Religious Education: The official journal of the

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Glimpsing God on the Rocky Road of Culture Deborah Court

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Bar-Ilan University , Ramat-Gan, Israel Published online: 07 May 2007.

To cite this article: Deborah Court (2007) Glimpsing God on the Rocky Road of Culture, Religious Education: The official journal of the Religious Education Association, 102:2, 116-119, DOI: 10.1080/00344080701285204 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00344080701285204

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GLIMPSING GOD ON THE ROCKY ROAD OF CULTURE


Deborah Court Bar-Ilan University Ramat-Gan, Israel

Culture connects us seamlessly with those who share our cultural backgrounds and divides us in often inexplicable ways from those who do not. Our native culture is known largely at a tacit level, its values, assumptions, and beliefs so much a part of us that we live them but do not see them. A cross-cultural experience can sometimes change this, bringing culture into relief. I grew up in Canada, where life seemed straightforward, the land was huge and the bureaucratic systems orderly. I was part of the mainstream, speaking good English, sailing through my studies and into the world of education, reflecting little on Canadian culture, because I was the culture, and the culture was me. Experiences I had with people from others cultures were always mediated through this comfortable, non-reflective Canadianness. Eleven years ago my husband and I followed our only daughter and moved to Israel, a place to which, as Jews, we already had a strong connection. Being thrust into the multicultural, multireligious social fabric of Israel, fabric woven from riotous, boisterous, living colors, and being for the first time not tourists in some exotic clime but residents, was a shock indeed. Hearing Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, French, Amharic, and English spoken daily on the street, dealing with shouting (in anger, happiness, and general greeting), vivid body language, reduced personal space, and an often disorganized (or perhaps it is simply differently organized) approach to business and administration, have made for a stressful integration process. And yet, being thrust out of comfortable Canadianness has had its benefits. To illustrate this I would like to relate two personal vignettes. VIGNETTE ONE More than the threat of war, terrorist attacks that target the innocent shake the fabric of Israeli society. The suicide bomber looks just like the million upstanding Moslem citizens who vote, shop, work, Religious Education Vol. 102 No. 2 Spring 2007

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and converse with Israeli Jews and Christians. A terrorist attack sends shock waves through the bonds of trust that tie together diverse segments of the Israeli population. How can people know whom to trust? How can people thrive if they are not trusted? The constant awareness of terrorism leads many Israelis both to move in public places with heightened alertness and suspicion, and to make extra effort in daily interactions to know one another. The students in my university classes are religious and secular Jews, Moslems, Christians, Bedouin, and Druze. Each with our own traditions, we form an eclectic mix of Israelis who try to meet on common academic ground. One of the strongest connections I have made is with a Druze woman who was a student in one of my Master’s classes. She was working toward a non-thesis Master’s degree, and one afternoon during a class discussion I became dazzlingly aware of her brilliance and spirit, recommended that she switch to the thesis track, and became her thesis advisor on that same day. Today she has almost finished her doctoral dissertation, our faculty’s first Druze doctoral candidate, doing important research into the Druze community. She became my partner in a study I did at the mixed Druze, Moslem, and Christian school where she taught, translating for me from Arabic to Hebrew and helping me to understand the cultural nuances of things I observed. We have become friends and colleagues connected at a spiritual as well as an intellectual level. There we were, a Jewish Canadian and a Druze Israeli, discussing her research on the phone one morning. The conversation drifted to that day when we began working together and all that had happened since through our collaboration. Suddenly an almost physical spark jumped between us, across the wires and across culture and religion; it seemed to both of us that it was a small spark from Heaven, and that our paths had been made to cross by the hand of God.

VIGNETTE TWO A few days before Rosh Hashana I took my car to the garage to get the air conditioning fixed. One cannot survive in a Middle Eastern traffic jam without air conditioning. A North American immigrant in Israel always approaches events like this with a bit of dread. Will they understand what the problem is? Will I understand what they tell me?


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Will the mechanic shout at me if I don’t? Will they do a meticulous job, or will it be slapdash? Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, is called the Day of Judgment, the day on which God judges each individual and decides whether to write his or her name in the Book of Life for another year. One cannot expect mercy from God if there is unresolved anger or misunderstanding with other people. One of the activities in the days before Rosh Hashana is to approach those one has wronged and ask forgiveness. The mechanic fixed my air conditioner, a simple fuse replacement. I drove away and before I reached the main road it shorted out again. I returned, he replaced the fuse again, pronounced it a coincidence and sent me on my way. It happened again. After the third time, anger and frustration erupted; I did a screeching U-turn and roared back into the garage, coming to a halt just inches from the feet of the mechanic. “What’s the matter with you?” I shouted. “Didn’t you think of taking the car for a drive? The air conditioner stops every time the car moves!” The secretary came rushing out and offered me tea. I shouted at her. The boss came out and asked me to wait in the waiting room while they replaced the fuse again. I shouted at him and refused to move until the mechanic replaced the fuse and then drove the car. When he did this he immediately discovered some simple thing, a wire touching another, and fixed the problem once and for all. He was sheepish and apologetic. I apologized to him for my impatience, we shook hands and I drove away. Once I got home I felt terrible about shouting at the secretary and the boss. I phoned the garage and the secretary answered. “Please forgive me,” I said. “I had no right to shout at you. It’s almost the Day of Judgment and I can’t expect God to forgive me if I treat other people that way. Please tell the boss, too. Ask him to forgive me.” “Dvora,” she said with warmth and instant understanding, “I forgive you. Yossi!” she screamed to the boss, “Dvora asks you to forgive her for shouting and getting angry!” “Absolutely!” he screamed back. “Happy new year!” This incident stuck in my consciousness because, although I was divided from these people by so many cultural norms, they instantly understood my request for forgiveness, and instantly and completely forgave me from the bottom of their hearts. It seems that the passion that leads Israelis to so much shouting also clears a direct route to the heart. Once more, I felt a spark from heaven connect me to these people. These connections have been so intense and meaningful because they cross a cultural divide. They have offered me glimpses

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of a more profound unity than that which I knew within my own comfortable, unexamined culture.


CLOSING THOUGHTS Since the Tower of Babel we have been divided by language and culture. Only God retains the knowledge of how we were before that time, but when we seek communion with others, tiny sparks from that forgotten unity may reach us. While we should of course celebrate our own traditions, and while it is natural to seek the comfort of the known, we are enriched by crossing the cultural divide. In navigating cultural difference and misunderstanding there are treasures to be won. Education is surely about this: knowing ourselves and others, and striving toward unity in a world of both conflict and connection. Deborah Court is a lecturer in the School of Education at Bar-Ilan University in Israel and is director of the Joseph H. Lookstein Center’s Principals’ Program. E-mail: [email protected]