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    experience growing up. The moral of the story? The moral of the show is that above all else, a woman must have good friends, especially women
    friends who she can love, trust and depend on. Taking this to heart as boys broke our hearts throughout high school and for a lot of us continued
    to disappoint us over and over again throughout college, we learned just how much of a truism the show's premise actually was.
       
    In the show, however, the tight-knit social sphere of the "girls" does not extend below an upper middle class, if not a down right affluent,
    comfortable white existence. The most culturally marginal character in the whole show is the Jewish husband of one of the women. So, while "Sex
    and the City" had a lot to say about the nature of relationships, and the value of friendship, not many examples were to be had on the subject of
    cross-cultural friendships - an emotional terrain where points of contention, and areas of bonding, can come in the face of or grow and thrive on
    the basis of differences.

    The greatest difficulties the women of the show faced in relation to each other were misunderstandings about what they thought of one another's
    sex lives; so while the show was and remains a model to me in some ways, as I've gotten older and begun to really understand that sometimes
    the most beautiful part of friendship is learning about how different you are from each other, I've also had to learn to leave the relative simplicity of
    this hallmark show behind.

    These thoughts emerge as I consider one of my now dear friends, Rachel, who I met while working at a small boutique in Berkeley, California. In
    fact, she was my boss and the woman who interviewed me for the position I later came to fill. I remember walking into the store and being ever so
    slightly taken aback when I realized upon entering the store and approaching the counter that she was a hijabi Muslim (one who observes the
    religious practice of covering the hair with a headscarf).

    Now, I had grown up in tolerance of all the world's peoples and after studying religion and living abroad for years it was not surprising in and of
    itself to meet a hijabi; what was startling was the fact that this was not someone else, someone outside my sphere of interaction or cultural milieu
    that was wearing hijab, which comprised the circumstances under which I had largely encountered religious Muslims before. Sure, there was a girl
    who wore the hijab here and there in my classes, and though I got along with them, I never spent whole days with them conversing or making
    plans to hang out on the weekends. So it was a truly blessed and truly unexpected gift when I discovered, over the course of the ensuing weeks
    and months, just what a special woman Rachel was and what a special friendship we seemed to be developing.

    Perhaps the realities that adjoined a relationship which did not subscribe to the notions of female friendship that had informed my experiences
    heretofore, like those propagated in shows like "Sex and the City" - is what made being with Rachel so wonderful. I couldn't remember having a
    woman friend with whom the crux of the relationship wasn't about "dealing with the male gender." Sure Rachel and I had those boy talks too, but
    what was really significant and the true seed of our affiliation was the fact that we could talk about religion--something that seems a little startling,
    considering the fact that she is an observant Muslim and I am an observant Jew.

    Really, we're supposed to dislike each other vehemently as people would expect; supposed to, but we don't. In fact, the more we came to discuss
    the differences between our traditions, we came upon commonalities in our faith and our feelings about God, where it truly counts. Forget bourgois
    luncheons and shopping for $500 a pair shoes -- to be a friend is to be able to share what is really at your core, and at our core, I believe Rachel
    and I have far more in common than our religious alignments might suggest.

    Or, maybe, it's that we have more in common than the dominant media-inspired perception of years of political unrest in the Middle East would
    have us believe at the outset. Because really, I've found that there doesn't seem to be massive and heart-wrenching differences between our
    religious practices, either. We carry the torch of different peoples, it is true, but for both of us the focus of our faith is based on cultivating qualities
    of Truth, Love and an Affinity with God. How far from one another, then, can we really be?


    (Photo credit: Ecumenical & Interfaith Blog)
Rachel, We're Not in "The City" Anymore
SEPHORA MATZNER
Send your comments and questions regarding this article to: interfaith@amaany.org.
Sephora Matzner grew up in Los Angeles as a Reform Jew and studied Religion at UC Berkeley. She now lives with her husband-to-be in Cambridge, MA
where she will be continuing her study of Religion at the Harvard Divinity School in the Fall.