When To Speak Up

I went to this thing tonight at the church - it was supposed to be a place to learn about Judaism in light of the fact that we have many Jews living in our neighbourhood.

It was presented by someone who did not have first hand knowledge about Judaism but had been selected because of his role in the denomination to be a presenter.

The teaching process was that rather than tell us about Judaism we were to reflect in groups what we already knew about Judaism. The questions were:

practices and observations
similarities and differences between Judaism and Christianity
what is important to Jewish people

Rather then be taught these things we reflected on them in a group setting. I thought I knew very little about Judaism so was interested in learning - instead I received a hodge podge of individual thoughts - some of them very negative and many of them totally out of context.

I heard so many disrespectful things at my table that I could not remain silent - yet that seems to be the preferred response. Stay silent, be gracious. This frustrates me I have been criticized before for being too vocal so I'm trying to be quiet.

I wasn't raised this way - I was raised to challenge ignorance, not to condemn the speaker but to challenge the thinking. I was raised that to let people speak poorly of another group without facts or in context is racism and that it can not go unchallenged.

That the church would choose to let people say whatever they think about Judaism rather than teach us about Judaism is a strange choice. Can there be anything less useful then a bunch of Christians sitting around talking about something we know nothing about? And this isn't the first time - I sat through a session where the parishioner chosen to speak on an issue told us we needed to be very cautious because the Muslims are "infiltrating" Canada - that they are coming here to take over our beliefs (Christian) and to make Canada Muslim. I was angry at this - I have worked with Muslims who have been so grateful to come to Canada and they never pushed their beliefs on me but always took the time to explain their practices if asked.

So now I am torn, I really think that the discussion was unfit for outsiders to hear - I would have been very embarassed if a non-Christian or Jew was sitting in our discussion because we really came off showing our ignorance without learning from it. But when I say things I get the "look". We are taking another stab at Islam next week - I don't know whether to avoid it or go.