Bruno Hussar

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Bruno Hussar (born André Hussar; 5 May 1911 – 8 February 1996) was an Egyptian-born priest who founded Neve Shalom / Wahat al-Salam, an Arab–Jewish village near Jerusalem dedicated to peaceful coexistence.

Early life and conversion
Hussar was born in Cairo to a Jewish family with Hungarian and French roots. He studied engineering in Paris and converted to Catholicism while there. He became a French citizen in 1937. During World War II he fled Nazi-occupied France and later studied philosophy in a Grenoble seminary.

Religious work and Jewish–Catholic dialogue
He was ordained a Dominican priest on 16 July 1950, taking the name Bruno. He devoted himself to Jewish–Catholic dialogue. In Jerusalem, he helped establish the House of Isaiah in 1952, a center for ecumenical study. He also supported the St. James Association (1954), which served Jewish Catholics and Hebrew-speaking Catholics. Hussar cared for Arab Catholics in Jaffa and worked to bring Christians and Jews together through prayer and study. He helped arrange a Jewish wedding before a Catholic wedding in 1960 and contributed to Vatican II efforts that improved Jewish–Catholic relations through the Decree on Jewish-Christian relations (Decretum de Iudaeis).

Neve Shalom / Wahat al-Salam
In 1970, Hussar began planning a new interfaith project on land near the Latrun Monastery, on no-man’s land between Israel and the Palestinian territories. The idea was to create a kibbutz-like community where Jews, Christians, and Muslims could live and pray together. The village, Neve Shalom / Wahat al-Salam, opened gradually, with families arriving from 1976. It was built on principles of neutrality and dialogue, and it fostered bilingual education (Hebrew and Arabic) and peace-focused programs such as the School of Peace. The Doumia building (1983) symbolized a deep, contemplative peace.

Later life and legacy
Hussar described himself as having four identities—Christian, Jew, Israeli, and someone close to Arabs. He remained committed to Zionist ideals alongside a belief in Palestinian rights and a peaceful, inclusive future for all in the Holy Land. He sometimes retreated to the village’s quiet spaces to pray and contemplate, learning from diverse traditions, including some practices from Asia. He died in Jerusalem in 1996, and Neve Shalom continued to be seen as a rare model of Jewish–Christian–Muslim coexistence in a conflict zone.