In 2007, Organic Consumers Association’s political director Alexis Baden-Mayer traveled with David and Michael Bronner of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps and her then-husband, Dr. Bronner’s Social Action Director, Adam Eidinger, to Jenin, in the West Bank of Palestine, where they were graciously hosted by Dr. Nasser Abufarha, founder of Canaan, an olive oil cooperative of over 2,400 family farms across 52 villages.

Many of these farms have been in continuous production by the same families for more than 2,000 years, with olive trees that are just as old! Palestine is home to some of the world’s oldest olive trees. The most famous is the Al-Badawi tree in Al-Walaja, near Bethlehem, which is estimated to be between 3,000-5,000 years old.

The Bronners’ decision to source the olive oil for their soap from Palestine wasn’t just about supporting fair trade and regenerative organic agriculture. They wanted to take action for peace in the wartorn region. A Jenin refugee camp had been the target of a brutal Israeli attack in 2002. (If this history is unfamiliar to you, watch the documentary Jenin, Jenin.)

The idea was to demonstrate peaceful coexistence in the Holy Land by mixing Muslim, Jewish, and Christian olive oil in their soaps. They made a commitment to source 90 percent of their olive oil from Canaan, and the balance from Israel, half from a Jewish family farm and half from Sindyanna, a cooperative of Christian Palestinian farmers in Nazareth. The Bronners created a powerful short video about their partners.   

David and Michael’s peace olive oil was the perfect way to align with their granddad Emanuel “Dr.” Bronner’s mission to “Unite the whole Human Race! For we’re All-One or None! … Exceptions eternally? Absolute None!” 

Emanuel’s parents were murdered in the Holocaust and he saw clearly that, if we did not unite the human race in peace, we would perish.

As we traveled though Israel on the way to Jenin, we visited with activists involved in the vibrant Israeli-Palestinian peace movement, including people who are still active today in coalitions like the “It’s Time” which represents “over 60 peacebuilding and shared society organizations, working together with determination and courage to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a political agreement that will ensure both peoples’ right to self-determination and secure lives.”

This trip was also the first time the Bronners visited their Israeli cousins. Their shared German-Jewish great-great-grandparents, Emanuel and Louise Heilbronner, began making soap in 1858 in the basement of their house in Laupheim, Germany. Three of their sons, including Berthold—the father of Emil Heilbronner who would later be known as Dr. Bronner—expanded the family enterprise by building a much bigger soap factory in Heilbronn, a large manufacturing center an hour away from Laupheim. That factory supplied soap to public washrooms throughout Germany.

Dr. Bronner came to the U.S. in 1929 at the age of 21, before Hitler and the Nazis rose to power. His youngest sister Lotte, fled in 1936 at the age of sixteen from Nazi Germany to the Ein Gev Kibbutz in then Palestine and now Israel. His sister Luise fled to the U.S. in 1938, but their parents Berthold and Franziska stayed until it was too late and were murdered in the Holocaust, Berthold in Theresienstadt in 1942, and Franziska in Auschwitz in 1944. (When David Bronner and Adam Eidinger visited Auschwitz in 2023, they brought Arundhati, Alexis and Adam’s daughter who is Jewish like her father and also has relatives who were killed in the Holocaust–as well as relatives who escaped that fate by fleeing to Israel.)

The Heilbronner home in Laupheim, Germany, is now “The Bronner Haus & Dr. Bronner’s Museum,” a residential home for adults with special needs as well as a museum about Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps and the family’s German-Jewish soapmaking history. This project started with a chance encounter Michael Bronner had with the home’s owner in 2017. Michael was visiting Laupheim for a speaking engagement. The owner happened to attend and she was so moved upon hearing the family’s history that she offered to sell the home back to them.