Almost some fraction of a lifetime later, I am looking at my own house of truth as having been shaped as much as what I was taught by as much as what was never taught. Or Alan gets grapples with what the big academics talk about as positionally.
And in so many big things in life, we end up taking sides on issues, maybe without always seeing it, or that we are on the right side.
Let’s talk about religion, you know the topic you should never talk about. Or specifically those holidays in December.
All the Holidays
I grew up in a Jewish family in area of Baltimore with many Jews, though not exclusively in my neighborhood. We were on the less rigorous side of the spectrum, aka Reform Judiasm. So indeed we celebrated Hanukkah and just understood that was different than the neighbors who did Christmas. Our house was dark while others had the brigh lights. I remember my Dad and I would always take quite walks just to enjoy and look at the decorations. I can remember our mutual favorite, it had ni lights, but it was a two store square shaped white house, with a rood that sloped gently back. It triuly looked like a big box. And their yearly Christmas decoration was draping a huge red ribbon and bow down the front, like a giant gift box.
I never truly found a belief or a faith, I enjoyed the traditions, the stories, the Passover seder. As an adult I pretty much skipped the celebrating part. Then I got married and was introduced more closely to Christmas celebrating. OMG, I loved the tree and putting lights up. As I am now, I really do not see myself as a Jew or a Christian, and I am on the side of celebrating holidays.
Each year, Cori and I do the Christmas tree setup, decorating, and we also do the Hanukkah candles each night. I give me partly remembered, maybe a bit made up story I barely remember of the Romans destroying the temple, and the mircal of light lasting 8 days. The best part is we just sit together, lights off, the phones down, and we just watch the candles burn down, in front of the Christmas tree lights.
This is rather minor.
War
Israel’s war on Gaza — really not a “war” since the power of Israel is total, following October 7, 2023– did not sit right from the start. I don’t need to cite the specifics, do I? the 52 tons of rubble. The photos.
If a side is to be taken, I’m not on the side who kills on this scale. Not that simple.
I looked to read things outside of the news streams, and bookmarked a few (first in November 2023), hardly comprehensive. Like Talking About Gaza in a Jerusalem Hospital (unpaywalled from the Atlantic) of Jewish and Arab medical staff who looked beyond the boundaries.
Maybe the most moving was a The Speaking Part, an episode of This American Life, of a woman named Youanna and her 72 day experience of moving her family aorund Gaza City, waiting and trying to get across the border to Egypt. Youanna had to voice the story of a life together, answering questions for her young children.
Juju wanted to know, was the cat getting food? Yes, Youmna said. The neighbors were feeding her. There was Mohammed, 11 years old, who, two weeks into the war, had begun pulling at his lips and biting into them until the skin tore. Mohammed wanted to know if his school was still there. Yes, Youmna said. Cerine, 8 years old. Every time the family fled, she always wanted to know where they would sleep, and would they be able to sleep together? Yes, Youmna would reassure her. We will all sleep right next to each other.
…
They seemed like the right words to say, even if Youmna had no idea if they were true. With Aline, with all her kids, Youmna’s strategy was to sell them on her own certainty, even if there was no reliable information on who was dead or who was alive. She wanted them to believe there was, and she had it. Youmna would summon all the authority she had as a mom who knows things.
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/822/the-words-to-say-it/act-one-7
There’s much more of course, comics, poems, wills written. The list can go on long.
The Wall Between
In early 2024 I came across the a story about The Wall Between, a book cowritten by an Arab and Jewish (Canadian) academic, that called out in its brief description like it was written for me. I ordered it right away.
i’m still slowly working my way through, it’s my usual habit of starting books and then adding to a stack of partly reads next to my bed. I have had the book a year, and in taking this photo, I had noticed more closely the top line.
Maybe I had not looked and thought it was “What Jews and Palestinians Don’t Know About Each Other” (maybe that’s what ChatGPT would construct?) But its more poignant in the actual text that reads, “What Jews and Palestinians Don’t Want to Know About Each Other” — that there is an investment in the sides that is almost undoable.
