I am in awe of the way that Josh Kornbluth is helping to make the world a better place. Here is what he just posted as he shared this. I think it is an incredible statement: Heres the video from the first of two public conversations between me and my friend Rabbi Menachem Creditor about Israel-Palestine. The second talk will be this coming Wed., from 7:30 to 9 p.m. (registration required; info here: rabbicreditor.blogspot/2014/07/in-two-weeks-overwhelmed-by-argument.html). I have mixed feelings about how the first conversation went. On the one hand (and this is the bigger hand!), Im thrilled that we HAD it - and that the people in the audience, who were obviously passionate about this topic, were so respectful of the ground rules that wed set up. On the other, I felt myself to be quite inarticulate - partly from my great respect and love for Rabbi Creditor (which sometimes led me to be overly deferential), partly out of my feeling not totally qualified to discuss such a complex topic. After the public event, Rabbi Creditor and I went on talking, passionately, for a couple of hours - and this conversation, I thought, had an ease and frankness that was sometimes lacking when we had an audience. (It was Rabbi Creditor himself who suggested to me that I had initially been too deferential to him during the public talk.) This later, private talk had been made possible by the hard, awkward work of the public one that preceded it; Im hopeful that our upcoming event, this coming Wed., will benefit from the strides we made last week. I do not know how to bring peace to Israel-Palestine. I am, indeed, no expert. But, as Rabbi Creditor suggested, I read Ari Shavits masterful book My Promised Land, and that really helped: it grounded me in a compelling view of the continuing tragedy for both peoples. And I learned that Rabbi Creditor and I could have a public discussion on this subject, with members of our beloved community in attendance, and the sky did not fall down. I love Israel, and long for Israel to flourish in peace. And I love my brothers and sisters the Palestinian people, who equally deserve lives of peace and agency. I hate the extremism, on both sides, that thrives on racism and hatred and violence. So (as a man my parents admired more than I do once asked), What Is To Be Done? For my part, this: for us to talk - talk seriously, talk without yelling, talk without deriding each other. Speaking as an American Jew, I wish for American Jews to come together and build an environment of dialogue in trust and safety. There are people who hate Jews, because they are Jews; there are people who hate Palestinians, because they are Palestinians - let those people talk somewhere else. Im saying (hoping?) there are many more of us who truly want peace. Right now were often divided from each other: AIPAC vs. J Street, hawks vs. peaceniks. Lets un-divide on this. I dont mean that we should stop disagreeing; I mean that we should stop yelling and accusing. As Rabbi Creditor pointed out to me in our private conversation last Wed., what we perceive as bullying often comes out of a deep fear. Lets acknowledge that we share that fear with those whom we see as bullying us - as trying to shut down our side of the conversation. Enough with the yelling, enough with the censorship, enough with the accusations. I am so grateful to Rabbi Creditor, and to all those who attended our talk last Wed. (and who supported it), for the opportunity to stumble into a shared dialogical space! And I will try to do better next time!
Posted on: Sat, 16 Aug 2014 22:04:46 +0000