The Jew and the Lotus

So I started this book, The Jew and the Lotus, about how a group of Jews of different denominations participated in dialogue with the Dalai Lama about the similarities and differences of the history and practices of Judaism and Buddhism. As a JuBu myself (yes, it’s a real-ish term), I can identify with how the two religions complement each other, at least spiritually. I have been surprised and delighted to read about just how similar are the philosophies of Buddhism and Jewish mysticism. It’s like they were once the same thing, back in the beginning of religion.

However, I have beef. Not with the main subject of the book, that’s all fine and dandy. My problem with it is how the author describes the Third World. The first chunk of the book is devoted to his journey to Dharamsala, where the dialogue was to take place. He does the typical “everyone is so poor, everything is do dirty, these people deserve our pity,” that is so common in Western coverage of poverty. He describes the hordes of beggars following him around Delhi, shamelessly shoving babies in his face to demonstrate their need. He dwells on the indecency of the slums and his inability to keep his emotions in check in the face of such desolation. These things are bad, yes. But what he writes in his own ignorance is that the true poor, the ones who are truly desperate and left with nothing, are too busy doing the worst jobs available to have time to beg on the street. Anyone who has spent any time in India would know that the shameless beggers in Delhi should be ignored. They know you’re foreign, they know you have money, and they know you’re easy. The author of “The Jew and the Lotus” is just contributing to the canon of Third World sensationalism that has exaggerated and skewed the common perception of the world outside the West. It’s frustrating seeing things so blatantly misrepresented in a vicious cycle of best-seller poverty-pity.

Let’s continue my rant to include Sub-Saharan Africa. Dirt, flies, malnourished children, poverty, beggars, etc. That’s what you see on TV, especially those infomercials. That’s what you read about in magazines and books like Three Cups of Tea, which glorify the poverty outside of our cushy First World empire. Give money here to this NGO, give money here to this fund. Well, you all know my views on foreign aid and how it’s keeping places like Malawi down. But the thing is, these people have been surviving just fine for much longer than we have. Yeah, they have less money and less education and more AIDS, room for improvment. But they aren’t dirty, they know how to keep the flies off their faces and their food. Being broke doesn’t have the same stigma or pose the same challenges as it does in America. They’ll still eat, they’ll still have everything they need. They have almost zero waste because they actually recycle, and creatively. Few things are actually wasted here (cow poop will soon be NOT wasted!). They are better off than us in a lot of areas of life. That’s true in Indian-India, that’s true in Tibetan-India, and that’s true here, in Africa. Of course, I’m generalizing. This is how it is most of the time. There are times, like the famine here ten years ago, that truly are horrendous. The droughts in West Africa which could turn into wide-spread famine, the war in Somalia. These are legitimately terrible things. But the pictures and stories of beggars and children sitting in front of mud huts? No. Mud huts are totally fine and cozy. I’m rather fond of them. And so, it is our own egotism and marketing that when we think of Africa we think of abject poverty. It’s not so. Last night, the BBC reminded me that Malawi is one of the poorest countries in Africa. They had to remind me. Malawi makes it work, they’ve been making it work for a good long time.