By: Michael Zank

On the occasion of the beginning of the Muslim month of fasting, here are two stories. More precisely, one story, and one anecdote.

The first story comes from a Saudi student of mine who told it in a class on Jerusalem. When he first attended boarding school, here in New England, Ramadan rolled around and his roommate asked him how he was doing. He said, well, the first days are always the hardest. We have something similar in my religion, the roommate said sympathetically. Wait, what? What is your religion. I am Jewish.

My student continues the story as follows. We had always learned that Jews are bad people and enemies of the Prophet, may his name be exalted. School books in Saudi (until 2014) vilified Jews and Israelis all the time. (The student was writing a paper for the course that described all this in detail. He wanted to find out whether the reform of Saudi school books has had an impact on students’ attitudes toward Jews and Israeli citizens.) In any case, since he had been taught that Jews were horrible people he immediately called his father and said: Father, my room mate is Jewish! What should I do? — His father said: Why? Is he nice? — Yes — Do you like him? — Yes. — So what’s the problem?

The second story or anecdote is this. When I was a student at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, many moons ago, I lived in El Hardoub, then a small village on the eastern slope of Mt. Olives, on the trail to El Azariyeh, the place where Jesus stayed with his friends Mary and Martha. When Ramadan came around we were awoken by the drummer who walked around at 4 am, an hour before sunrise, to wake up Muslims so they could get up and eat. When I looked out — by mid-month this daily ritual coincided with the full moon — I caught a glimpse of the Judean desert, with the echoing sound of the drum and the call to rise, and I understood the beauty and blessing of Ramadan.

Ramadan kareem everyone!