Creating a Compassionate and Vegetarian Global Village

 

On April 7, we proceeded to the third stop of our tour, Tel Aviv, Israel. As Master had previously given a lecture here, everything went much smoother than the last two stops; even the weather cooperated by halting the rain. The local contact person, who had moved to England and came back specially for this leaflet distribution activity, prepared 100,000 leaflets in Hebrew, Arabian and Russian languages prior to our arrival. He also released the message of Alternative Living in the most popular weekly newspaper, which was a free publication that provided information about food, clothing, shelter, transportation and entertainment. Containing the Alternative Living message, this newspaper was delivered to households in five large cities on the second day after we arrived in Tel Aviv, meaning that 500,000 families in Israel received Master’s compassionate message synchronously that week.

After working hard for two days, we distributed 44,000 leaflets in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The Israeli people were broadminded and the ratio of people accepting the leaflets was very high. On the streets we met some people who were already vegetarians; they were glad to see that we had come to share this message and offered to help us distribute the leaflets. We also met a vegetarian who deals with alternative medicine. He emphasized that “food is the best medicine”; wise advice passed down from ancient times. Many shop owners gladly consented to let us place leaflets in their shops for their customers. In a big bazaar in Jerusalem, we met the owner of a bakery shop who told us excitedly that he had been a vegetarian for many years, yet he never thought of sharing this concept with other people. He was very grateful that we had come from afar to do this meaningful work, and said he would definitely join our distribution team the following day since he would have a day off. Actually he took a large stack of leaflets and started distributing immediately. We regretfully told him that we had to go to another destination on the next day and were unable to work together with him. Nevertheless, we left him with a large number of leaflets and asked him to help us in continuing to share this noble message in Jerusalem.

In the Tel Aviv marketplaces, all the entrances were guarded by armed soldiers who looked quite intimidating. At first, they asked us not to distribute in the vicinity where they were guarding, but after some time, some soldiers who were not on duty also came to help us. When we were about to leave, they earnestly took photographs with us and asked whether we would come again the next day. One of the soldiers told us that he was also a medical student and would become a doctor to serve the world in the future. He found that the ideal we were sharing was splendid and asked us to give him more leaflets he could share with his schoolmates.