"I have a lot to learn from you"

I’ve been in Dakar a couple of days now and we just met the 11 Senegalese students who are studying with us. It’s truly incredible that we’re going to get the chance to learn side by side with them about religion and decolonization in their country. Not only is it incredible that we’re going to learn with them, but it’s even more so that we’re going to learn from them. I am truly humbled by this experience and never thought that someone from this beautiful country would ever tell me that the favor of learning can be returned.

I was in a cab with one of the Senegalese students, Fatima, and we were talking about the Quran and how when she studies it, she has to study with interpretations by various scholars and religious leaders. As she said this, I was thinking how similar that is to Jewish texts where they don’t really mean anything when studied without interpretations. It was at this moment that the little Talmud fairy inside me was itching to come out and where I could no longer hide my Jewish identity.

I wasn’t really hiding it up until this point, but it wasn’t something I told people until they got to know me a bit more. I don’t know why I kept inside the fact that I’m Jewish or that I study at the Jewish Theological Seminary. I think it’s an unconscious effort to protect myself from stereotypes and judgements like those made in the states.

But in this cab, sitting next to a religious Muslim woman who I barely knew, I decided to go for it because by hiding my identity from her, I was playing into the very cruel stereotypes I was afraid of. So I tell her “It’s the same thing with the Jewish bible, like you have to study them alongside the interpretations made by scholars.” Immediately her face lit up with a smile and she said, “You’re Jewish? Wow, I’m so happy to meet you I’ve always wanted to meet a Jew. You’re the first one I’ve ever met.”

I was truly shook. I’ve never been the first Jew someone has ever met, let alone the only Jew out of 20 people. I honestly felt isolated before this conversation with Fatima because I felt like I couldn’t relate to anyone about a big part of my identity. But here I was talking about religious texts which are so similar (Fatima even told me that Moses’ name is mentioned more than any of the prophets) with a woman who values her religious identity like I do.

What shook me even more was when she later said to me “I have a lot to learn from you.” What? How could she learn from me when I’m just this ignorant American trying to absorb and learn from her culture? But then she told me that there’s so much she wants to know about Judaism and she finally has someone to ask. Her excitement inspired me to channel my faith and religion, something I’ve been pushing away for a while. She showed me that there’s something so beautiful about our two faiths that connected us on a deeper level.

So yes, I plan on teaching her what I know but boy do I have so much to learn from her.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/8b7ecb_f3249768a77246ef8e0af58eb5cafd9c/360p/mp4/file.mp4