Father's
Day 2009 - Abraham's insight
modeled by
young Muslims and Jews
Sunday, 21
June 2009
Father's Day 2009
Abraham - a shared, spiritual father of
Jews, Christians, and Muslims, long ago left Ur - the "old" --
for the sake of a new, better but undefined existence.
The promise of a high destiny for him and his
descendents-in-principles depended on fulfilling conditions that lead to
human success for self, others, and Earth altogether.
Even today, on the shoulders of Abraham and
Sarah are added daily more human success based on their ancient, correct
intuition that all is one - wahad, echad, uno, odin.
We citizens continue to demonstrate "one" -
lives-lived, realizing there is no individual survival, acting as if all is one
and totally interdependent.
Personal and collective faith traditions keep maturing
year by year.
New children of Abraham and of other teachers keep
stepping forward.
Most often they are young adults, as illustrated
in these two stories of the past few weeks.
For these students - one - Father's Day is every
day of their living, learning, and relating.
-
L&L
Abraham's Vision
alive in California
May 2009 graduations worldwide included the a historic
commencement ceremony for 29 Muslim and Jewish high school students who
trained and engaged successfully for one year under the guidance of Abraham's
Vision - http://www.abrahamsvision.org/
Adult tears and cheers affirmed a dozen of this
new breed of young scholars giving graduation speeches -- refusing to be
enemies, insisting on engaging, modeling what the future will look like.
The young women and men Bay Area students received
Certificates of Completion from the Unity Program of Abrahams Vision and the
University of San Francisco.
Their year-long 2008-2009 success sets a new reachable
standard for shared studies to understand one another, our faiths, and the
Israeli-Palestinian relationship.
Inventive programs like this need exemplary
co-directors, like Muslim Palestinian Huda Abu Arquod (Huda@abrahamsvision.org
) and Jewish American Aaron Hahn-Tapper
( Aaron@AbrahamsVision.org ).
COMMENCEMENT CEREMONY PHOTOS at http://traubman.igc.org/avgraduation2009.pdf
Unity Programs first local grads break down walls
of Muslim-Jewish relations
Published in j., the Jewish news weekly of Northern
California 12 June 2009
Jewish high school
students pursue Arabic language
to expand understanding, identification
Several
years ago, six Jewish teenagers at the SAR yeshiva high school in Riverdale,
New York, eagerly asked to study the Arabic language.
The unprecedented request was met with a
"yes" from the their interested principal, Rabbi Tully Harcsztark (
harcsn@sarhighschool.org ).
This fifth year of the program, 40 students are
studying Arabic in four grades.
Some want to understand those they regard as
enemies, but many more seem to want to build bridges.
Sarah Samuels, one of 14 ninth graders who just
completed their first year, said a schoolmate had questioned her commitment to
study Arabic, saying, Its the language of terrorists. But Sarah shrugged the
student off.
You cant define a whole people by certain members of
the language-speaking population, she said.
Adin Goldstein, another ninth grader, added: Not
everybody who speaks Arabic is a bad person. Most are good people.
I feel like lots of people have misconceptions about
Arabs and Palestinians, chimed in Ariel Mintz, and if I speak Arabic I can
better understand the culture and understand what is really going on.
Their parents back the students.
While supportive families like these ideas of
bridge-building, it is continuing to be the young adults with vision and
determination who are making history like this.
READ the full story.
Yeshiva Students Make
Arabic a Cultural Bridge
The New York Times - 19 June 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/20/nyregion/20metjournal.html?_r=1&hpw
PHOTO: An Arabic naming chart in a classroom at SAR High School in
Riverdale.
Several years ago, six teenagers at the SAR yeshiva
high school in Riverdale came to the principal with a request: They wanted to
study Arabic.
It was an unusual appeal in this heavily Orthodox
neighborhood in the Bronx, with at least a half dozen congregations on tree-lined
streets that can turn eerily quiet on the Sabbath. Among the kosher butcher
shops, restaurants, bakeries and delis, the talk on the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict is usually supportive of the settlers on the West Bank, many of whom
are transplanted Orthodox Jewish Americans, not Arabic speakers.
