Article content

Tovey was a boy in my first grade class. I remember him distinctly because he was the first person I ever identified as being Jewish, or as my father would say in Arabic, “yahudi.”

Growing up with a family from the Middle East meant I heard a lot about Jewish people within the context of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. As a child, I had no idea what any of the discussions happening around me meant, just that there was a distinctly different people from us involved in significant conflict somewhere far away that also involved fellow Muslims and Christians.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Opinion: Standing in solidarity with Jewish communities Back to video

It was not a favourable first impression.

Yet, at the same time, I had also been taught to fully respect people of other faiths, or of no faith at all. I was taught to view the Jewish and Christian communities as “People of the Book,” or those whose communities had received particular sacred texts. I would become friends with Tovey and later, Sarah in the third grade.