Talah Turk: Amman’s Filipinos are the luckiest, with a whole area dedicated to their community. Manila Street, also commonly known as Little Manila, and Filipino or Egyptian Neighborhood, is an area with a large concentration of Asian and Arab immigrants. In the heart of Jabal Amman, Buhturi Street descends from Second Circle– which Filipinos refer to as the Panadol Roundabout – and is full of Asian grocery shops, discount clothing stores, as well as affordable restaurants and bakeries, some of which serve authentic Filipino dishes. Amman’s Little Manila is the place to go for Filipino delicacies such as crispy chicken skin and salted eggs, in addition to Asian products and the latest Filipino movies.The Filipino community is by far the most organized and active amongst all guest workers’ communities in Jordan. Filipinos are raised to be caring and considerate of others, which comes through in the type of events they hold and the way the UFO (United Filipino Organization) operates. If one person has a problem, it becomes the community’s problem.The Indonesian community is definitely the most private and, some might say, defensive.
Aaron Koller: Scholars have had difficulty identifying the precise borders of the tribes in Transjordan, and have suggested that one reason for the difficulties in pinning down the borders of the holdings of Reuben and Gad is that tribal identities were often fluid. This means that a town, or a group of people, may consider themselves to be Reubenites one century, but Gadites the next. These changes can take place through conquest, through political realignment, through cultural influence, and through other processes; it is a truism of modern research on ethnicity that identity is created through affiliation as much, or more, than it is inherited through genealogy.
Who is Gad? – was Gad part of Israel? an independent ethnic group? a subgroup of Moab? The anxiety over the stability of tribes settled in the Transjordan was well placed.
Throughout the history of biblical Israel, identity was never stable, and that the borders of the nation – defining who was and who wasn’t an Israelite – were constantly shifting, especially in the multicultural Transjordan. This historical reality provides important background for understanding the concern voiced by Moses about Reuben and Gad remaining on the eastern banks. We can only conjecture how these processes affected the Israelites as a whole, but it contributed, no doubt, to the Israelites’ growing sense that being a member of the people was dependent more on culture and religion than on biology alone.
Avrahom Dovid: Gad - we regret that we are unable to show you his resting spot at this time because his tribal territory is in the political entity called Jordan.
Moishe New: When will we have the complete Land of Israel that comprises the eastern bank of the Jordan [present-day Jordan and Saudi Arabia]? That will happen in the Messianic Era. That is yet to be fulfilled.
