Dalia and the black group

For the past few months I've been very slowly reading a narrative non-fiction book called The Lemon Tree. It tells the history of the part of the Middle East that has caused the most conflict at least in my parents' lifetime through the stories of two families, one Jewish and one Arab.

I'm not even half way through the book yet - it's only May 1967 in the story - but already I'm beginning to understand the complexity of the issues that surround the entire area of Palestine/Israel.

The parts of the story that have stuck with me the most have been those that have involved individuals who were willing to stand up for the oppressed.

The first took place in Bulgaria during WWII. If you don't know the names Dimitar Peshev, Metropolitan Stefan, and Bishop Kiril, I encourage you to look them up. A number of events and people working individually ultimately led to thousands of Bulgarian Jews being saved during the Holocaust.

Just yesterday I came upon another similar story, but on a much smaller scale. The best I can do is to quote it here:

One day in the spring of 1957, Dalia was playing with her girlfriends after school. They were at a concrete shelter in Ramla, the same claustrophobic bunker where Dalia and her schoolmates had practiced air raid drills during the recent Suez crisis. Most of Dalia's friends had been lighter-skinned girls from Europe. But recently a new wave of olive- and brown-skinned Jewish children had come to Israel from the Arab countries, including many from Iraq, Egypt, and Yemen. No longer welcome to live in the Arab world, the newspapers reported, these 'Oriental Jews' (also known as Sephardim or mizrahi) were immigrating to Israel, which would grant them the safe haven it offered to every Jew. Among many of Dalia’s classmates, however, there was a sense that the dark-skinned schoolmates were 'bringing the class down.' They were considered dirty and carriers of lice....

Still, Dalia was stunned, she would recall later, when her Polish friend stood atop the concrete shelter and, hands on hips, declared her intent to expel the darker, Oriental Jews from their play group. There would now be two competing groups among the girls: a 'black group' - the cherniti, the schwarzes - and a 'white group'. The other European girls murmured their assent. The 'white group' would be made up of only the lighter-skinned Ashkenazi, plus Dalia and the other Bulgarians....

The Polish girl picked up a stone and threw it at a dark-skinned classmate. Other lighter-skinned girls followed. Dalia stepped forward. 'Where did you say you came from?' she asked the Ashkenazi girls. 'And remind me what happened to the Jews there?' She paused. 'Of all people who should know better,' she said. 'Of all people who should know how not to treat someone badly just because they are different. If you are going to have a black group and a white group', Dalia announced, 'then I am going with the black group.' The issues never rose again among her classmates.

The Lemon Tree by Sandy Tolan, pp. 184-185

Dalia, a Bulgarian Jew whose family had immigrated to Israel after the War had learned from her past. All the kids in the story were children of Holocaust survivors, but only one was willing to point out the shame in the segregation and oppression suggested by the Polish girl. Interestingly, the one who stood up for the oppressed came from an oppressed people who were shown grace. She then showed the same grace to the 'black group'.

This "pay it forward" mentality is not always the case, of course. If it were, there would have been no need for that story about the man who was forgiven a great debt and then demanded his small debt be paid. You know the one I'm talking about. But I like to think that if I were part of this story I'd be Dalia, and not one of the other light-skinned girls. But am I?