Tags

I embarked on my first Ultimate Peace experience last weekend. This has been an organization with which I’ve been infatuated with since I heard about its launch in 2009. Middle Eastern conflict resolution was a smattering of oversimplified, idealistic theories I’d studied from a safe and privileged seat in an American classroom; and I’d heard that UP’s founders were some of the greatest athletes that the sport has known. So I would scroll through their website and talk about their work in the same star-struck way that a kid might keep baseball cards on his dresser, thumbing through them on occasion before tottering off to little league. Five years down the road, I find myself elbow deep in the political knots and cultural complexities of Israel. I’m sitting alongside the heroes themselves who are welcoming their new family members and toasting to a successful first hat tournament of 2014.