The shock for this Jewish kid from Baltimore was in the very start of reading, I came across the reference to Nakba, something that was never covered in a world history class and certainly not mentioned in my religious schooling. You can look it up, of course.
Unlearning With What I had Never Learned
I had never gotten the fuller story of the British Mandate and establishment of Israel- it was played more about a victorious and righteous act, the land that was promised, the accounting of the Holocaust, there was the glory in books I read (and the movie version) of Leon Uris’s Exodus. There was no mention I casn recall of the displacement/cleansing of Palestinian people who were living in the land that was stamped as a country named Israel.
Then I rethink something I always felt was a formative experience from my Jewish religious school. I saw it as progressive that maybe in 6th, 7th grade, we had a unit or more on comparative religion. We got to go to a Quaker Meeting and a high mass at a Catholic Cathedral (was it the Baltimore Basilica or Mary our Queen??). We never went to, or maybe even discussed, Islamic religion, we did not go to a Mosque (Masjid Ul Haqq has been around since the 1950s).
Was this deliberate? Or is my memory faulty? Where were choices made about what not to teach kids, both in religious school, but I am fuzzy on what public school covered.
Regardless, with the heavy emphasis we got on the horrors of the Holocaust, to the witnessing on TV of the Munich massacre of the 1972 Olympics, a not very religious kid from Baltimore ends up with almost an internal subtle wiring of Israel just always gets an automatic justification. You don’t dwell on it, but to entertain any thought means you are abandoning your faith.
That wiring fell apart for me in October 2023. Not that I did anything except read and internalize.
The Obliteration of Education
The very first story I bookmarked was Education Is Casualty of Israel-Hamas War, as Bombs Hit Gaza Universities (Al-Fanar Media). I can’t look at this photo of a bombed building at the University of Gaza and ask, in what conflict is it justified to destroy universities? (well actually all wars).
Or see the summary of Universities in Gaza bombed by Israel from The New Arab. The bombs wiped out the universities and all the other schools. What exactly is the military strategy that says, “let’s bomb schools”?
Where are the Open Educators?
I am now thinking of the work we do at Open Education Global. I was fortunate to be part of several support efforts to help educators bring to awareness following the Russian Invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. We shared and rallied in our community space and I was lucky to record a podcast with a rather heroic open education librarian, Tetiana Kolesnykova. Their struggles continue as the war is on going.
Yet I am wondering where are the conversations and where is the action to support the educators and students in Gaza? Have I missed something? I have noted that people do join our OEG Connect Community with affiliations in Gaza and Palestine, that was where I got curious and started learning about Al-Quds Open University.
It’s not totally silent. With not much search effort (no AI) I found:
- The Gaza Education Hub (fund raising through the Open Collective)
- Academics for Palestine (Academia against apartheid, active)
- Open Education in Palestine: a tool for liberation (open book chapter by Javiera Atenas, 2017)
- Palestine OER Strategy Forum (2017)
- Open Educational Resources in Palestine: High Hopes Promising Solutions (by Jamil Itmazi, 2020 in Current State of Open Educational Resources in the “Belt and Road” Countries)
- Palestinian Journal for Open Learning & e-Learning (journal published by al-Quds Open University, last issue 2021)
The resources gets backdated quickly. I am sure there is more.
There is no silence on many university campuses though the forces are working fervently to eradicate protest and to leverage institutions with the funding hammer.
And Thus?
I’m writing for myself here, and working to find out my own unsilencing. I am though whispering about it to my open education colleagues because all of the lofty goals of providing accessible education to all the world ought to be talking about and rallying against the obliteration of education in Gaza.
Otherwise, it’s just words.
There are no sides to stand on. I am with Hanukkah, Christmas, AND chips and guacamole.
Featured Image: The new Traditional Hanukkah Chips and Guacamole flickr photo by cogdogblog shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0)