Still, the students, all of whom had spent time in
Israel some had visited every year of their lives were eager, and Rabbi Tully
Harcsztark, the principal of SAR High School, decided to add Arabic to the
foreign language offerings of Spanish and Latin.
This year, the fifth year of the Arabic program, 40
students are studying Arabic in four grades, though their reasons vary, Mr.
Harcsztark said: Some want to understand those they regard as enemies, but many
more seem to want to build bridges.
The Arab-Israel conflict is a huge part of our lives,
and understanding the culture and language helps us to relate to the other
side, said Jonah Eidman, an 11th grader taking Arabic for a third year.
Sarah Samuels, one of 14 ninth graders who just
completed their first year, said a schoolmate had questioned her commitment to
study Arabic, saying, Its the language of terrorists. But Sarah shrugged the
student off.
You cant define a whole people by certain members of
the language-speaking population, she said.
Adin Goldstein, another ninth grader, added: Not
everybody who speaks Arabic is a bad person. Most are good people.
I feel like lots of people have misconceptions about
Arabs and Palestinians, chimed in Ariel Mintz, and if I speak Arabic I can
better understand the culture and understand what is really going on.
Ariel, wearing a latke-sized skullcap, and Adin, Sarah
and the other ninth graders were in class deciphering passages in Arabic about
a man complaining about the cold weather in Ithaca, N.Y., and contrasting it
with the warmth in California. It was the kind of nonsensical passage that all
beginner language classes take on to tackle essential vocabulary and sentence
structure.
In the 11th-grade class, students discussed a passage
about how Israelis like Ariel Sharon have expressed fondness for the work of
Mahmoud Darwish, one of the most widely known Palestinian poets, because they
shared his love of the land.
Though rare, there are similar programs at Jewish day
schools locally and nationally, according to the Jewish weekly The Forward,
including Ramaz High School in Manhattan, Shalhevet High School for Girls in
Cedarhurst on Long Island, and schools in Rockville, Md.; Greensboro, N.C.; and
Bryn Mawr, Pa.
Only eight public high schools and one middle school
in New York City offer Arabic, said Nicole Duignan, a spokeswoman for the
Department of Education.
Some of the Riverdale students said they were looking
forward to reading signs in three languages on their next trips to Israel:
Hebrew, Arabic and English. Others, like Adina Israel, a ninth grader, said,
Were all hoping for peace, and its easier to establish peace if youre able to
talk in their terms.
Arabic is not an easy language to master, said Irrit
Dweck, 33, a part-time instructor who teaches all four grades. Its distinctive
alphabet means that students, already challenged during their youth by two
alphabets, spend months just mastering the characters, with 28 letters in a
cursive script that take different forms depending on their placement in a
word.
Parallels with Hebrew sometimes help. Words like
pineapple and watermelon and the names of eight months are similar in both
languages. Arabic had its origins in Aramaic, the language of the Talmud that
students at the yeshiva study.
Ms. Dweck, whose paternal grandparents were Syrian
Jews, got an early start, growing up with Arabic expressions and Arab music.
She studied Arabic at Columbia, spent a year living in Cairo and has a masters
degree from Columbia in Middle Eastern language and culture.
I feel its really impressive that the students wanted
Arabic, and the school responded, she said.
None of the students said their parents opposed the
decision. Some parents liked the idea of bridge-building and the intellectual
challenge of an uncommon language. Others emphasized the practical advantages
in a world of increasingly global commerce and in a country with a growing
Arabic population.
That is not to say that the course is shifting
students political views. I never thought all Muslims or Arabs do terrorist
acts, said Tuvia Lerea, an 11th grader. But this class has solidified my idea.
A tremendous majority of the Arab population live their daily lives and do
their own things just like in our society.
Ms. Dweck knows that her students will not be fluent
in Arabic by the end of high school.
The only way to learn a language is to live it, and
theyre only living it for 40 minutes a day, three times a week, she said.
Two former students did pursue the language after high
school, and are now living in Jerusalem studying Arabic.