundational to the author’s November 2, 2023 Friends Journal article “Speaking Up for Palestinian Rights Now.” You can also watch Steve’s First Monday Night Lecture on this topic to learn more.

You can purchase a copy of this publication at the following links:

PH pamphlet (printed edition)
Amazon Kindle (e-book)
Barnes & Noble Nook (e-book)

Thanks to the generous support of the Friends Foundation for the Aging, we’re able to make this and other free, online programs accessible to f/Friends of all ages.

Leader

Frances Kreimer (she/they) is a queer Jewish educator and the Education Director of Pendle Hill. A member of Jewish Voice for Peace, she previously taught and directed Villanova University Law School’s Clinic for Asylum, Refugee, and Emigrant Services, focusing on mental health, trauma healing, and movement lawyering. She is drawn to Pendle Hill’s experiment in spiritual learning community as a space to imagine the world we are building together.

Steve Chase is a long-time Quaker activist, educator, and writer living in Washington, DC. A member of Friends Meeting of Washington and the Quaker Palestine Israel Network, he is the author of the Pendle Hill pamphlet Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions? A Quaker Zionist Rethinks Palestinian Rights (PHP #445). He is currently working on a book entitled Seeking Justice in the Holy Land: The Quaker Struggle for Moral Clarity on Israel/Palestine, and he has been selected as Pendle Hill’s 2024 Henry Cadbury Scholar to support his archival research. He visited Israel/Palestine in June 2023 as part of an annual Quaker service-learning delegation sponsored by Friends United Meeting.