Some Thoughts about Faith, Tradition and Identity

 

Yesterday, fellow blogger Yorkshire Pudding published a blog post entitled "Jews" - related to a recent tragic attack outside a synagogue in Manchester, in which two Jewish people were killed and three left in a serious condition after a car ramming and stabbing attack. 

YP asks some questions, like:  "How can it be that someone who is a native born citizen of Great Britain [or some other country] may self-define more eagerly through their religious heritage than through their nationality?" and "If you were born into a Jewish family in another land - what is your relationship with the state of Israel and [---] why should it be more intense than a Christian's relationship with The Holy Land?" and  "[One Jewish woman declared] that she would now have to emigrate from this country where she was born and raised and I thought - why?" (For the full context, I recommend that you read the whole post.)

Very complex issues, not easily answered, and I certainly can't claim to be an expert on any of it. But it did trigger some thoughts for me, and also a memory from my childhood. Because of the complexity, I chose to write my thoughts down in a separate text document first, before sending a comment to YP's blog. And on second thought, I decided to share it here on my own blog as well. (If nothing else, that will make it easier for myself to re-find it later, if I should want to.)

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I'd say it's all deeply rooted in history and inherited traditions even more than in “faith” – and that the bigger question is why some people still persecute others because of their origin (which is really something that none of us have chosen ourselves). 

I'd also say that a Christian's relationship with the “Holy Land” is totally different because the Christian tradition from start was to spread their faith to the whole world. (Jesus told his disciples to “go and make disciples of all nations” Matthew 28:19) Jewish history on the other hand goes back to nomad times long before they had a country of their own to begin with. I think a bigger question is why others are still persecuting Jews living elsewhere than in Israel. Considering the history of how the Jews were persecuted under the Nazi regime in Germany back in the 1930s/40s, I'm not surprised at all if a single terrorist attack anywhere in modern times still causes panic among people of Jewish heritage, whether they're very religious or not. 

I think my own first awareness of "different" religious beliefs/traditions was when I was about 10 or 11 years old (i.e. in the mid 1960s). We got a new boy in my class in school, who was Jewish (born somewhere in Eastern Europe). Back in those days we were all still going to school half days on Saturdays here in Sweden. We were also still taught “Christianity” rather than “Religion”, and each morning started with singing a psalm, and prayers were said before going to lunch. But unlike the rest of us, this new Jewish boy was excused from attending school on Saturdays (the Jewish Sabbath). And our teacher took some time to explain the difference in traditions to us. I suppose it probably made us a bit jealous that this boy got more “time off” from school than the rest of us – but as far as I can remember, we came to just accept it as a fact. (Or at least I did.) 

In 1968, the same year I started  “secondary school” (at age 13), no school on Saturdays was introduced nation wide, so then that wasn't an issue any more. And Christianity was replaced by Religion on the curriculum - aiming to give us all a bit more insight into different traditions. (I'm not trying to make out that this solved all problems, though!!) 

For my own part, I do identify myself as Christian. (I had a brief period of regarding myself as atheist in my early teens, but then gave that up!) 

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PS. "On third thought" it strikes me that there are actually quite a few other people(s) around the world too being (or having been) persecuted for either religious or political reasons, and forced to live with "split identities" - as in not always finding it easy to know whether to identify oneself primarily according to one's religious faith - or lack of it - or one's country of "origin" vs where one happens to have ended up (by choice or by chance!) later in life...