Marta365: Peace Sign of a different sort

[martasfic]

The cool thing about taking pictures is I notice things I just walk by otherwise. Case in point:





This is a little pole, about shoulder-high on me. On one side it says "May peace prevail on earth." And then it says it again - in Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew, and Spanish. It has a lovely multicultural look to it, but the inclusion of the Spanish really made me sit up and notice because that's a different type of peace than most people think about. Not peace from war, but peace from economic injustice, peace from being named a not-legal person, and peace from split families and bad stereotypes. Sometimes my school does multiculturalism okay after all.

Not so sure about the inclusion of Hebrew. What exactly does it bring to the table that isn't covered by Aramaic and the English? Perhaps I'm being a dunderhead, but its inclusion just struck me as... odd. Almost like it was pandering. Ah, well, it's a lovely thought-provoking monument in any case.

Comments

[aliana1.livejournal.com]

Not so sure about the inclusion of Hebrew.

Hmm, is your school in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood? Because Hebrew, English, Russian and Arabic are the four main languages of Israel, which is of course a conflict area. Another reason might be that Hebrew and Arabic are a the original canonic languages for the foundational texts of the three Abrahamic faiths. *turns head sideways* I like that the Hebrew says adamot, actually, which very literally means "earth," rather than ha'olam, which is a more generic term for "world" or "everything" and is occasionally used interchangeably.

Thank you for another nice picture and musings. :)

[marta-bee.livejournal.com]

I'm slowly working through old comments (sorry, have been super-busy). We're not in a particularly Jewish neighborhood, but this is New York, so there may in fact be an element of that. More likely, this is a Catholic school and I can see their being a sort of theological tie there - the RCC seeing itself as the "inheritor" of the Abrahamic covenant or something along those lines. (Yes, that line of thought bothers me, but you see it sometimes in different Christian groups.)

I didn't catch the adamot, but I agree it it really neat because it drives home the point that the peace will be some sort of earthly peace and not just in a utopian afterlife. (All too often, Christians talk about that in the same way hobbits used "When the king returns.") I wonder if it was intentional.