[PLUG-TALK] most common language spoken at home other than English or Spanish
David Mandel
dmandel at davidmandel.com
Wed Oct 20 02:50:14 UTC 2021
Rich,
It is a different world there (in the Holy Land), and the news always talks
about everything that is wrong and the violence that happens and what not -
and there certainly is room and need for improvement; but as you say most
people (Jews, Arabs, Persians, etc) understand one another and empathize
with one another and get along so much better than the media would have us
believe.
It was the same in Malaysia when I lived there in the 1970's. The country
was close to being at civil war at times, but still there really wasn't
much hate between the Malays and Chinese and Indians and others. There was
fear and misunderstanding, but relatively little hate. However, there was
always the potential that that little bit of hate or an accident by someone
could start a war which would then be fueled by the fear everyone felt.
Catholic schools (and possibly Methodist schools as well) played an
interesting role in Malaysia. At least the elite Catholic schools had
students of every faith and ethnic group including many Muslim students
from well placed Malay families. This was good. It tended to reduce fear
and promote understanding - at least among the small number of students
attending the schools. In my case, I was a Catholic teaching at a state
(and thus Muslim) university. I was treated with love and respect, and I
learned so much during those years.
Shalom,
David
On Sun, Oct 17, 2021 at 6:08 PM Rich Shepard <rshepard at appl-ecosys.com>
wrote:
> On Sun, 17 Oct 2021, David Mandel wrote:
>
> > I have been invited to Shabbat in Jewish homes a few times. I treasure
> > those events. Very meaningful. I did a pilgrimage to the Holy Land a few
> > years ago. One of the things that impressed me was just how Jewish Jesus
> > was. That doesn't always come through in our Christian teachings. It
> > should. That is also something I love about Islam. I'm not wording this
> > well, but they have preserved a lot more of what I might call early
> Jewish
> > Christian traditions than we Western Christians have. I have only been to
> > Friday prayer service in a Mosque once, but it too was quite memorable.
>
> David,
>
> Good for you! When I was in junior/senior high school in NYC I used to go
> to
> Christmas midnight mass with my Catholic friends. In return, they stayed
> home on the Jewish holidays. At Stuyvesant H.S. we used to joke that half
> the student body was Jewish, half Catholic, and the rest all other
> religions
> in the city.
>
> When I lived in Beer Sheva (and got past the cultural shock of living in a
> third-world country) I was impressed by how the folks I knew at the
> University, where I was living, and in the city at large how well Jews,
> Arabs, Persians, and others got along. And this was during the war of 1984
> with annual inflation at 800% and my grad students periodically not showing
> up for class as they were called up for military duty at the Lebonese
> border.
>
> When we set mosquito traps (or emptied them) along the Dead Sea the roads
> surrouning the kibutim or moshavim where raked daily. We had to walk to our
> traps single-file and use the same footprints on the way out. They were
> marked specially so patrolling troops knew we made those footprints and not
> someone crossing from Jordan.
>
> It's a different world there and pretty much remains the same 35 years
> later.
>
> Stay well,
>
> Rich
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