My children were four and seven years old on 9/11, though they both remember that day. In shock, we wandered to the center of town, and found a spontaneous gathering at the gazebo singing peace songs. I felt helpless: singing seemed to help.
Singing together, like drumming and working with clay, stems from a primal impulse. Song soothes the fretful, the sad, the cynical, the terrified. When my children were babies, I sang lullabies to them each night, including peace songs passed down from both sides of my interfaith family: “Oseh Shalom” and “Sim Shalom” in Hebrew, but also “Dona Nobis Pacem” in Latin. (I was not making a conscious effort to be even-handed: in those long sessions in the rocking chair, I sang every scrap of music lodged in my brain, including selections from “The Music Man” and “Hair.”)
The song I now think of as the quintessential interfaith song was written in the aftermath of 9/11. Our musician friends Pat Humphries and Sandy Opatow (known together as emma’s revolution), created a healing chant: “Peace, Salaam, Shalom.” They performed it for the first time in New York City in the first large peace rally after 9/11, and 10,000 people wound through the streets of the city singing it for hours.
At my daughter’s interfaith Coming of Age ceremony last year, we were privileged to have Pat and Sandy (an interfaith couple!) lead our family and friends in singing “Peace, Salaam, Shalom.” This song, with one essential word in Arabic, has now joined the Hebrew and Latin lullabies in our interfaith family canon. The words are deeply embedded in my children, and only good can come of this.
As 9/11 recedes into history, as our memories inevitably fade, we must remember those who were lost, and our troops overseas, and all who live in fear of war and terror. But I also want to remember the way trauma brought us out into the streets to try to conjure peace. Tomorrow, I will wear my “Peace, Salaam, Shalom” shirt. If you see me, let’s sing together.
Susan Katz Miller’s book, Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family is available now in hardcover, paperback and eBook from Beacon Press.
Being Both 
i love how you write and live and sing!
your jules
Your blog is really great, and the message of this post is the best reaction to 9/11 and other acts of war and terror in the world: Peace, Salaam, Shalom.
I think it is really good that the number interfaith marriages is growing fast as you say, and I cannot think of a more hopeful way to bring peace to the world than for the interfaith community to keep growing. – Thank you.
Thanks Erwin! You have gorgeous photos of Afghanistan on your site…you have traveled in many interfaith worlds!
Sue