Letters - 12 September 2014
From Yearly Meeting Gathering to Bryant & May
Expulsion versus running for your life
I greatly appreciated Henriette Al-Khouri’s letter (29 August). It was a reminder that under the Muslim rulers of Spain, and, after the expulsion of the Spanish Jews in 1492 by the Christians, under the Ottoman empire, Jewish and Christian life flourished under a tolerant and benevolent rule as long as Jews and Christians accepted a slightly unequal civil status. For Jews this was far better than in Christian realms until the 1800s.
The 800,000 Jews who fled the Muslim-governed countries of the Middle East after the establishment of Israel did, indeed, do so for personal reasons – fear of the pogroms and persecution that ended that tolerance: the same as the Palestinians who fled Israel. In a Middle East where Christians (including, in some cases, Christian Palestinians) are now routinely persecuted as well as Jews, is it really mostly up to the West and Israel to find a just and lasting solution to the religious conflict? Do Palestinians have such a small role?
Where are the Quaker voices supporting the Chris-tians of Syria and Iraq? Where will they live now that they have been expelled like the Spanish Jews in 1492? Are they not innocent civilians worthy of a Quaker concern? Shouldn’t we urge the British government to take some in as we did for Jewish children during the Kindertransport and as the Sultan did for Spanish Jews?
David Hickok
Yearly Meeting Gathering (YMG)
Geoff Pilliner (29 August) is right to raise the question of the financial cost of YMG, both for Britain Yearly Meeting and for individual Friends attending it (not to mention the cost in time and effort for those organising it). Cost was one reason why I did not go to either Canterbury or Bath.
But, there were other reasons, too, and these also apply to Yearly Meetings (YMs) at Friends House. I found YM 2012 and 2013 rushed and stressful, the programme overloaded, with no major decisions made. All this will have more effect on those of us with disabilities (I am partially sighted), but I think many non-disabled Friends will have had difficulties, too.
One solution, though a partial one, might be to return to the practice of holding a separate Summer Gathering, leaving Yearly Meeting to focus on discerning significant ways forward (hopefully with routine business kept to a minimum).
We need, too, to reflect more generally on our struc-tures and Business Meetings, as Ben Pink Dandelion has urged us to do. I expect to be attending the weekend course on ‘Decluttering Quakers’ at Woodbrooke later this autumn and hope others will also do so.
Judith Smith
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