Controversy, Compromise and Community

Rabbi Melanie Aron

Kol Nidre 5772 — Friday, October 7, 2011

How can I have taken such a wonderful trip to Israel this June and not say something to you about it over these holidays.

It was a trip shaped around the interests of our group members: Archeology, the out of doors, and meeting up with our Reform co-religionists in Israel. Being a group of adults, without having to worry about children’s schedules and attention spans, afforded us certain luxuries: late dinners, lengthy q and a with our speakers, and intense conversations among ourselves.

The ten days we spent in Israel were wonderful, both as a travel experience, and as a creator of Jewish memories, even for those who weren’t Jewish. I hope at some point, either with the cantor as families in the summer of 2014, or with me in 2013, or on your own, each of you will make this trip.

Our trip in June wasn’t focused on the political situation but still we heard a lot about it. When we visited our religious school’s sister school in the Northern Negev, we learned that their new building is reinforced to eliminate the need to run into the shelters if rockets come across from Gaza. The Kibbutz , where one of our congregation’s Torah scrolls is on loan to a new Reform congregation, also deals with rocket attacks, but they don’t allow that to interfere with everyday life. To enable their members to continue to enjoy jogging, they have placed individual mini- shelters every 1/10th a kilometer or so along the periphery road. That way they can get to protection quickly if needed when they are out running.

We did most of our touring in the center of the country and felt very safe the entire time we were in Israel, but issues of war and peace still came to mind. The newly built Yitzchak Rabin museum reminded us of how explosive these issues could be within Israel itself. At Neve Shalom, the intentional Arab Jewish community halfway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, our guide, an Israeli Arab, talked about the challenge to the community, when a Jewish member was killed serving in the Israeli army in the territories. He was mourned and missed by all, but the community became conflicted about what language to use on his memorial. Was he a hero, a model of self-sacrifice for the greater good, or the tragic casualty of an ill-conceived and misguided policy?

What really struck me was that during our trip, all of us heard the same discussions and explanations, had the same experiences, and yet the range of points of view on the bus remained quite wide- and at least at one particular moment, threatened to divide the group.

And that is what I would really like to talk about this evening:

In our American civic life in general, and, in our American Jewish community, particularly with regard to Israel, we are becoming more and more polarized. In light of that reality, and because so many of the discussions of these disagreements seem to go nowhere, I believe that conversation is shutting down. When we think about talking with someone about a divisive topic, we are afraid of the bad feelings that could result. Besides, will talking about issues with someone with whom we disagree significantly have any benefit? And so to a large extent, we avoid conversations about the important issues of our day.

I probably don’t have to say much to convince you of the polarization of American politics and the resulting gridlock in our political system. Commentators have pointed out that it is not just an issue of political parties but of total worldview, shaped and reinforced by our own individualized set of sources for news and information, our circles of friends who usually agree with us, and even where we shop, whether it‘s Whole Foods or Cracker Barrel.

While in some ways our American society is getting better at pluralism and diversity, in other ways the lines of demarcation are getting harder to cross.

Let me give one example: thirty different religious faith groups, with representatives from around the world, were present at one of the local 9-11 religious commemorations. That would seem to indicate great openness. But, to my knowledge, there was no commemoration where the “mainline churches”, that is the more liberal Christians, the blue churches as it were, and the fundamentalist, evangelical and non-denominational “red” churches, prayed together. What we have gained in interreligious cross cultural understanding we have lost in communication across the great blue/red political divide.

As Jews, we shouldn’t point fingers. The Orthodox rabbis who participate together with their Conservative and Reform colleagues in ways which imply mutual respect and recognition are a beleaguered minority. The tension between those who support organizations like the ZOA, Zionist organization of America, and AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee verses those more involved with the New Israel Fund or J Street has occasioned passionate arguments, mudslinging, and the most exaggerated accusations. This internal conflict has seeped out of the Jewish community onto the Colbert Report and into American politics at large where it seems likely to play a role in the upcoming presidential election process.

At some level we shouldn’t be surprised at the stark divisions; polarization is not something new in the world. For all that we know and love the story of the bat kol, the voice from heaven, which announced that the teachings of the followers of Hillel and the teachings of the followers of Shammai, were both the words of the living God, that text comes centuries after the actual arguments by which time the followers of Hillel were firmly in charge. By the time the Pesikta de Rav Kahanna, states so beautifully: “Do not be confused by the many voices you hear. Remember they all come from the One God.” the Geonim, imitating the Caliphate of their time, had imposed a high degree of uniformity on Jewish practice. Perhaps we are better at celebrating differences retrospectively than in the present.

More typical of the response to contemporary diversity are the accusations of treason made by one faction of first century Judaism against the other, or the bitter fights of the Hasidim and their opponents in Eastern Europe, which included turning other Jews over to the non-Jewish authorities. We see it still today as when members of opposing parties in the Knesset, routinely call each other Nazis.

There is another approach. If we can accept that other people may sometimes reach different conclusions not just because they are pigheaded, evil or wrong, but perhaps because they see things from different perspectives or ask different questions--that can really change how we feel about differences.

One prominent Israeli rabbi, Donniel Hartman suggests that it might help supporters of AIPAC and supporters of J Street to be more tolerant of each other if they really believed that the other also cares deeply about Israel’s future but that each sees the biggest threat to Israel’s future security differently.

