Two Encounters of Tel Aviv Youth Interfaith Encounter - on 16th & 30th March:

March 16th: Marriage

The first encounter of the new semester was dedicated to marriage.

In Islam – marriage are considered half of the religion: all commandments are half of the religion and marriage is the second half.

In Judaism too: a whole human being is only a make and female together while each of them alone is only half a person. Also: when a person gets married all his sins are forgiven and that is the reason for the custom to say the Yom Kippur confession before marriage.

We heard about the marriage process in the Muslim society in the north. A relative of the potential groom first introduces the idea to the family of the bride who, if convinced, invited him for coffee. If they are satisfied with him – a meeting is called with his immediate family who asks officially for the marriage and then the conditions are discussed and agreed. The next stage is a big meeting with all elders of both families, the ceremonial request and the official engagement. Then comes the marriage contract with the Sheikh – which includes the payments for the bride's family before marriage and the payment to the woman in the case of divorce – after which they are religiously married. The final stage is the big marriage celebration after which the couple moves to leave together.


March 30th

Most of the regular participants could not come to this encounter so instead of talking about divorce, as we planned, we had an intimate conversation about our personal paths that led us to be involved in interfaith encounter in general and in this group in particular.

This conversation took us to touch on other issues, such as the belief in God and its nature in the three religions and the different ways in which each religion sees the other religions – in different texts, in different times in history and in different stages of our own personal evolvement.

The next encounter will take place on May 4th when we will host two speakers from a religious group in Turkey who will speak about the attitude of Islam towards Judaism.



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