First Visit to Synagogue

I went to the Netivezra Synagogue off Ives Dairy Road.

It was a small, very new looking building with yellow walls and a beige marble dome over the entrance. The parking lot was empty except for a shiny red Cadillac and a beat up '97 Nissan Sentra.

I took a deep breath before opening the 8-foot tall black door.

I entered the empty building. The entrance hall was 7x7-foot square with black double doors on either side. A small hall led to restrooms on the right. I made a right into the hall and was greeted by some migrant construction workers. They were installing lighting in an empty room.

Finally, a man wearing a yarmulke greeted me. We stood in the hall and spoke for an hour.
His name is Ofir. He is 37.
I discovered he was from Tiberius which is in northern Israel. He told me his father is a traditional Jew, however most of his family is not practicing.

Ofir wasn't a religious man until he attended a retreat four years ago. He burst into tears the moment he first felt God in his heart.
Ofir told me, "I felt so embarrassed to cry.. it felt like an arrow hit me in the heart. This is what I was looking for all my life."

Thoughts on class pt.2

Every class starts with updates from my peers about their most recent experiences with their listening posts. Poor Soraya is always up first, but for this I am grateful. She usually takes about half an hour to detail her most recent experience, which are all very interesting, and it only allows for two or three other students to share.

I have noticed that in a single day we never get past the Muslim-American blonde (don't know her name). Logically speaking we should begin the next class by sharing experiences from where we left off, in this case Victor would start us up, but Soraya is always so willing to share the same four people get to report their experiences while the rest of us zone out or chime in.

I find myself in the group of people who chime in. The blonde girl has been having trouble with her listening post and we have all exhausted our wisdom and advice resources to help her out. Hope to hear nothing but good news from her next week!

Thoughts on class

Every Monday and Wednesday from 5:00pm to 6:15pm my classmates and I get to discuss our biases and fears amongst ourselves. It's not evolved significantly since the first day of class.

We still have our biases. The same girls in the corner still give me the impression they come to class drunk. I still can't envision my listening post, and the speech Professor Reisner gave us on the first day gets reworked ever so slightly at every class meeting (let's hope it's on its last leg).

Our Prof wasn't kidding when he said this wasn't your conventional type of class. I can think of no other class that would devote an entire class meeting to help someone not think of a drug-user as an immoral and "disgusting" person.

It's like anti-bias counseling. Or therapy for the young black woman who has to venture into a biker bar to overcome her fears.

On a personal level, I'm afraid to go to a synagogue. Just the fact that I have to buy clothes because I don't own a long skirt makes the task daunting. Let's see how I can pull this off.

Surprising Find

I hope the title of this blog doesn't come off in the wrong way, but I was surprised to get a test result of preferring African-Americans to Europeans.

My whole life the adults in my family were very pro-European (and very anti all others except Cubans). In 6th grade, when my Grandma was still alive, I had a friend of Middle-Eastern heritage come over to play. We were playing in my room for 15 minutes tops until my Grandma came in. She started screaming, "Pakistani! Pakistani!" and chased him out of my room. She sat by the door holding a butter knife in her hand while I translated to him that she wanted him to leave.

From a very young age I was exposed to the N-word in its harshest context along with any other derogative, discriminatory word you can think of.
My family taught hate for blacks, lower class white Americans, almost every South American nationality, every religious people besides Catholic (even Christian), Middle-East, Asians... seriously, you name it.

Yet on this test I scored as having a preference for African-Americans to Europeans.

I guess the apple can roll as far from the tree as it wants. =)