Keeping the Promise: A Journey to Jerusalem

A few thousand years ago a man named Moses, with plagues and miracles in hand, made a promise. He took a people through a desert, parted a sea, climbed a great mountain, and delivered a set of rules to live by. Not "the rules" as in dating guidelines, but nevertheless useful information.

In May, I visited my son in Israel with my Jamaican girlfriend, Daedrian McNaughton. My son was raised Catholic. He went to Catholic school from PK3 to eighth grade; he received his baptism. He went to church with his Catholic mom. I was born Jewish but traded it away at an early age. I never cared much for any tales where virgins were not sacrificed. I guess I was born to live in Miami.

My son decided, against my self-serving inclinations, to go to Israel to serve a largely Muslim group of African refugees called Eritreans. He tried to get them asylum, to provide education and job opportunities for them in Israel. My Catholic son decided to become a citizen of Israel. He found a Rabbi to write him a letter. He claimed his Jewishness by association to me. But of course my son does not intellectually embrace any religion, nor do I. This is the Middle East — nothing makes sense.

I went to Jerusalem for two days. Young men and women not old enough to rave at Space carried automatic weapons while eating their hummus. No one was alarmed, no one stared or seemed on edge. This is the Middle East and you need a grenade launcher to even get a head turn.

The people of this country all seemed very happy — Jews, Muslims, and Christians alike. I have felt more tension in SoBe waiting to get into LIV.

I went to the Muslim section of Jerusalem and got caught in a rush to pray at the Dome of the Rock. Thousands of Muslims surrounded me, a human mass moving forward in the market. I got a little nervous for my son, me, and the Jamaican. An old Muslim man must have sensed my unrest and in a visual gesture which was unmistakable, motioned: all is good. There is nothing to worry about.

I traveled some of the countryside and saw lush swaths of land with trees and vegetables. The Israeli people planted millions of trees, made ugliness beautiful. The buildings and cars were not luxurious by Miami standards. Yet, the sense of things was prosperity and contentment. Israel's only natural resource is its people, and it is a good one.

The Middle East is a monument to man's weakness, to the fact we have not come far enough to be worthy of God's praise. The Middle East is a place where all people are truly the same, where everyone is a son or daughter of Abraham. In my casual interactions with Muslims and Jews I could not tell much difference aside from some funky clothes and haircuts. People need to check their spiritual DNA — sorry, but we are all brothers and sisters, even the idiots.

The two-state solution is with two states of minds. It is the solution for all hate in the world, all divisions and all misunderstandings. We can't hate what we love. When we treat one another as equal humans guided by the principle of tolerance and affection, praising god by war, words, or funny gestures becomes obsolete.

By: Dr. Mark S. Goodman