Fred Prudek: My Armenian experience

In 2005 I arrived at the Zvartnots airport, the international airport for Yerevan, capital of Armenia. I spoke no Armenian, except maybe to order shish kabob or lavash. Arriving in this airport made me feel as if I were in a time warp. I felt like the airport was still in the Great Depression, under Joseph Stalin.

If you are old enough to recall the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons, then you will remember Boris and Natasha, two very nasty Russian characters, as well as the military brass, who always had the exaggerated hat brims. I chuckled when I went through customs, and I noticed that the police as well as the military still wear these Soviet-style oversized hat brims. But as I chuckled, I was also holding my breath, hoping I would get through customs. Yet, only a decade later, in 2015, Zvartnots is a modern and up-to-date airport, similar to Vienna or Prague.​

I went to Armenia to teach at the Theological Seminary of Armenia, which was built in the ’90s and serves a small group of Armenian Baptists. I met the president of the seminary while teaching in Prague. After learning that I grew up in Clovis, outside of Fresno, he asked me to come and teach at TSA, for two weeks, five hours a day.

Armenians are very proud to tell you that Armenia was the very first nation in the world to declare itself a Christian nation, in 301 A.D. under St. Gregory. And since the rise of Islam, Moslem countries have surrounded Armenia. But for over 1,700 years, the Armenian Apostolic Church has kept its faith and religion, in spite of many obstacles, including the genocide of 1915.

My first few years of teaching at TSA, I was assigned to teach the “sisters” under the category of Christian education. There were also a small number of “brothers” in this class.

My style of teaching is very interactive with lots of questions, compared to the straight, didactic lecture style common during the Soviet period. So I had to do a bit of explaining my first day of class with the sisters, that when I asked a question, they could not simply shout their answer at me along with the other 25 women. They needed to first raise their hands before they could speak.

I proceeded, thinking I had corrected the problem. Yet, upon asking my next question, they again all hollered their answers, but this time with their arms raised and waving at me. One more explanation, “You need to wait until I call upon you, before you can speak.” For some of them, who loved to give the answer, they would go uber trying to get my attention with extreme fits of arm waving and head shaking.

One of my best memories of my first few years teaching the women, along with a few men, was when we studied Joseph in Genesis 39. Joseph had been sold as a slave to the Egyptian military general, Potiphar. Potiphar gave him great freedom and trusted him totally, until Potiphar’s wife lied to her husband, accusing Joseph of sexually molesting her. In fact, it was just the opposite. Potiphar’s wife was the vamp pursuing Joseph doggedly. Joseph made it clear to her that he would not do such a wicked thing against his master nor would he sin against his God.

So, I was making the point, that Joseph was a young man, about 27 years, and probably near the peak of virility. Potiphar’s wife was probably lovely, so wouldn’t it have been extremely tough for Joseph to resist her enticements day after day? Wouldn’t it have required a great deal of self-control?

One of the few brothers in the class, a young, single Armenian named Hrak, enthusiastically blurted out that it would have been 10 times more difficult if Joseph had been Armenian. The sisters giggled with delight at Hrak’s implication that Armenian men have 10 times the libido of the rest of the men in the world.

During my first year of teaching at TSA in 2005, it was the 90^th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, “Medz Yeghern” (The Great Crime) on April 24.

I stood in line for hours with over a million other pilgrims waiting to reach the memorial site, situated on a hill above the city. Watching, waiting and listening to the singing of Armenian folk songs accompanied by traditional musical instruments, made me thankful for the privilege of teaching this ancient race of honorable people.

This story was originally published July 31, 2015 at 8:00 AM with the headline "Fred Prudek: My Armenian experience."