Who among us has no secrets? We all, deep down, hide things that we don’t want to tell others, either because they are embarrassing, uncomfortable, dangerous, harmful, or maybe even criminal. In addition, life and belief can be a mystery in many cases. There are many things we cannot understand and cannot explain.
Having secrets is first and foremost something private that only a person knows or those close to him, but not the community, the masses. In colloquial Hebrew, the word Sod (סוד) is used for this, as in the biblical text. In the Bible, however, the same root word Sod has a second meaning: community. For both mystery and fellowship, the Hebrew Bible text uses the same word, Sod, in many places. It’s seemingly quite contradictory, because a secret should be or is hidden from the wider community.
The topic came up through conversation over the new Arabic adaptation of Perfect Strangers, a Netflix movie based on the 2016 Italian box office hit of the same name. It tells the story of...
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