Roundtable/Great Reads is on the cusp of publishing—may have already published, by the time you read this—a book called Passover, which teaches kids about the Jewish holiday of the same name.
I didn’t intend it to be read only by Jewish kids.
When I was a teenager—which was a very long time ago!—I joined an organization called Youth for Better Understanding. Its purpose and mission was to promote not only better relations but also better understanding (just like the name said) between the Christian and Jewish teens in the community.
We had no Muslims living there. We had no Blacks. We had no Latinos. No Native Americans either.
But the Christians and Jews almost never mixed. (That might lead to—gasp!—interfaith dating, and nobody, on either side of the divide, wanted to see their kids going out with one of “them”! <shudder> Remember, we are talking about roughly half a century ago.)
The organization didn’t accomplish much, and to the best of my recollection, it disbanded after a year or so. But it imprinted in my mind the need for better understanding among kids of different faiths and different economic strata.
If we didn’t accomplish much, at least we were peaceable. At least we discussed our differences in an educational, informative manner. We were civil. No arguments or “Our way is right” garbage broke out among us.
That’s more than I can say about us adults of today—especially on the political forefront. No, I’m not going to point fingers or name names concerning any particular candidate or that candidate’s followers. There’ve been quite a number of guilty parties among the candidates, and I think we all know who they all are. And as for the partisans among us supporters, shame on everyone who exceeded the boundaries of civil disagreement—and if you read the morning paper or watch the evening news or read some of what gets posted to social media, you’ve seen a lot of people who’ve exceeded the boundaries of civil disagreement.
Why can’t we have…better understanding?
I have friends and associates whose political views and/or views on social issues are polarly opposite from mine. In some cases I actually can see their side very clearly. In other cases I don’t—but I still respect their right to hold their opinions.
Better understanding.
Which can come from books as well as from face-to-face interaction. Sometimes book-learning is better than face-to-face interaction. Sometimes it’s the other way around. One advantage of books is that in face-to-face elucidation, the person informing the other person, should he or she become impassioned, may be seen as arguing a political point or proselytizing a religion or attempting to convert to some other type of belief system. Most books—surely not all!—are calm and factual, and one can read them without feeling the need to become defensive.
All of which leads back to why I wrote Passover: Not just to inform Jewish kids who may not understand the history or significance of the holiday, but to inform non-Jewish kids who want to know why their Jewish friends do “weird things” like bringing their lunch sandwiches to school on “big crackers” for a week every spring.
Let’s all read books, web articles from responsible sources, and other materials—but especially books—that can give us insight into other people’s points of view, belief systems, and, yes, religions.
We can all use some better understanding.