An Address to American Jews

Back in the United States for the foreseeable future!

Last summer my former Rabbi asked me if, after returning from the Middle East, I might be interested in speaking about some of my experiences to his congregation. So this year I received the following prompts from him:

What do the Arab people you met think about America, Israel, and Jews?

Is there really such a thing as moderate Islam?

If so, what does it take to build bridges?

So I wrote the following address and delivered it to Temple Shalom in Milton, MA on Saturday the 22nd of August.

My name is Abraham Katz, and I’m about to enter my final year at Middlebury College where I study Middle Eastern studies and political science. I spent this past year in Alexandria, Egypt at Middlebury’s school in the Middle East. It was an Arabic-intensive program that included a “language pledge” that we signed, agreeing to speak only Arabic for the year.

This summer, from mid-June until about a week ago, I was living in Muscat, Oman on the state department’s “Critical Language Scholarship.” It was a vastly different environment with a distinct culture and it took some more adapting.

So, for the past year I’ve lived in Arabia. I’ll start by explaining how I tried to represent America and Judaism in the Middle East, and then I’ll try to report on Egyptian and Omani society and Islam here, to you today. I may not be a particularly qualified spokesman in either case, but I have some stories and we can find some trends that might indicate how Arabs tend to view “us,” as Judaism, Israel, and America.

First of all, questions about one’s religion and personal life are commonplace in conversations with Egyptians. Every day I rode a taxi to and from school, and every day I was asked my religion, marital status, thoughts on politics, opinion of the world cup qualifiers, or any combination of the above. For the first month I answered the religion question “Mesihi,” Christian. I was never afraid of saying “Jew,” but at this point my Egyptian Colloquial Arabic was very limited and I was worried about getting into a discussion, argument, or altercation I didn’t understand or was unequipped to handle. So, in these encounters, I lied. Now as for my Egyptian dorm mates, friends I would grow very close with, I was completely honest, without trumpeting my Judaism.

Yom Kippur came shortly after Eid al-Fitr, the end of Ramadan, and I was playing dominoes with a couple Egyptian friends. They were snacking on something or other and offered me some, which I declined and explained I’m fasting. Why? It’s a Jewish holiday today, and we fast, sort of like during Ramadan. This was the first time I told any member of the host culture that I was Jewish. They didn’t change their conduct towards me in the slightest. Another American student was passing by, Jewish, and I asked him “Hey, are you fasting today?” He shot a look, gave me a non-committal shrug and responded of course not, why would I fast today?

This was the first of many differences with this friend of mine about how we should address our Judaism in this very unfamiliar environment. He and several others were consistently afraid of being socially alienated, or even physically endangered, if they revealed this part of their identity. Indeed, one of the themes of my fall semester in Alexandria was my interaction with many other Jews on the program whose reactions to life in the Arab world ranged from legitimate caution to paranoia and sometimes racism.

As I grew confident in Egyptian Colloquial Arabic, after about a month, I began to engage taxi drivers by answering their routine curiosity as honestly as I could. “Enta Muslim?” La. “Enta Mesihi?” La, ana Yehudi. This was typically followed by a beat of silence. The next step generally went one of two ways. The driver would either say “Ahlan wa sahlan, Muslims, Jews, and Christians are all of the book! No problem! Welcome in Egypt!” and it would be kumbaya. The other contingency was “Are you Israeli? What do you think of Israel? What is wrong with Israel? Israel’s a problem, why are they oppressing the Palestinians? Why did they take the Palestinian land?” and so on. Occasionally they would caution me against telling other Egyptians that I was Jewish, because it could be “problematic.” But honestly I understood those drivers themselves to be the most extreme cases and this warning was in fact as dangerous as it ever got. When I felt agitation brewing in the driver, I would divert the conversation to how beautiful Alexandria is, or how amazing the Arabic language is, ma sha allah, and asking him about his children or the next eid coming, and things were generally nice.

The most uncomfortable encounter I had was in March. I was teaching an English class to a group of Egyptian university students and the inevitable religion question came up. So I answered honestly, and a very awkward silence ensued, full of furtive glances and some snickers. I smiled and asked if it was unusual to them that I was Jewish? Did they know the difference between a Jew and the Israeli government? We talked, addressed our differences, and our relationship was strengthened.

In Oman, I was the first Jew a friend of mine had ever met. She doubts the ‘Western theory’ that Al-Qaeda is responsible for the attacks of September 11^th, subscribing instead to idea that the Jews were behind it. And yet, after another awkward snicker and ensuing conversation, she and I remained good friends.

My goal was simple: I am a person before I’m a Jew, and if the curious Arab wants to know me, he or she will know that I care about the weather, and the news, and girls, and whatever it is that I care about. If we suspend our expectations and proscriptions – what we expect the Arab response to our Judaism to be – we’ll tend to find that humans do in fact get along, and sadly our feuds are too often self-fulfilling prophecies. This conviction was demonstrated perfectly at the beginning of my second semester in Egypt when an Egyptian dorm mate, a friend of mine, found out that I was Jewish. We were walking together and I was explaining a new class I was about to take, comparing some stories shared between the Bible, Torah, and Quran. He asked why I was interested in that, and I explained I knew a little about Judaism from growing up Jewish and I wanted to read some of the other Abrahamic texts. He took a beat and said, “Ibrahim, to be frank if I’d known you were Jewish from the beginning there would have been a big problem between us. But you’re my friend!”

