Seeking the common denominator – a seasonal call to thinking big

 

[Holiday dinner*]

As a society and as individuals, we tend to seek to identify differences. Politicians carve out constituencies by statistically defining groups. Reports in the traditional media are explicitly about the unusual, not the banal. The masses of parents preparing a sandwich for their children’s lunch before they go to school is not of public interest but an especially shocking tale, however rare, of child abuse is news worthy. Social media certainly is quite often a dividing force. Personally, as a translator and teacher, I have been taught and directed to identify non-similarities and explain them. Thus, the dominating tendency is to create us as compared to them images.

However, this week, I accidently experienced a welcome call to reality. I teach general English to translator two groups of first-year engineering students at the Braude School of Engineering in Karmiel, Israel, which is located in the Galilee, a multiethnic area. The backgrounds of my students include religious and non-religious Jews, Christians, Muslims and Druze. (This year, I have no Ethiopian or Circassian students.) As part of the process to accustom them to public speaking, I asked them to stand in front of the class and tell the other students about their favorite holiday moments. To my wonder and joy, each and every one of them, all 57, spoke about getting together with family and friends, eating special meals and enjoying the feeling of belonging. The occasions differed, from Ramadan and Ziyarat al-Nabi Shu'ayb to Sukkot and New Year’s Eve, each according to his/her customs. However, the actual religious or calendar event was ultimately irrelevant. All the students valued the feeling of food, togetherness and love.

This wave of common joy led me to think about Thanksgiving. I do not enjoy holidays as a rule. Somehow, the expectation that I am supposed to be happy depresses me. Thanksgiving is the exception. It is a holiday of too much food, bad football, and spending time with family. It has been some 30+ years since I actually celebrated it because I live in Israel and am married to an Israeli. Yet, I still have positive memories. My feelings are exactly the same as those expressed by my students.

Living in a diverse community and having witnessed how easy it is set off conflict among groups, I now see how important it is for everybody to teach and encourage the recognition of common humanity. Instead of emphasizing religion or color and creating tribe mentality, as in the Middle East and many other parts of the world, each of us in our various capacities, including parent, educator, marketer and even translator, should recall and transmit how much people have in common. The easiest way is to seek and recognize the universal reasons why people behave the way to do instead of attributing behavior to a unique, often negative, factor. To do so is to oppose the tribalization of society. Granted, the influence of any individual in the face of organized and unorganized groups is very small. However, as small as neutrinos are, quite small I assure you, when grouped they carry a large mass.

So, during this season, so important to so many religions, maybe because of the winter solstice, the best way to celebrate is marvel how people worldwide are so similar despite all the differences in culture, religion, language and other background elements. It probably won’t prevent another war in the Middle East or anywhere else for that matter at least in the near future. However, the insistence on seeking the common denominators among us can only benefit people and society if only in that creates hope for a solution. I wish everybody many happy holidays celebrated by eating too much with too much family.

* The blind need captions to fully access the Internet.

 Photo by Sebastian Coman Photography on Unsplash

Holy academic scheduling

I have been an English lecturer at Ort Braude for over 25 years.  One aspect of academic life in Israel that is unique to the country and very peculiar is the schedule of non-classes in the second semester. 

To explain, as in the United States, each semester has 14 weeks. An additional factor is that the Jewish calendar, which determines the actual date of the religious holidays, is based on the moon, which means that an extra month, Adar B, is frequently added to keep it in line with the solar year. This means that their dates vary from year to year but within a certain range.

The first semester begins after Sukkot. In practice, that means any time from the end of September to latter part of October. Once the semester begins, it lasts 14 consecutive weeks with no holidays except for maybe one day for Hanukah (some institutions give more).

Alas, the second semester is a matter of occasional study between days off.  To illustrate, this year, it began on March 6.  Students got one day off for Purim on March 24, two and half weeks later. They actually have to study another almost four weeks until Pesach, which lasts from April 22-29. Immediately after readjusting to academic life for not even a week, they get a late afternoon off, on May 4, for Holocaust Memorial Day. Not to worry, one week later, there are no classes, from the late afternoon on May 10th for Memorial Day straight through to the 12^th, for Independence Day.  This break is followed by two actual weeks of study, until, no kidding, Students Day, from noon of May 25^th to noon of the 26^th. By this time, even the students want to get some learning in. There is a limit on how much you can eat. Yet, on June 12, the students can catch up on homework on Shavuot. There are no more holidays or days off until June 20^th, the end of the semester, unless they are sick or called up for reserve duty.  

I should clarify that the plethora of holidays is not the fault of the management and is applicable all over the country.  It should be noted, to nobody’s surprise, that the vast majority students appreciate the extra time, especially at an engineering college.

If you are wondering how the faculty can actually teach anything, the management has calculated 14 full weeks of study here. It is undoubtedly true but who can count with so many holes?

Passing Over Holidays

In Israel, Pesach or Passover is approaching.  For those who never experienced the period before this holiday, it is both similar and different than the closest social Christian equivalent, Christmas.

Preparations begin four weeks before the actual event.  In fact, once Purim is over, it is time to get ready for Pesach, a bit like the time between Thanksgiving and Noel.  Pesach also causes stress and even depression as people have to decide which side of the family has priority this year (although there is a bit of a consolation prize in the holiday at the end of the Pesach for the losing side of the family).  People lacking or far from family seek invitations.  As the event approaches, people have to find appropriate gifts for the hosts, a challenge familiar to most Americans.  The last week involves multiple food shopping trips, hours by the stove, disagreements among parents and children about helping out, and massive cleaning of the house.

Yet, Pesach has its unique aspects.  On the one hand, the menu is fixed by the rules of the Haggadah, the book everybody reads during the Pesach seder, or ceremony.  That being said, there are numerous ethnic variations on the exact version of the required food, not to mention the grey area of foods that are allowed for Sephardim but not for Ashkenazis, such as rice. Second, a common topic of conversation is the exact number of guests who are coming.  A classic Israeli comedy show Zehu Ze once jokingly portrayed three women bragging about how many people they were feeding, with the last one claiming she had tables throughout the neighborhood just to seat all her guests.  As for cleaning, Pesach cleaning is a bit like spring cleaning, but all hametz, leavened bread products, must be removed from the house.  Of course, some take this duty more seriously than others. In some neighborhoods, you will ritual burning of bread and placing of pots and pans in boiling water as part of the house preparation.   As for the seder itself, the reading of the Passover story has three basic versions: read only selected parts and eat early; read everything and eat late; and read everything and allow unlimited additional commentary and eat VERY late, sometimes approaching midnight.  The actual atmosphere varies widely depending on the family and number and age of guests.  My grandmother used to read about our suffering in Egypt as if she was suffering right then.   Other people view the evening as an ideal occasion to catch up on gossip with cousins.

Pesach is as the French would say: chacun à son gout – to each his own.  However, like any good holiday, aside from causing an upset stomach, it creates a feeling of belonging to one’s family and religion.  Alternatively, it is as Tom Lehrer said in the song National Brotherhood Week, “Be grateful that it doesn’t last all year.”