Reflection on GIP Panel: Religion in Israel and Palestine

Reflection on Panel: Religion in Israel and Palestine

My final capstone project panel took place last Wednesday, and although I’m sad that it's over, I’m so happy to have been involved in such an informative event. The three speakers whom we secured, Bishop John Taylor, Marium Mohiuddin, and Eliana Kaya, were amazing, and they brought such perspective and openness to a new and potentially contentious conversation at Poly. In my first question, I asked each speaker to talk about their personal connections to the land of Israel/Palestine, whether that connection be religious, historical, or community-based. Although I knew that different religions have similar religious and historical connections to the history of Israel/Palestine, I was surprised when each of the speakers opened up about personal anecdotes that I deeply connected with. Bishop Taylor opened with an anecdote about the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. He spoke about the chaos of the church in and of itself and how the beauty and hectic nature of the church was a representation of his connection with the land. Marium and Eliana spoke after Bishop Taylor, and they both talked about having complicated and personally confusing relationships with the land of Israel. Marium spoke about grappling with her religious identity but still being completely in awe when she visited the grave of Abraham in Hebron. Even though I haven’t been to the side of Hebron that houses Abraham’s grave, I experienced a similar feeling of awe and intensity during my visits to the Kotel (Western Wall). Afterwards, Eliana spoke about wrestling with her own religious and national identity as a Jewish Israeli-American. Eliana taught the audience a piece of Torah (the Hebrew bible) with a story about the renaming of Yaacov. In the Torah, Yaacov has a dream that he wrestles with G-d, and he wakes up with physical evidence of this dream. After this point, Yaacov is renamed Israel, which means: the one who wrestled with G-d. Eliana explained how this Torah story can be a representation of her relationship with Judaism and with Israel, as she, too, wrestles with her own Jewish identity and with the ideas of the tradition she grew up in. The beauty in this, though, is that the basis of the very tradition that we wrestle with teaches us to wrestle. This story is also one that I was taught growing up, and it is a story I deeply connect with. In the end, I really appreciated how each of the panelists spoke about their personal experiences and connections with Israel/Palestine and with religion but also acknowledged the larger geopolitical predicaments of the Middle East. The question of if this panel would be political and if so, how political it would be was one that really stumped me during the planning process. I didn’t want to censor panelists who might have something to say about the politics of Israel, but I also really wanted to bring a new perspective on religion and culture in the region to the Poly community; I didn’t want discussion of politics to diminish or invalidate the conversation about religion and cultural coexistence. I really couldn’t figure out how to frame the panel in a way that both acknowledged geopolitical realities of the region while also bringing a valid perspective on the cultures and religions of Israel/Palestine; even though this was a personal predicament for me, I think the panelists balanced this difficulty perfectly. They spoke to the audience about both valid realities, and I think the audience gained more from the experience because of it. I’m so proud to have brought such articulate and graceful speakers to the Poly community, and I’m happy that many audience members seem to have taken something away from the experience.