Peacemaking

Fasting

In the liturgy for Ash Wednesday in the Episcopal Church’s Book of Common Prayer, the people are invited “to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.”

In Islam, the people are called into a period of spiritual renewal during the month of Ramadan. From sunrise to sunset Muslims are called to fast from food, drink, and some varieties of pleasurable activity, and from evil thoughts and desires.

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus taught the disciples that “whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting:  Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.  But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face….”

Being illiterate in Arabic, I don’t know the words the people might hear in their mosques in preparation for and during Ramadan.  I can tell you what I sense on the streets of Hebron’s Old City.  And pancakes figure into it.

I grew up with pancake suppers on Shrove Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday, when we stuffed ourselves with pancakes and sausage as we “prepared” for the fasting of Lent.  For the last few years, we’ve had a talent show in my parish after we’ve finished off the pancakes, a time of laughter and tears, of joy in the sharing of parishioners’ gifts and talents with our parish community.

The people of the Old City grow up with trays and tables of pancakes, qataayif, usually on Fridays, which are snatched up by the men coming from noon prayers to take home to their families on their weekly holy day.  But in Ramadan, the pancakes are out there every day, purchased in the afternoon to take home for the break fast meal around sunset.  On the street the men pour the batter onto big gas-powered griddles, brown them on one side, slip the spatula underneath and gracefully toss them onto a quilt-covered table.  (I’ve never seen them miss.)  Boys line the qataayif up in rows, and count them out to be weighed and wrapped in paper by young men for the purchasers to carry home.

On the streets, there is a sense of joy I’ve not seen during the rest of the year.  The men greet one another with great pleasure, amidst handshakes, kisses on the cheek, and embraces.  Sometimes the streets are so crowded it’s hard to move forward.

All this is in the midst of the nearly forty-year long Israeli military occupation, a boycott by the West of the democratically-elected Hamas government, a strict school strike to continue until the Palestinian teachers are paid, and economic deprivation of much of the population.

Friday 6 October was the thirty-third anniversary of the war called Yom Kippur by the Israeli Jewish community and Ramadan by the Arab community.  Saturday 7 October was the thirteenth anniversary of Baruch Goldstein’s massacre of twenty-nine Muslims at prayer in the Ibrahimi Mosque. 

During this Ramadan, I am thankful for and blessed by the joy I see in the Palestinian community in the midst of so much adversity.

Ramadan kareem (sweet Ramadan)!

Hebron
9 October 2006

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