(As a result of a trip I made to Egypt and Syria in 2008, I was recently asked to write a chapter for a forthcoming book that will include the thoughts of a number of people who have made trips from the US to the Middle or from the Middle East to the US. What follows is a version of what will be appearing in the book)
Jews are a ghostly presence in the Arabic Middle East. That is a sad reality I experienced first-hand when I visited Egypt and Syria in June of 2008 as part of the Religion and Society Program as a guest of the Natioanl Peace Foundation and the Islamic Society of North America. My group included one American Muslim, two Jews (including a young Rabbi from Texas), and three Christians .
During our ten-day stay we had scores of meetings with groups, organizations and religious communities. Wherever we went we heard universal, unanimous affirmation of the idea of interfaith cooperation, especially among Muslims, Christians and Jews. In spite of that there was one event that focused me on what I think is the key problem in interfaith understanding among members of the three Abrahamic religions.
We had only been in Cairo for a couple of days when our group was taken to visit Shaar Hashamaim Grand Synagogue of Cairo in that great Egyptian city. The morning we arrived it wasn’t the Sabbath. We explored this beautiful spiritual facility as though it were a museum. There were many things I wanted to know about it, and I began to pepper our tour leader with questions. She smiled and pointed me toward an Egyptian gentleman who she told me was the caretaker for the building.
I walked over to him, and began asking what I thought was going to be a series of questions about the building’s history by saying, “I understand that you are the caretaker for this synagogue…” Before I could get to my first question, he said, “Actually, I am the caretaker for all of the synagogues in Egypt.”
That seemed pretty impressive to me, given that Egypt is a fairly large country geographically and it has a population of about 80 million. So I asked, “And how many synagogues are there in all of Egypt."
Without hesitating, he responded, “Eleven. Five of them here in Cairo.” Again, I was impressed but wanted to learn more, so I asked, “And how many Jews are there in Egypt?”
“One Hundred and Eighty,” he said.
I thought I had misunderstood him, and I said “One hundred and eighty thousand?”
“No,” he said, “only one hundred and eighty. And they are all women and they are all old.”
I was stunned. I had no idea that there were so few Jews in Egypt. A few days later when we visited Damascus, I discovered there was an equally tiny number of Jews remaining in all of Syria. After I returned to the U.S., I did a little Google searching about the Jews in Arab countries. I learned that with the exception of Morocco, and perhaps Algeria, there are virtually no Jews in the Arabic speaking Islamic world.
The tiny, spectral presence of the Jews around the Mediterranean represents a major problem that must be addressed if we are to establish a long lasting peace in the Middle East.
The problem is that when you don’t have daily, on going contact with “the other,” whether they are Jews or Muslims (or Buddhists for that matter), it is very easy to demonize those who aren’t present. Lack of contact often leads one party into beliefs and practices that escalate into violence. We see this over and over again, whether it is in Israel and the Occupied West Bank, Ireland, or in Louisville, Kentucky where I live in the US.
Shortly after I returned from the trip to Egypt and Syria I had lunch with my friend Sylvia Weinberg, an emerita member of my group’s Board of Directors. Sylvia is an accomplished poet and one of those rare people who can listen to a story or problem and put her finger right on the heart of the issue being discussed. Because of this I frequently seek her counsel.
Over lunch I told her about the trip I had made to the Middle East. I talked about all of the incredible people we had met and the extraordinary historical sites we had visited. I concluded my travelogue with the story of visiting the historical synagogue and I mentioned the tiny number of Jews in the Arab Middle East. I talked about the enormous obstacles this puts in place for those of us working to increase understanding.
When I had finished telling my story, Sylvia paused for a moment and said, “Does that make you despair of your work as an interfaith leader?”
Up to that moment I hadn’t really thought about the impact of what I had seen on my own work.
So then I paused and considered her question carefully. When I answered, what I told Sylvia surprised me. I said, “No, I don’t feel despair about the fact that there is little opportunity for interaction between Muslims and Jews in Arab countries. This fact just shows me that our work to improve interfaith interaction and understanding is a growth industry. I will be working at this for years to come.”
And that is true for me as well as for other interfaith entrepreneurs. It doesn’t make any difference, really, whether we are in Cairo, Egypt, or Cairo, Illinois. There is still a great gulf of misunderstanding, or more accurately, ignorance, that separates people of different religions, whether they are Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Baha’is or Buddhists. The work of bringing people of different religions together is an incredibly important endeavor. Without daily interfaith encounters, the door is open to misunderstanding, mistrust, vilification and ultimately violence. That is why inter-cultural trips such as those undertaken by the National Peace Foundation and the Islamic Society of North America are so valuable not only for those who take the excursions, but also for those with whom we share our stories when we return home.
