FEATURED JOBS
Comments (0)By Ruth M. Szykman
Baltimore Hebrew Institute
The western side of the Judean Hills are green. Terraced and farmed for thousands of years. You continue past Jerusalem and head east, the climate turns arid and you enter the Judean Desert. Too sparse to cultivate, you now think of nomadic life. This is where Abraham grazed his flocks. This is where David ran away to hide from Saul.
The hills meet in folds and you see sparse vegetation where the water collects and trickles into gulleys and gulleys into river beds. The direction of flow of this rain would be east towards Jordan and the Dead Sea if there happened to be enough water.
Here, halfway between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea, some social visionaries decided to try a new social model. In 1982 the ‘yishuv’ (village) of Alon (oak) was established with the goal of having religious and non-religious families live side-by-side in harmony. In general, in Israel, some neighborhoods are more or less homogeneous due to people wanting to live with folks with similar values. This has the effect of segregation over time and now modern Israelis are experimenting with pluralism, tolerance, mutual respect and understanding. Alon has 150 families, 50 percent are religious and 50 percent non-religious and they live in understanding and accommodation. They celebrate holidays together, invite non-religious people to give lectures on their understanding of Jewish texts and send their kids to school together.
The person who told us about the yishuv was “Abraham” at Genesis Land, which is a brief camel ride back in time to Abrahams tent to discuss hospitality, monotheism and history. He told us about how when his young daughter was asked if she was religious or not, she thought about it and replied that she wanted to be a good person. Beautiful!
