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Rabbi´s Message, from April 2006 bulletin:

      Argument and debate, dissent and discourse – not only are these the bedrock of our democratic system, but also the heart and soul of Judaism. It seems that something has happened to this spirit of disagreement in our culture over the last few years, and I would like to take a moment to advocate on behalf of respectful dissent.

     I imagine that I might not be the only one who has noticed how difficult it has become to speak about issues of any significance in a way that allows two or more people to disagree. More and more, on hot button issues, between right and left, religious and secular, liberals and conservatives, people actually go so far as to refuse to hold discussions with those who disagree with them.

     Jewish history and traditions, of course, include a most engaging understanding of the importance of healthy debate. The first attempt to create a comprehensive Jewish legal corpus, the Talmud, consists of a very involved, engaged, and quite lengthy debate over how to live and build a Jewish society. The Talmud lays out principles of argument, including a most rigorous ruling about the recording of minority opinions, so that they may be referred to at later times when the vote on them might change.

     While strident traditionalism has occurred at various times in Jewish history, the bulk of our past writings and experience emphasize the importance of opening almost all topics to discussion. The rigidity of the lines between different Jewish sects emerging over the last century, especially in the areas of ultra-orthodoxy on the side of preserving traditions, and liberal Judaism on the side of adaptation and change, perhaps represents a wider gap between Jews than has existed before, and thus may help explain some of our own struggles at civil discourse between Jews as well.

     All this goes to say that even though there may be some recent evidence to the contrary, the bulk of Jewish thought leads us to work on the creation of healthy environments in which disagreement and argument may be viewed as assets to relationships and communities.

     Considering our current struggles then, how might we work to foster such reasonable discussions in our own lives?

     As a “recovering” New Yorker, I thought I knew everything about healthy debate – also known as, I knew how to be very argumentative. One of the interesting things about reasonable argument is that good discussions are less about the arguments that we make, and more about our willingness to listen to those of others. Perhaps, our current environment of divisiveness can be summed up quite simply as a crisis in listening.

     Next time we have the opportunity to express ourselves about our deeply help opinions, maybe we can challenge ourselves to take a deep breath, and listen to someone else’s position on that topic. Instead of biding our time to give our version, let’s try to lend all of our attention to what the other person might be trying to say. After all, I strongly believe that our fellow humans around us wouldn’t feel strongly about something without a good reason – despite how differently they might think from us.