Pompeii, Jews, and Christians

(Computer-generated image found on answers.com)

Several years ago our family visited Pompeii, where I found one of the coolest t-shirts I have ever seen. I didn't purchase it, because it was about 110 degrees outside and I didn't want to carry one more thing around all day than I already had in my bag. I figured I'd buy it on the way out. What I didn't know was that there are several entrances to Pompeii, and that we would end up leaving from the one at the bottom of the hill at the end of the day. No way was I trudging all the way back up for a t-shirt.

A few years later, one of the Lovely Daughter's teachers went to Pompeii, and I asked her to bring back a t-shirt for me. She forgot.

Last year, one of my ninth grade students in the Orthdox Jewish school in which I taught for the past six years mentioned that she had been to Pompeii over the summer. "And where is my t-shirt?" I demanded. She looked utterly confused. "I taught you in eighth grade, too, and I can't believe you didn't consult me before you headed off for Pompeii!"

"I'll get you a t-shirt, Ms. Gannet!" cried one of the other girls. "I'm going to Pompeii next summer!"

I stopped by my former stomping grounds today.

I got lots and lots of hugs and many updates.

I got to have a lengthy discussion with one of the rabbis about a question I had asked last year: whether his artist wife could create a piece of work for me, a Protestant, as a gift for a Catholic priest, if such work incorporated words from Christian scripture. He had e-mailed a rabbi in New York, who had finally responded (in English) and attached several other comments (in Hebrew). We were right back where we were a few months ago, discussing the arguments made by some Jews that Christianity is a an idolatrous religion, similar arguments made by Muslims with respect to both Christianity and Judaism, and whether "worship" and "advancement of a belief" are the same thing or not (it depends, of course).

I learned that there is a problem at the moment between Israel and Syria.

I got to hear about a colleague's studies in Israel over the summer.

And I got a Pompeii t-shirt from a fifteen-year-old girl who thought of me when she was far across the ocean.

"Yes," she said, "my mom thought I was crazy."