AIPAC supporters tend to believe that the most significant threat to Israel’s future is the threat to Israel’s physical security. If that is what you believe then it is clear that Iran looms large on your horizon.

On the other hand if you see the biggest threat to Israel’s future to be the question of the character of Israeli society, and its place among the community of nations, as many of those who support J street do, then what keeps you up at night is the demographic challenge to Israel as a Democratic and Jewish state, should the two state solution fail.

This difference in perspective explains why for some the most important topic in last week’s Israel related news concerned continued anti Israel talk by Turkish officials, while for others it was the arson against an Israeli Arab Mosque in the Galilee perpetrated by Jewish settlers.

Within Israeli, itself, after decades when differences over the issues of war and peace were the main political divisions, things began to change this summer.

The surprising “cottage cheese revolt” our group witnessed live in Israel this June, mushroomed into a greater protest movement . All of a sudden domestic issues took center stage and one Saturday night last month 400,000 Israelis took to the streets, all over the country. That was 1/20 Israelis, or, in the United States, the equivalent of over 15 million people.

Actually these Israeli protests about the concentration of wealth into the hands of a small minority ( in Israel the numbers are so small you can practically name the people), and the struggles of the middle class for housing and education, are pretty relevant to our American domestic politics as well. One difference is that in Israel, the protests have so far not broken along typical societal divisions or party lines. They have brought together groups that do not usually get along, like the religious and the non-religious, residents of Tel Aviv and those from the periphery of the country. While the protestors have criticized Netanyahu, and the Knesset, the focus has remained on the issues.

In the United States, by contrast, the battles have seemed more partisan, more like the conflict between Korach and Moses, where Korach’s primary goal was to wrest leadership from Moses.

Can compromise help to solve the problems in both our societies? Will it offer a path past polarization? Can it help us refocus discussion on issues, rather than on winning and losing?

Dialogue is a necessary precondition to compromise. It allows us to understand why our opponents hold the views that they hold, what experiences have shaped those views, and which of their cherished values they feel are threatened in the present situation. It can also help us define common commitments. If the dialogue is deep enough and sustained, new possibilities emerge and there are possible compromises that offer all sides at least a bit of what’s most important to them.

Jewish tradition likes compromises. It praises compromise as, in the words of the Talmud, being greater than a legal judgment. The rabbis note that if you want the world to endure there can be no absolute justice, but that compromise is necessary. The famous Biblical teaching, “Justice, Justice shall You Pursue”, is interpreted to mean, first justice, based on law, but secondly, justice based on compromise.

The Talmud includes many stories about how without compromise the world can’t move forward, as for example the story about camel merchants travelling in different directions along the same narrow road. Their camels are heavily laden with merchandise such that two cannot pass together. One must give way for the other, or else they are stalemated forever. But the rabbis remind us, compromise means sacrifice on both sides. Equally important to one camel driver giving way, is that the other must offer a gift from his own wares to the merchant who went second in order to compensate for the time lost.

Within families reaching compromises is vital ( it goes along with the advice I was given early in my marriage - you can be right or you can be happy). Families are fragile and can be destroyed if no one will give in. Accepting your sister’s desire to host, or not host Thanksgiving, reaching an accommodation with your in-laws concerning their ideas about child rearing, explaining to your kids why their cousins own every electronic gadget known to creation and they do not, all pose challenges, but for most of us we can work it out. Our compromises are as much a reflection of our values as our principled stands. Sometimes being family requires flexibility, understanding, and a willingness to judge others with a generous eye.

Until recently compromise was a big part of American political culture. It wasn’t always pretty. As Avishai Margalit writes in his book, Compromise and Rotten Compromise, there were shady deals with spurious motives, shoddy deals with rewards that looked better initially than they really were, and shabby deals which took advantage of one sides weakness. But as long as we avoided the truly rotten compromises, being aligned with an inhuman regime, for example, the compromises are still worth it. Where compromise will not work, he writes, is with sectarian groups, who believe in extremes of good and evil, are intolerant of even small differences, and view every disagreement as a hill on which to die. That is why these true believers are so dangerous to democracies.

You can be too much of a compromiser- the famous Israeli example was said to be Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, who when offered coffee or tea, would not take sides and was rumored to answer, as he did to all things, half and half. But the more likely danger for a community, is for there to be an agreement which if reached would be better for both sides, but to have suspicion and mistrust make moving to that better place, near impossible. Many of us believe that is where things are today both in our American domestic politics and in the Middle East, but we differ vociferously on both the means and the plausibility of ever getting to that better place.

On the bus in Israel this summer, when strongly felt differences seemed likely to divide us, we were reined in by our desire to continue as a community. At the height of the fighting between Hasidim and their opponents the Misnagdim, the Kotzer Rebbe, an active protagonist in the fighting, still insisted that being part of the Jewish people, overrode these deep divisions. Let’s not allow insecurity and pessimism to keep us from talking with friends and neighbors about issues on which we disagree that are important to us. When suspicion and mistrust prevent us from being able to move forward, we should reflect on what we learn from game theorists-- that without trust and confidence in each other, the solutions are always suboptimal.

The study of Talmud often begins with the study of the case of two men, who have grabbed a hold of a garment at the exact same moment, each claiming that it is his. They can’t both go home with the whole garment, so the Talmud creates a compromise allowing them to continue to live together in the same community. May we find such compromises in our own time, so that our Jewish community and our American civic society can continue to flourish.