Sometimes we just can’t see our lives as they are. I always take the shower as my central example. What is good about a shower? It comes from above and washes you from the top down, when you are usually dirty from the bottom up. My uncle Yitzak built showers that sprayed from all different directions, all around you, and that makes so much more sense to me. But no one seems to criticize American plumbing.
Except for me – i am a critical outsider. So I have all kinds of perspectives on things Americans take for granted as being the only way.
Here’s a different example. Friends of mine here are convinced that the only way to make peace in the middle east is to bring Israel to its knees with a boycott. The Arabs, they tell me, don’t want to talk to Israel any more because they are so arrogant and evil. Tell me, bringing Israel to its knees will make them want to talk to us? I am more and more convinced that the only way to make some sort of peace is to bring people together not apart, that no matter what legal or political decision is made, it will only work when people respect one another.
Recent Comments