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Since mid-September, tensions in Jerusalem have spread due to disagreements
over access to places sacred to Muslims, Christians and Jews. At least 55
Palestinians have died in clashes with Israeli authorities responding to
attacks, often by knife-wielding assailants, that killed 11 Israelis.
While unrest percolates within the nation of Israel and violence mounts
throughout the Middle East, educators in six Hand in Hand schools in Israel
teach Muslim, Jewish and Christian students to respect and dialogue with each
other.
One of those schools is located in the port city of Jaffa (or Joppa) just
three miles south of Tel Aviv, where people of different faiths sometimes live
as neighbors in integrated apartment buildings. But the idea of educating their
children together is still novel in a nation that routinely segregates groups
according to their differences.
The Jaffa school has 170 pupils, about half Arab and half Jewish. Classes
are taught in Arabic and Hebrew, languages all students are expected to learn.
"It's fun to know other languages because then you can speak with all
kinds of people!" 5-year-old Ofri Druckman enthusiastically declared as
two of her friends, one Arab and one Jewish, nodded appreciatively.
All holidays important to Judaism, Islam and Christianity are noted in
class. Nor do teachers avoid difficult dates such as Israeli Independence Day
and "Nakba" Day (when Palestinians mourn the birth of the nation of
Israel).
Rebecca Bardach, Hand in Hand director of resource development and strategy,
and parent of two children enrolled in the Hand in Hand school, vividly
remembers a day about four years ago when she saw a 4-year-old boy at a daycare
pretending to shoot a gun. When his mother came to pick him up, he cried out,
"Mommy, I killed Arabs." Aware that children on all sides of conflict
act out scenarios like this, Bardach was more grieved by the fact that the
child's mother was so concerned about being late that she didn't even respond
to his imagining the killing of other human beings.
Jewish photographer Dafna Kaplan said she heard her daughter, who attends a
different school in Jaffa, call Palestinians "dirty Arabs" for the
first time after the recent acts of violence in Israel. Kaplan described Hand
in Hand as "the only sane place," which could only exist as people
accept it as "a mission," as something "you have to create
[because] it won't happen by itself."
"What is glaringly evident throughout the school is the strong desire
to learn from one another, a commitment to tolerance and a sense of urgency to
coexist," wrote Jewish-American educator and Hand in Hand volunteer Miri
Wexler. "The students ... are not scared of differences; rather they
approach 'the other' with curiosity and admiration."
Arab engineer Hani Chamy, who sent her two girls to the Hand in Hand
preschool, said the schools prove that students of different backgrounds can
"be together, while still different, and learn about each other."
More on this story can be found at these links:
The Big Questions
1. The Free Dictionary defines to coexist as "1) To exist
together, at the same time, or in the same place. 2) To live in peace with
another or others despite differences, especially as a matter of policy: 'I've
been wrestling with the dilemma of how you coexist with those you hate' (Ariel
Dorfman)." When have you found peaceful coexistence with someone or
others particularly difficult? What factors made coexistence hard to achieve?
How did you handle the stress of the situation? Can you coexist with those who
hate you? If so, how do you do that? If not, what options do you have?
2. Respond to these questions from Rebecca Bardach, parent of two Hand in
Hand students: "Are we the chosen people? To me the question is: Are we a
choosing people? At every point along the way, we can choose what kind of
society this is, what kind of people we are, which traditions we will espouse,
debate or reject." What is the difference between being a "chosen
people" and being "a choosing people"? What might be positive or
negative aspects of viewing yourselves as "chosen"? as
"choosing"? Can one be both? If a small group believes it can
"choose" on behalf of the entire society, is that necessarily
arrogant?
3. Were you ever welcomed as a stranger or included in spite of your
differences? How did it affect you and others involved? When have you included
a stranger in an attempt to find out more about him or her? Describe the
experience and the outcome.
4. Respond to another set of questions from Bardach: "Today's students
become tomorrow's citizens. What happens when children grow up rooted only in
their community, and without any opportunity to interact with others, to be
challenged by and appreciative of diversity, to learn about or learn from
others? What kind of socializing influence and values do we want for our
children? What kind of person[s] and what kind of citizen[s] do we want our
children to become?"
5. Have you ever been involved in an experience in which a group of
disparate individuals were required to work through their differences together
to accomplish a task? What was challenging about the experience? What was
rewarding?
Confronting the News With Scripture and Hope
Here are some Bible verses to guide your discussion:
John 4:7-10
A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, "Give me
a drink." (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan
woman said to him, "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman
of Samaria?" (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) Jesus
answered her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying
to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given
you living water." (For context, read 4:3-42.)
Jesus' encounter with this woman highlights God's desire to invite the
sinner and the outcast to share in God's salvation. Most Jews would have
avoided Samaritans in general, and most Jewish men would have avoided the woman
in particular, because of her gender, her "colorful" past (she had
had five husbands, not counting the man she was living with at the time), her
ethnicity, and her religion, which they considered an impure mishmash of their
own faith with idolatrous practices of other belief systems. But Jesus
deliberately traveled through Samaria (v. 4), and while there, he had the
audacity to ask to share her cup before offering himself as living water to
quench her spiritual thirst.
Questions: How often do you share things in common with
people who are radically different from you? What barriers stand in the way of
that kind of sharing for you? How did Jesus go about dismantling barriers
between himself and the Samaritan woman, and what was the result?
Galatians 3:26-29
… for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of
you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is
no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer
male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to
Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise.
(For context, read 3:23-29.)
