Thursday, 18 June 2009

• Currently The Faith Club: A Muslim, A Christian, A Jew-- Three Women Search for Understanding By Ranya Idliby, Suzanne Oliver, Priscilla Warner see related

  Segregation...not just about race

  This is a subject that has been on my mind for a while now, but I wasn't actually inspired to write about it until today. And maybe there's a small chance I'll get flamed for this...but I'm not too concerned about that at the moment because this is a topic that needs to be addressed.

  I may be semi-known as an avid participant on Revelife but I was raised -- and, regardless of what anyone says, I am forever in my heart always -- Jewish. Throughout my upbringing I remember hearing phrases like "Jews can never go to church, only Christians do that," or "Jews can't have anything to do with Jesus, he's for Christians, not for Jews" and other such anecdotes. While I understand that logic, the result is problematic...rather than teaching a lesson on what Judaism is supposed to be, it creates a sense of alienation and segregation that results in ignorance and intolerance more than anything else.

  If Jews weren't allowed to read the New Testament, how would they be able to understand that Jesus was a man of peace and not someone who advocates violence in his name? If Christians weren't allowed to read the Torah, how could they understand why it's important to keep kosher and not do any work on the Sabbath? And if non-Muslims weren't allowed to read the Quran, how would we know that the perpetrators of 9/11 grossly misinterpreted their own text, making them think it's okay to crash airplanes into buildings that would ruin the lives of thousands of people? How can anyone expect world peace to come about any time soon if we all have these secret prejudices against reading other faiths' holy books, for the sole purpose of understanding why it is they believe what they do? Education is not wrong, people.

  As far as "traditional" Jewish upbringings are concerned, mine was fairly liberal and slightly untraditional. I missed several Sunday and Hebrew classes so I could participate in rehearsals for my town's annual Christmas pagaent (I was an angel but I always wanted to be Mary!). The first synagogue I remember going to was a church, which I was later Bat Mitzvahed in, much to the surprise of some of my Orthodox friends. I went to see The Passion of the Christ with my friend's church and participated in other interfaith activites that, for the most part, really broadened my spiritual horizon and helped clear up several misconceptions I had about the Christian faith. It wasn't until my senior year of high school that I picked up a copy of the New Testament and even then I felt strange about it, as if the imaginary Jew Police was going to sneak up on me and confiscate it, because it "wasn't my book."

  There is never going to be any peace without understanding, and understanding won't come unless people are willing to step out of their spiritual comfort zones and do some research to understand other people's religions. Otherwise, ignorance prevails, and we are not doing ourselves any favors by staying sheltered. Christians and Jews especially need to make more of an effort to understand each other, seeing how Christianity was born from Judaism, and no two religions are linked as closely as those two have been throughout history. In fact, Jesus never intended to create two separate religions...but I never would have known that if I had never bothered to read the "forbidden book" known as the New Testament. And I'm better off for having done so

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