This is where the rubber meets the road. For the past half year, our community has entered into the Year of Civil Discourse in which we are all being summoned to listen and to speak with civility.
We are now being tested big time. On March 16, the Berkeley home of Rabbi Michael Lerner was again vandalized. It was a violent act directed against his property.
This act is one expression of the opposite of our goal: It is an action of disrespect for a fellow Jew with whom one may passionately disagree, delegitimizing and dehumanizing him. It is one small notch short of violence against a person, the worst of our nightmares.
If the Year of Civil Discourse means anything at all, it teaches guidance in just such a situation — one in which we are at odds with one another over our postures toward Israel. We do not need guidance when we are in agreement. We need it most when we hear something that sounds outrageous to our ears.
It is then that we are summoned to stretch ourselves to hear the wisdom of our tradition that teaches that no one of us has a monopoly on truth, and there is no one among our people from whom we cannot learn.
Imbedded in the wisdom of Jewish tradition is the certainty that treating each other with disdain, anger and even hatred has invariably led us to disaster.
Having witnessed the worst that can happen when one Jew is at war with another, our sages lined up in support of the proposition that truth is richer than any of our heartfelt convictions. Talmudic sages Hillel and Shammai, the Maharal of Prague and Chief Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Kook — among many others spanning two millennia — have urged us to learn compassion toward one another.
When we engage with one another with mutual respect, the consequence is likely to yield greater wisdom, much more than would ever emerge in isolation or in conversation only with those with whom we agree.
“Truth on Earth is not, nor can it aspire to be, the whole truth. It is limited, not comprehensive; particular, not universal,” writes Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of the United Kingdom, in his book “Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid the Clash of Civilizations.”
Sacks continues: “When two propositions conflict, it is not necessarily because one is true and the other false. It may be, and often is, that each represents a different perspective on reality, an alternative way of structuring order … In heaven there is truth; on Earth there are truths …
The sages said: ‘Who is wise? One who learns from all people.’ The wisest is not one who knows himself wiser than others: he is one who knows all people have some share of the truth, and is willing to learn from them, for none of us knows all the truth and each of us knows some of it.”
The key idea in our Year of Civil Discourse is not that we relinquish our deeply held positions, work for them with any less energy or argue them with any less passion. Rather, it is that we engage each other with respect, open ourselves to hearing the other, assume that the other is very worthy of our attention, imagine that what we share in concern for the State of Israel burns with no less intensity within the other than within ourselves.
When we lose control, we abandon our ability to hear another and forfeit any chance that we can convince the other as well. We tear a gaping hole in our people at a time when everyone’s wisdom is needed. It is very, very hard to repair those gaping wounds. Nothing is gained. Everyone has lost.
The ongoing conflict in the Middle East, with its many casualties, is the worst price that is being paid. Hurting one another with harsh words and destructive actions adds to the tragedy without shedding new light.
When we witness violence against one another, such as what happened against Rabbi Lerner at his home, we should respond with a resounding condemnation from every place on the spectrum.
Now is the time to say to one another resolutely that such behavior is unacceptable. Now is the time to build our capacities to be civil in discourse.
Rabbi Sheldon Lewis was the spiritual leader at Congregation Kol Emeth in Palo Alto for 33 years. He is now rabbi emeritus and co-chairs the Northern California Board of Rabbis’ Task Force on Civil Discourse.