He then asked me to speak for what he saw as Israel’s crimes. He was not accusing me, but rather genuinely appealing to a friend who somehow represented the enemy. I explained that Judaism has an essential connection with Jerusalem, as does Islam, and a history in the broader land, as do the Palestinians. Sometimes that claim yields Jewish views against Arabs, ranging from a legitimate fear of suicide bombing and rocket attacks to harsh policies essentially aiming to remove Arabs from the land. I emphasized that for every intolerant Jew exist more tolerant Jews, just as I’m sure for every violent Palestinian exists more nonviolent Palestinians, but unfortunately we on either side really only hear about – or experience – the most polarized actors. He nodded, interested, and I felt that I had scored some points for the coexistence camp.

Getting people on the street or taxi drivers or friends to appreciate the difference between “Jew” and “Israeli,” first of all, was a constant effort. Then, distinguishing between peace-seeking Israelis and the more obstinate and intolerant sectors in Israel was another constant activity. These are not actually difficult distinctions to convey, but the media and education and general understanding in the Middle East use the terms “Jew” and “Israeli” synonymously, as The Aggressor. For example, one day at my University there was a student protest. This coincided roughly with the Rabbinate’s decision to excavate some part of the temple mount, allegedly threatening the structural integrity of Al-Aqsa mosque. (This myth was not unwrapped in the Arab media, unfortunately.) The protesters carried a banner that read “La tahuid al-quds!” which means “No to the Judification of Jerusalem!” next to a crossed-out Israeli flag. But in fact, I found that many Egyptians do acknowledge the long and deep connection Judaism has with the old city, and don’t on principal oppose a Jewish presence. What they meant the sign to read was “No to Israel’s Temple Mount excavations that we were told threaten a very old mosque in Jerusalem because, were this true, it would threaten our historical connection to the city as Muslims.” Unfortunately my cavaliering for nuance as the source of mutual understanding and world peace wasn’t inspirational enough for me to go advise the crowd of their mistake.

I was constantly deferring a defense of Israel in the face of those who would challenge me. After all, I am not Israeli, I don’t speak Hebrew, and until December I’d never even been there. American Jewish writer Peter Beinart does a good job explaining my poverty of nationalism in his article “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment.” I simply never felt that it was appropriate for me to address Israel if I wasn’t wearing my political scientist hat. For me, America is an easier subject to address.

Egyptians tend to like Americans. “Obama!!! Good!” was the response 90% of the time in Egypt. The more educated Egyptians I spoke with, and many Omanis, had a lot of criticisms of American foreign policy – maybe because of our wars in two Muslim countries, or perhaps they understood that – after Israel – the corrupt and unpopular Egyptian government is the highest recipient of US foreign aid. Regardless of their impressions of American politics, Egyptians overwhelmingly liked American people, and exponentially so when they saw we were speaking Arabic! I can’t account for this affection, maybe it’s from something in the movies, or maybe it’s interest in getting the rich tourists to buy a miniature pyramid, or perhaps just seriously developed Arab hospitality, but generally playing the “American” card scored major brownie points.

In America, our impressions of Middle Eastern society tend to critique more than praise, is that fair to say? We see veiled women, militants (sometimes suicidal), human rights violations, a pretty uniform lack of democracy, transparency, accountability, and so on, and we attribute it largely to an immoderate, “extremist” Islam. That’s a fair conclusion to draw, because the governments or militants who defend a status quo that so starkly contrasts ours always cite Islam and Sharia law as justification. This claim is very fringe on their part and our condemning conclusion represents a very slippery slope, dangerously absolutist. Many Middle Easterners may not distinguish between an Israeli soldier who kills a Palestinian in the name of a Jewish homeland, and an Israeli civilian who has sold bread his whole life. They should, of course, because there is a moderate, “benign” Judaism. Similarly, many Americans may not distinguish between a Muslim militant and a Muslim store owner. But there is a Moderate Islam, and if we don’t treat “the other” with discretion we can’t really expect discretion from it.

The moderates, us and them, exist. I have met Egyptian Imams who preach religious tolerance and dialogue, Omani politicians who argue Islam PRESCRIBES democracy, and youth arguing against polygamy and female genital mutilation as haraam or forbidden by religion.

The various communities I visited, all Islamic, can be night and day in their values. Men and women don’t shake hands in Oman, and yet it is prevalent in Egypt. But wait, in 2005, 96% of Egyptian women had experienced female genital mutilation (Egypt Demographic and Health Services, 2005). The proportion of neqabs, the female face covering that only has a slit for eyes, is substantially higher in Egypt than in Oman. Further north, Beirut was like a bombed-out Miami – night clubs, gay bars, and lots of skin. And – Hezbullah flags. Democratically-elected Hamas bans women smoking shisha (water pipes) in Gaza, and yet a Palestinian woman I meet in Oman invites us out to smoke shisha!

My point is Islam, like any other religion or identity group, cannot exist as a single entity in our minds. We might hear the speech of absolutist spokesmen, “fundamentalists,” and not much rings louder than a suicide bomb, but let us not forget the details and the nuance. The fun facts. That, for example, the most violent pocket of terrorism on the planet is a feud between Hindus and Buddhists in Sri Lanka. The polarization of the leaders of groups and states in the Middle East must be attributed to something else, and the idea that Islam plays a primary causal role in its problems is a false correlation. As a political scientist, I’m inclined to point to a number of geopolitical factors such as the legacy of colonization or resource scarcity, but that’s another topic entirely.

As I am a human before I am a Jew, he is a human before he’s a Muslim. Nothing in our faiths sets us against each other. Arab Muslims call Jews “Awlad al-a3m” – cousins. Then how do we build bridges? We remember this bond. We learn each other’s languages and we speak. We visit each other. V’yahavta li-raecha k’mocha – “And love your neighbor as yourself.” We identify our differences and we celebrate them. We disagree, we look within, and we reconcile. Patience. Nuance. There is always more to the story. Shukran jazilan, thank you very much for having me and Shabbat shalom.