Be aware the similarities between Easter, Passover, and Ramadan. The obvious is the sharing of a meal along with household and buddies. What higher approach for individuals to get to higher know and perceive one another than to speak over dinner.
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“That which unites us is greater than that which divides us.” Now we have all heard this saying earlier than, in a technique or one other, and although we could take it as a right, there’s a lot knowledge in that adage.
As New Yorkers, we frequently don’t notice simply how a lot commonality all of us share, particularly relating to celebrating one another’s faiths. At no time of the yr is that this extra obvious than in spring, when the world’s main religions every observe a renewal of spirit in their very own approach.
Tonight, for example, Jewish New Yorkers will collect across the dinner desk for the Seder on the primary evening of Passover. Just a few days later, on Easter Sunday, Christians will break bread collectively to have fun the resurrection of Jesus Christ. (Orthodox Christians will have fun Easter per week later, on April 12.)
Passover commemorates the liberation of the Jewish individuals from their captors in Egypt, who enslaved them. Easter celebrates what many Christians consider is the second of liberation from non secular demise.
Each holidays had been preceded this yr by the observance of Ramadan within the Muslim group, which marks the primary revelation of the Quran. For weeks, Muslim New Yorkers fasted and prayed from dawn to sundown, then got here collectively for Iftar dinners to nourish their our bodies and souls.
Be aware the similarities between Easter, Passover, and Ramadan. The obvious is the sharing of a meal along with household and buddies. What higher approach for individuals to get to higher know and perceive one another than to speak over dinner.
However past meals, there’s the frequent celebration of freedom and non secular renewal between the faiths. This celebration is preceded or accompanied by intervals of fasting and different types of sacrifice, with the intention of serving to all who observe higher recognize and perceive the which means of those holy days.
And that’s solely a fraction of the better commonalities shared among the many Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths, all of which had been based within the Center East centuries in the past. All three faiths consider within the frequent rules of compassion, charity, and justice. In addition they every espouse the “golden rule” of “doing unto others that which you would have done unto you.”
How fantastic it’s that we dwell in a metropolis the place so many individuals share these faiths and values. We ought to acknowledge and have fun what all of us share as New Yorkers, and let nobody let our variations tear us asunder.
The adage is certainly true: That which unites us is larger than that which divides us.
A joyous Passover and Easter to you and your households.