Paul's letter to the churches in Galatia deals with the problem of Jewish
believers who were advocating a two-tiered hierarchy within the church that put
those who followed Jewish laws in a higher class than Gentiles who did not. In
no uncertain terms, Paul rejects that philosophy, arguing that we are not saved
by our own works, but only through faith in Christ. Therefore, no one has
higher status or worth than anyone else in the kingdom of God.
Questions: If Paul were writing a letter to Christians
today, what other groups do you think he might add to the statement "There
is no longer Jew or Greek … slave or free … male or female"? Does that
mean that human diversity disappears, or something else?
Besides defining what we are not, how does Paul describe who we are
in this passage? Who does Paul include among the "children of God"?
Is anyone still excluded? Why or why not? What is meant by the statement that
"the ground is level at the foot of the cross"?
Acts 10:15-17
The voice said to him again, a second time, "What God has made clean,
you must not call profane." This happened three times, and the thing was
suddenly taken up to heaven. Now while Peter was greatly puzzled about what to
make of the vision that he had seen, suddenly the men sent by Cornelius
appeared. (For context, read 10:1-48.)
In this passage, Peter is praying around lunchtime on a rooftop in Joppa, the
very same city featured in our news story today, when he falls into a trance.
In a vision, he sees all sorts of animals being lowered down from heaven in a
sheet, and he hears a voice telling him to kill and eat one of them. When he
objects that he has never eaten prohibited foods, the voice declares that God's
cleansing removes the "banned" label.
The vision occurs three times, as if to emphasize the importance of the
message, but then the sheet is taken up to heaven, as if to indicate that the
message is about more than dietary restrictions. At that moment, messengers
from a Roman centurion show up, and Peter begins to connect the dots.
Even though the visitors are Gentiles with whom it was unlawful for Jews to
associate (vv. 28-29), Peter not only speaks to them but gives them lodging (v.
23) and accompanies them to the house of Cornelius, where he preaches this
message of inclusion: "... God shows no partiality, but in every nation
anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him, … Jesus
Christ … is Lord of all, [and] everyone who believes in him receives
forgiveness of sins through his name" (vv. 34-36, 43).
Questions: When is the last time you were surprised or
puzzled by something God revealed? What was God trying to teach you?
Matthew 5:9, 43-45
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. … You
have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your
enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute
you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun
rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the
unrighteous. (For context, read 5:1- 12, 43-48.)
In these verses from the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus lays out the nature of
those who are God's children.
Questions: Why do you think those who make peace will be
called children of God? Who gives peacemakers that name? Why are the acts of
loving your enemies and praying for those who persecute you markers of the
children of God?
What is the relationship between "tough love" and peacemaking? Is
it possible to be a peacemaker while at the same time exercising "tough
love"? Why or why not?
John 1:9, 12
The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. … But
to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become
children of God …. (For context, read 1:9-13.)
These verses from John's introduction to his gospel describe the incarnation
of Jesus, when God became human and dwelt among us as Emmanuel, God with us. He
is depicted as light that shines on everyone; as the sun when it dawns does not
provide light only for certain people of a particular race or gender or status
in the world, so Jesus does not hide his light from the rich or the poor, from
the powerful or the weak. He enlightens everyone. In the context we
also see him rejected, yet to all who receive him, who believe in his
name, he gives power to become children of God.
In the preceding passage, we read that peacemakers will be called children
of God and that those who love their enemies and pray for their persecutors
will be children of God. Here, to those who receive Jesus and believe
in his name, he gives power to become children of God.
Questions: What is involved in becoming God's
children? How do people in the world recognize those who are truly the children
of God, who bear God's likeness in everything they say and do?
For Further Discussion
1. Read the lyrics or listen to the song "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught" from the
musical South Pacific. Is hatred primarily inborn, or introduced from
one's environment? Comment on this from TWW writer Joanna Loucky-Ramsey:
"Attitudes of children are certainly influenced by authority figures and
peers as well as by blatant or subtle subtexts in messages from educators,
government agencies, marketers, purveyors of popular culture and beliefs, and
others." How can the church assist parents who want to "train up a
child in the way he should go"?
2. Ashutosh Varshney, in his 2002 book Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life:
Hindus and Muslims in India, reported that ethnic violence between Muslims
and Hindus was largely restricted to certain cities where groups were
segregated and lacking in common experience and goals. Such violence rarely
happened in the smaller villages where people of different religions and ethnic
backgrounds lived close enough together to get to know each other well as neighbors.
In other words, when disparate people belonged to the same
associations, unions, book clubs, athletic clubs, businesses and organizations,
sharing common interests and goals, violence did not generally break out.
With further study, Varshney discovered that this
phenomenon held true in the former Yugoslavia, Ireland and the United States.
When people belong to the same organizations and share daily associations they
generally will ignore provocations, finding a way to get along, even with
tremendous differences.
In light of these findings, consider the following
questions:
a) Why do you think some prominent people in government and media suggest we
should be in a state of war, or at least be wary and suspicious of those we see
as different from us?
b) What associations do you have in common with people who are substantially
different from you?
c) Must associations only be among Christians, or does Christ call us to cross
all boundaries and barriers?
d) How might church members go about building deep and intentional
relationships with others who are quite different from ourselves?
e) When and where have you seen peace preserved because people with significant
differences worked together to find and build common ground?
f) What is the role of the church in such endeavors?
Responding to the News
What can you do as an individual to begin to share things in common with
people who are substantially different from you? What can your group or church
do to connect more meaningfully with people who don't look like you? Why might
you want to do this?
Closing Prayer
Father God, help us to open our hearts to you and to others with the
generosity and guilelessness of children, so that we may see people as you see
them, love them with enthusiasm, and welcome them without reservation, as you
have welcomed us. For the sake of Christ and by the power of the Spirit at work
within and among us. Amen.
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