Jain Spirit 2005 09 No23

Author(s): Jain Spirit UK
Publisher: UK Young Jains

Page 78

INTERFAITH
BOY
Writer and activist TEDDY MILLER describes how love, ahimsa, activism and anekantvada penetrated his inter-faith, interethnic upbringing
just as much of a lie today as it was the day when the Romans, the ITALIANS, Toby, killed their God."
um, who is God and why is he dead?" my brother asked one morning at the kitchen
table. "What kind of question is that? Who have you been talking to at school?" my mum replied, spatula in hand. "Diego says God was killed by Jews. He said that means Jews are bad people." My mum turned off the heat beneath the pancakes and looked my brother right in the eyes. I will never forget what she said. "Toby, you tell Diego that people have been spreading that lie about our people for a thousand years. And it's
What was remarkable about mum's debunking anti-Semitism over breakfast was not just the implication that the Italians were responsible for the death of Jesus, but that we belonged to the Jewish Diaspora. You see, mum is Vietnamese, and dad grew up in a WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) neighbourhood so intolerant that they restricted ownership to non-Jews. Not too many people can claim to have grown up in an Animist/Jewish/ Buddhist/Christian Scientist/Trotskyite/ WASP household. Then again, not too many people grew up in a family that was weird by Berkeley, CA, standards. If California is the wackiest of the coastal fringe states, then my hometown of Berkeley is the place that zigs while everyone else zags.
WWW.IAINSPIRIT.COM