Carl M. Perkins: What do Israel and the Philippines have in common? Actually, more than you might think. Now, you may be wondering: The Filipino community? Isn’t Israel a Jewish state? What are Filipinos doing here?
That’s a very interesting question. In fact, there are many people from the Philippines here.
The reason is quite simple. Through a program created by the Israeli government a few years ago, many Filipinos come to this country to serve as caretakers for the elderly. It seems to work out well, for both the Filipinos and the Israelis. The Filipinos speak English, which is a second language here, and they don’t raise any particular political or security anxieties.
Wherever you go in Israel you see Filipinos walking down the street hand in hand with the elderly, or wheeling them around in wheelchairs. In my neighborhood, you often see Filipinos shopping in the grocery store or riding the busses. In the elevator in my building, I am as likely to encounter a Filipino as an Israeli. It’s gotten to the point where they don’t stand out.
Who would have predicted this when the state was created in 1948?
The other day, I was working on an entry entitled, “Day and Night.” It concerns various questions that have to do with when a day begins and when it ends. A good portion of the article has to do with how Jews are supposed to behave when they are travelling in the area of the International Date Line in the Pacific Ocean.
In “Day and Night,” Eisenstein points out that when the location of the date line was altered in the mid-1800s, certain communities found that not only the date but also the day of the week changed. One of these communities was—you guessed it—the Philippines. Prior to 1845, the Date Line ran to the west of the Philippines, but in 1845 it was moved to the east, so that the day and date in the Philippines would be identical to those in China and Japan. Monday, December 30, 1844 in the Philippines was followed by Wednesday, January 1, 1845! (An even more complicated day and date change occurred in Alaska in 1867 when the United States purchased the territory from Russia and the line was moved to the west of the territory.)
Now, why did Eisenstein think to discuss what had happened in the Philippines or in Alaska in his book? What would be the relevance of this to Jews? As you might have guessed, the Jewish question this raises is, when should a Jew in these areas observe Shabbat? Should he or she observe it according to the old calendar or according to the new one?
The answer that Eisenstein gave is this:
With respect to the decisions made by the governments in Alaska and the Philippines to switch the day and the date… they should observe Shabbat consistent with prevailing law and local practice.
Speaking of Jews and the Philippines…
One recent Friday evening, we went to a friend’s home for Shabbat dinner. That evening, she happened to have volunteered to host folks in her shul who didn’t have a place to go for Shabbat dinner. Visiting the shul that evening was a couple from California, and so they joined us for dinner. The guy looked like a typical American Jew of Eastern European ancestry; the woman he was with did not. She looked, well, Filipino. Indeed she was. Looking around the table, it was clear that people were intrigued. Given that in Israel, practically the only Filipinos one encounters are aides to the elderly, seeing such a couple defied the conventions. When the woman began talking about her synagogue in California, and how excited she was finally to be travelling to Israel, we realized that we were in the presence of a Filipino Jewish woman. We later learned that she had converted to Judaism a few years ago, and that although her husband had already been to Israel several times before, they had long anticipated travelling to Israel together. I shared with her what I had learned about the Philippines and the movement of the International Date Line in 1845. (She was very polite.) What an unexpected and delightful reminder of just how heterogenous a people we are!
So who says that Israel and the Philippines have nothing in common?
