Jonathan Weighter’s photos on display at Pangea through end of September
By Art Van Kraft for Ashland.news
Ashland teacher Jonathan Weighter has returned from seven years in Beirut, Lebanon, where he taught English and philosophy at a private high school. He said he expected to find a different a culture, but he didn’t expect that culture to drastically change his views of the region.
“It was a very different world from what I had been anticipating. I always like to stress that it’s much more friendly than people realize. I traveled all over the Middle East and I never had a bad experience, not once,” Weighter said. “I’ve been to all the areas controlled by Hezbollah and talked to tons of people, I found that the experience was not the narrative that we are given here. There’s a lot of politics and history to understand the enormity of the culture.
“Hezbollah are Shia (a branch of Islam) and are generally the working-class people of Lebanon. They are often looked down upon by the wealthy,” he said.
Weighter explains that it was impossible not to be drawn into the political turmoil of the region. He said his beliefs were challenged by the experiences.
“I talk to people daily about the situation in Gaza. There are Israeli warplanes flying over Beirut triggering sonic booms every few days. It’s psychological warfare of a type because they are not going anywhere. Lebanon is not allowed to have an air force so that they can not be a threat,” he said.
“Hezbollah also have a strong distaste for Israel. I watched the news on Oct. 7 (about the Hamas attack on Israel) and realized this was something that was going to change the dynamic in this region. In 10 days, the CIA raised the threat level in Lebanon because there was fear of a massive escalation between Israel and Hezbollah. I flew to Egypt to ride out the threat, but returned in two months,” Weighter said.
Weighter said he was confronted in Lebanon with a long-standing national resentment of Israel going back to 1948 and the fact that Lebanon has never formally recognized Israel.
“All our maps in school call that area ‘Occupied Palestine.’ I don’t think many Americans realize that most people in the region don’t recognize Israel — at least, that’s the popular opinion,” he said.
The popular opinion in the region is sometimes controlled by a country’s government and that can be misleading to the West, he said.
“You have this tension between states that have dictators in the region like Egypt that move towards the interests of the West, versus what their population actually thinks,” he added.
Weighter saw his job as a way to create more dialogue and understanding between our cultures. He taught the International Baccalaureate curriculum, something taught in International schools around the world.
“There are some curriculums in the U.S., there is one in Portland. It runs a curriculum that is quite different than you might find in Ashland High School. It is supposed to be global in scope and it gets the students to consider their place in the world,” he said.
A photography exhibit at Pangea restaurant in downtown Ashland highlights Weighter’s journey.
The deets
Photos by Jonathan Weighter of Ashland are on display at Pangea through the end of September. The cafe is open from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day at 272 E. Main St., Ashland (pangeaashland.com, 541-552-1630).
“It’s a pretty dramatic change coming home to Ashland. It feels a world away from all the action and chaos. Yet at the same time people are living their daily lives, but with this swirling feeling of uncertainty. I find people in Ashland to be curious and interested … to be willing to rethink what they thought they knew. I’ve seen people’s attitudes shifting, I see more Americans willing to see things through a Middle Eastern perspective,” Weighter added.
“All the pro-Palestinian protests here in the U.S. are being picked up by people in the Middle East on their phones and there is a global conversation of sorts connecting the groups of people,” he said.
Weighter says the U.S. plays an enormous role in this situation.
“I just feel very grateful to have had the opportunity to live and work in Lebanon for so long and I believe passionately that more dialogue connecting our respective parts of the world is the way we can actually make meaningful progress moving forward,” Weighter said.
Art Van Kraft is an artist living in Ashland and a former broadcast journalist and news director of a Los Angeles-area National Public Radio affiliate. Email him at artukraft@msn.com.
