The death of John Paul the second this month is a right time to write about religion in Canada. Religion is a big minefield and people don’t talk about it much. It is supposed to be something private, none of the business of others and definitely not the business of the state, unlike countries in the Middle East. Most Canadians believe in god. Why not? And if others practice religion in a different way they have no problem with that. Churches serve not only for theological purposes, but also function as community centers, offering lessons for children (e.g. in math) and hosting musical events (especially choirs). Canada is mostly white-protestant, but downtown Toronto is very multicultural and diverse. Toronto for anthropologists is like the Galapagos for biologists. Within a radius of two kilometers from my place, there are about 10 churches. Among the churches in the neighborhood are Lutheran, Anglican, Korean, Philippine, Russian orthodox, not to mention a Bahai and Buddhist centers and several synagogues. One of the churches has a big iron bell ringing every hour that I hear inside my house. Montreal is no different. In a speech after visiting Montreal
Mark Twain said:
"This is the first time I was ever in a city where you couldn't throw a brick without breaking a church window. Yet I was told that you were going to build one more. I said the scheme is good, but where are you going to find room? They said, we will build it on top of another church and use an elevator. This shows that the gift of lying is not yet dead in the land".
In my last year at Tel-Aviv University there was a huge debate whether the university should build a synagogue. Many people claimed a synagogue doesn’t fit in an academic and scientific institution. Here the university is much older, and part of it started for religion studies. There is a very nice Trinity College inside the university and St. Michael College is for students to live in Christian atmosphere. There is even a medium-size room in the computer science building that serves as a mosque.
Compared to Judaism, the number of streams in Christianity is much higher. In fact, from their point of view all Jewish are the same and Judaism is like any other church. An interesting question is how so many different beliefs can live in the same place in peace. The reason is that there is no territorial conflict. There is enough land in Canada for everyone, and there are no holly places to fight on.
Another interesting aspect is how religion is integrated with the English language. For example, I met someone named "Chris" (short of "Christian") who is not religious at all. There are some expressions without a secular equivalent. When someone coughs, they say “bless you”. You can here “Oh my god” even from Chinese, most of them have no gods. Even more intriguing, you can here a Jew crying "Jesus!" which means "I don’t believe it!".
Not only John Paul the second died this month, but also former president Weizmann the second, who became the Air-Force commander at age 34. Apparently with no computers the Air-Force was much easier to manage. In tribute to Weizmann, I recommend reading
this diary,
which is not only a remarkable testimony but also written in a very old Israel Air-Force pilots’ style. Have faith,
