Do you have non-Jewish friends?

icebreaker

Sun, Jan 29 2017, 9:22 pm

This stems from a conversation during the workweek with various coworkers (all non-Jews). Most are of the mindset that frum Jews are completely closed to having non-Jewish friends. Of course I don't think this is true but then I realized my two very good friends are Jewish lol.

dancingqueen

Sun, Jan 29 2017, 9:29 pm

A lot of halachot exist to keep friendships from happening between Jews and non Jews. I have non Jewish friends from school and work but I think it might be harder for someone more Right wing to do so.

mommy3b2c

Sun, Jan 29 2017, 9:32 pm

I'm not really in many situations where I can make non jewish friends, but when I was in my graduate program there was this sweet Irish girl that I started to really become friends with. We would go for dinner together and talk on the phone and the like, but we somehow lost touch shortly after the semester ended and that was that. That was probably the closest I ever got to having a non-Jewish friend. The other place where I come into regular interaction with non Jews is at mommy and me. I super friendly with lots of the women there , but I wouldn't consider any of them a friend.

I actually just thought of one more non jew that I would consider my friend. My cleaning lady is my very good friend. I am really close with her.

bigsis144

Sun, Jan 29 2017, 9:46 pm

I don't get out enough to have Jewish friends, let alone non-Jewish ones...

(Meaning, I work all alone and will at least run into the same circle of Jewish people at shul/my kids' schools, etc. I would have to go further afield and make an even more deliberate effort to make a non-Jewish friend, even if I'm not at all opposed to it in concept)

33055

Sun, Jan 29 2017, 10:31 pm

I have one non-Jewish friend. She is a Born Again, and we marvel over the similarities in our lives. She became a fundamentalist Christian and I moved to Monsey. Perhaps because we took parallel journeys we stayed close. We have been close for a decade and a half.

naturalmom5

Sun, Jan 29 2017, 11:04 pm

I have some childhood friends and a number of friends from the college I'm attending now
It's very sad that they all talk about G-d and spirituality more than any of the "yeshivish" women I'm friendly with in Lakewood
They only talk about sheitls and shells and cleaning ladies and of course just the right bow for their daughters shoes
We all know that's an urgent crisis..

Water Stones

Mon, Jan 30 2017, 12:33 am

I had non-Jewish friends when I lived in Denmark before I get married.

Now I don't. I don't know any non-Jews in my neighborhood. Only the wife of a employee of my fil and dh business who is Hindu Indian who is becoming my friend because we both like to cooking and she teaches me Indian food. And we are the same age. I like her very much.

etky

Mon, Jan 30 2017, 3:21 am

chanchy123 wrote:

No, but I live in Israel. Not that many chances to have close relationships with non-Jews here (although my DH has a few Arab friends).

Same.
I think though that "non-Jewish" is very different here than in chutz la'aretz.
Non-Jewish, more often than not, either means Arab - which probably adds a political dimension/tension to the relationship (even if it is muted, it is still there) or, someone who is non-halachically Jewish but living their lives as citizens of the Jewish state and to some degree inevitably immersed in the dominant Jewish culture. My DD, for example, has met many non-halachically Jewish people in the army. The fact that they are technically non-Jewish is absolutely irrelevant to her daily interactions with them. They are as Israeli as she is.

zaq

Mon, Jan 30 2017, 8:27 am

Yes I have two or three. Mostly coworkers or former coworkers because work is where I spend most of my time outside of home. Those who become friends generally share similar values as well as having congenial personalities.

My college had a Hillel house and a fair sized Jewish population so most of my friends from college were MOT. There was the occasional nonJewish classmate with whom I was friendly for the semester but didn't socialize outside of school.

sushilover

Mon, Jan 30 2017, 8:34 am

I used to, but have since lost touch. I really have nothing in common with them at this point of my life.

My best friend in college was a devout Muslim girl whose mother used to bring her to classes and wait outside each classroom. We bumped into each other a few days after my wedding and must have made such a sight. The two of us hugged, with her mother and my husband looking on in shock. My husband was even wearing a shtreimel because it was during sheva brachos... LOL

FranticFrummie

Mon, Jan 30 2017, 8:46 am

In the US, I had tons of non Jewish friends, from all walks of life.

In Israel, all of my friends are new Olim, mainly because of shared experiences and language. Some of them are very secular or Reform, so there's variety there, too.

I am open and friendly to everyone I meet, including the girl in hijab who checks out my groceries, my Druze taxi driver, the Lebanese Xian who fills my prescriptions, and the Turkish Arab who drives my bus route. I love meeting people from different backgrounds!

DD takes after me. She has two best friends who she Skypes with every day. One is an adorable girl from Sweden, and one is a rebellious Mormon from Arizona. They've been online besties for 4 years now, and show no signs of growing apart. Of course her school friends are all Jewish, but they come from all over the world, and in her words "Are different shades of brown and tan." Kiddo doesn't have a racist bone in her body, B'H.

ValleyMom

Mon, Jan 30 2017, 9:10 pm

I have several BEST friends and two of them are not Jewish.

One is Episcopalian from Boise Idaho and the other is Greek Italian.
We speak regularly and have dinner in fabulous kosher restaurants.
They even come for Shabbos for dinner- they LOVE kosher cooking.

gp2.0

Mon, Jan 30 2017, 11:04 pm

I had a few non-Jewish online friends from a different forum as a teen. I was very close to one of them, a girl my age from Poland. But we gradually grew apart, especially after I got married and pregnant and she was taking a gap year in Japan.

In my day-to-day life I don't have much opportunity to develop close friendships with non-Jewish people, but I am friendly to most people I meet and I sometimes strike up conversations with strangers.