Living Between Two Worlds: Experiencing the Diverse Cultures of the Middle East
Part of the magic of living in Jerusalem is living among many people from diverse cultures and ethnic backgrounds. For me, this actually started a bit before BYU Jerusalem when I lived in the BYU Foreign Language housing. I was in the French house which happened to be next door to the Arabic House. There I met a lovely Muslim young woman, Shaden Husseini. I became friends with her and her brother, Ghaleb. They happened to be natives of Jerusalem.
When I arrived in Jerusalem for Winter/Spring of 1996 my friend Wendy (Shaden’s roommate from the Arabic house) and I one day discovered that a special invitation had been extended to us. We had been invited to dinner at the home of Shaden and Ghaleb, whose family lived in the West Bank. Along with the president of the Jerusalem Center, S. Kent Brown, and some other faculty, we were driven to the Husseini home. We had a lovely dinner with their tight-knit family. I admired their devotion to their religion, their love for their family members, and their hospitality. I found I had to be careful not to say that I liked something or they would offer it to me. A delicious meal was served and then we were driven home.
Shaden reached out to Wendy and me again shortly before we left Israel to take us on a personal tour of the Dome of the Rock (her father was an administrator for all of the mosques in Jerusalem). She bought us breakfast and gave me a beautiful head covering to wear and an exquisite copy of the Qu’ran. I felt deeply their devotion to their religion and their sincere desire to share some of their beliefs with others – as members of our church often do. Shaden also took me to the Islamic museum where we saw pictures of those who were killed in the 1990 massacre and many ancient artifacts and documents.
A contrasting experience occurred for me near the Sea of Galilee. There, while working in the banana fields on Kibbutz Afikim a friend and I were given the privilege of meeting with a wonderful couple, Oscar and Dina Kol, who were residents of the kibbutz. There they lived a happy and idyllic life, but this had not always been the case. Oscar and Dina were both Holocaust survivors. They told us horrific stories of their lives in those “factories of death” during World War II. Oscar held his father in his arms when he died in Dachau. Oscar left the concentration camp when the war ended weighing 71 pounds. Dina was at Auschwitz. She was a blond Jew – her head shaved by the guards hated the fact that this Jew would have Aryan coloring. She and Oscar were both the sole known Holocaust survivors in their families. They met in a Jewish refugee camp where they fell in love and were married. They traveled to Israel in a boat. Dina was pregnant and drank salt water mixed with chocolate drink mix to survive. Oscar and Dina’s boat was captured off the shores of Israel – the Jamaican flag did not fool British helicopters. They were taken to prison camps where their first child was born. Eventually, Oscar fought in the Jewish War of Independence. After the war, they settled on Kibbutz Afikim where they raised their children and worked hard to build their homeland. When I met them they lived a peaceful life in idyllic circumstances, with their memories of a horrific past behind them. Their stories of life in concentration camps and colonizing a new land are forever ingrained in my memory.
A great blessing that came from my Jerusalem experience was learning to value different cultures and to put behind me my preconceived notions of what it meant to be “Jewish” or “Muslim” or even “Christian.” We had wonderful professors from both Jewish and Muslim backgrounds – Rabbi Rosen and Brother Nazzal. They were good men, dedicated to their families and they were also excellent teachers who made their respective cultures come alive. I learned to be sensitive in appreciating that the Holy Land is a special country with deep religious significance for many good people of different faiths. I learned to respect people’s stories and to listen more than I spoke. My trip to BYU Jerusalem center helped me to learn to appreciate the deep dynamics of the Middle East and the good people who live there. As my own country has grown more divisive in recent years I have learned to appreciate the things I learned in Jerusalem about people – we are all very similar in many ways, It is in accepting and loving others different from ourselves we can find some of life’s richest and most valuable experiences.
Elise Ellsworth, Winter/Spring 1996
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