Posted by Native Carolinian (other posts) on December 22, 2017 at 12:13:51 Previous Next
Seeing as we have a multi-faith crew here, Happy December. I have been visiting the site off and on for a while in the last few months and am happy to see people being themselves and such. I am happy to see that there are new people posting and glad to see people from Russia on board here too.
I want to give a shout out to Don in Israel and say I am happy that you are having a good time in Israel and that you are enjoying the Holy Land. I really appreciated the general invitation to join you in Israel because depending on how long standing that is, I may end up taking you up on that. It would help me as a Orthodox Christian because it would allow me to have a base from which to jump off in order to get to the sites I would want to see.
I am not so sure about doing synagogue stuff without permission of an Orthodox Priest or Bishop, but I would enjoy getting to know the local area from your perspective. I enjoy "Jewish" food like latkes and Hammantaschens since I hung out with the Hillel group at college. I learned how to cook Kosher and was kind of off and on with a lady who was part of the Hillel, so I have gotten to see some Jewish life from the close up without being Jewish myself.
Hitting up Haifa and the Med. would be fun. I keep watching the developments with the move of the U.S. Embassy from Tel-Aviv-Yafo to Jerusalem. I hope that Israel does not get invaded when and if the Trump administration moves the Embassy. The U.N. resolution against the U.S. and Israel yesterday was disheartening. Let's hope there is not another intifada with the move.
One interesting connection between the Cherokee and the Jews is that there appears to have been Jewish people among the Cherokee early on in the history of the Jewish presence in North America. Check out People of One Fire and see what you think. It is a web-site run by an unenrolled Muscogee man. He points out that cultural things seem to be similar between Jewish people and Cherokee people in some cases. Whether there is a strong case for the Cherokee giving refuge to the Jewish people or not when the Jewish people were fleeing the effects of the Inquisition in Spain, is a question, but it is an interesting thing to check out nonetheless. I am an unenrolled person but I speak Cherokee as one of my first languages and I would be fascinated to see Israel from a Hebrew's perspective.
If this sort of thing does come up in the future, I would want to set-up some kind of payment for the stay and food if that were part of the visit. I would also want to make sure that you would be comfortable with Orthodox Christian items being in your home such as icons or books. I wear a cross like most Orthodox Christians do and I do not know if that would be offensive to you or not. I usually wear it under the clothing but for events like swimming, the cross would probably be seen if a shirt were not worn. If you needed help around the house or something like that while I were there, then that would be fine if you wanted to do in kind payment or something like that. Being that I am culturally American Indian, doing in kind trades and stuff like that is normal for me, just to put that out there.
Hope everyone is having a good December.