Sikh Temple Turlock opens its doors to share beliefs, free pizza

Sikh Temple youth held a Know Your Neighbor event this month to introduce their southwest Turlock neighborhood to the less-known religion under the white domes and turbans.

Community alarm over hate crimes against Sikhs in Fresno a year ago, a fatal shooting Feb. 23 in Kansas and a shooting March 3 in Kent, Wash., spurred the effort, said Jasmin Kaur, a community organizer with the nonprofit Jakara Movement youth organization. Turbaned Sikhs have been mistaken for Muslims, though Islam is an entirely separate religion.

“That’s why we’re building those bridges,” Kaur said. There have been no hate crimes against Sikhs locally, she added, saying that was another reason to thank the community.

The Jakara Movement Club of California State University, Stanislaus, worked with Sikh teens from area high schools to spread words of welcome and 105 pizzas to families living around the Sikh Temple Turlock. Jakara youth did a Know Your Neighbor event March 9-11 by the temple in Livingston.

Last Thursday, students knocked on doors of 100 homes in southwest Turlock, greeting families and dropping off fliers saying there would be pizza coming Friday and an open house at the temple Saturday morning.

“The flier has one side in English, the other in Spanish,” she said. “Right away, we’re not able to get the message through, but when they turn to the second side, it gets across.”

The youth trooped out again to deliver 105 pizzas Friday night, and on Saturday came to guide tours of the temple, or gurudwara, for the dozen visitors who came.

The tour begins in the entry area, where shoes come off and headcoverings go on. Unlike mosques, women and men enter Sikh temples together into a single, large room of worship with carpets for sitting or kneeling. Both sexes are equal in the Sikh religion, which worships a single God they believe to be the same supreme being as Christians and other monotheistic religions worship.

There are no set times of worship, but Sunday is generally the busiest, said guide Navroop Kaur, a Stan State business major.

The Sikh religion does not use last names, which signify caste, explained Supreet Kaur, a high school student from Ceres. Kaur, meaning princess, becomes the second name for girls, she said, while Singh, meaning lion, becomes the second name for boys.

Each person approaches the holy book set on a platform at the front of the room to pray and to read. Turning one’s back to the book signals disrespect.

No priests lecture – the holy men got too full of themselves and were abolished long ago, she said – there is only a caretaker of the sacred text.

Everyone is welcome at the temple, as long as no one smokes or enters inebriated, and also to join in a free meal. All diners get served the same amount. All eat sitting on the floor.

“We can all be equal. We don’t have tables and chairs because it recognizes that this is one basic human need,” said Jasmine Kaur as she walked through the separate kitchen and dining building.

Sikhs are lacto-vegetarians, eating milk products but not eggs, in accordance with a tenet that forbids eating any animal.

“Why is our life more precious than their life?” she asked.

This story was originally published April 26, 2017 at 3:23 PM with the headline "Sikh Temple Turlock opens its doors to share beliefs, free pizza."