About Our Spring Series: "Community Conversations" About the Mideast

Israel evokes inspiration, dismay, pride, anger, blessing, suffering, love and hate.  The State of Israel and the Mideast, including the ongoing crisis in Palestinian life, deeply touch the heart of everyone in and near Jewish life. Yet rarely do we discuss them openly.  Too often such matters are avoided like a Third Rail, or suppressed, or relegated to quiet corners.  Let's change that.

TO REGISTER, CLICK HERE.

By Rabbi David, Joan Green, Nancy Heller & Ronny Kaplan

We are the team that the Board designated to bring together our spring series about the Mideast.  Thank you in advance for reading this message.

Israel evokes inspiration, dismay, pride, anger, blessing, suffering, love and hate.  The State of Israel and the Mideast community, including the ongoing crisis in Palestinian life, deeply touch the heart of everyone in and near Jewish life. Yet rarely do we discuss them openly.  Too often such matters are avoided like a Third Rail of Jewish life, or suppressed, or relegated to quiet corners.  

We yearn for Jewish spirituality to be clean and clear.  We yearn for Israel always to reflect our highest aspirations for Jews and Judaism.  We yearn for the Holy Land to be holy.  But decade after decade, the world's most complex geopolitical, social and religious conflict seems to stymie most everyone.  Meanwhile the near constancy of Mideast turmoil, especially lately, freights our hearts and souls – and impacts our Judaism and spirituality.

Judicial ethics ban Rabbi David from teaching about root causes and political rightness amidst Mideast conflict.  (Read more about that here.)  Recent guidance, however, lets him talk about “the laws of war; the emotional/spiritual valences of terror, trauma and moral complexity; the need to reduce and eliminate implicit and overt bias and prejudice; and recent casualties in the Mideast.”  (Read that guidance here.)

So that’s what we’ll do. It won’t be a traditional “course” so much as a series of guided, intimate and truthful community conversations.  We’ll discuss, openly and candidly, what Israel and the Mideast mean for us as individuals, as Americans, as people of spirit, as Jews, as a synagogue, and as a global people.

Along the way, we’ll refract our subject through the lenses of our Judaism(s) including identity and peoplehood, ethics and conflicts of ethics, antisemitism, xenophobia, Zionism(s), trauma, war and peace.  Jewish spiritual teaching – including from Torah, other sacred texts and modern spiritual thought leaders – will help guide our journey.

SOLICITATION FOR TOPICS

If there are particular subjects (e.g. hostages, border wall, incitement, political extremism, settlers) that participants wish to see discussed, please let Rabbi David know in advance.  The ethics rules might not allow a full treatment, but we'll do our best.

SUGGESTED READING

This series still isn't a "course" or a book club, but participants might wish to do some reading.  Here are some eye-opening volumes across the political spectrum:

• Ronen Bergman, “Rise and Kill First”
• Selma Dabbagh, “Out of It”
• Noah Feldman, “To Be a Jew Today”
• Phyllis Goldstein, “A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism:
• Rashid Khalidi, “The Hundred Years War on Palestine”
• Deborah Lipstadt, “Antisemitism: Here and Now”
• Benny Morris, “Making Israel”
• Chuck Schumer, “Antisemitism: A Warning”
• Noa Tishby, “Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth”

GOALS AND GROUND RULES

The goal of this series isn’t to win the Nobel Peace Prize, or achieve consensus.  Neither, however, will we simply talk for the sake of talking, or blindly validate any perspective no matter what.  Pluralism finds strength in diversity but still has core animating values and boundaries for  communities to set and navigate together. 

Rather, our conversations will develop tools both practical and spiritual to inhabit the vibrant pluralism that Judaism, and the State of Israel’s founding values, aspire to make real.  We will aim to make emotional and spiritual meaning amidst the mess, as members of the Children of Israel living, as our ancestors often did, in times of beauty and challenge.

To these ends, we will make best efforts to honor the following ground rules during the series:

• Elemental care.  We will honor each other and our community with respect and grace.
  
  
• Ethics.  We acknowledge Rabbi David’s ethical limitations and will honor them, including redirection if a conversation evolves in a manner that ethically he can’t guide.
  
  
• Confidentiality.  What happens in community stays in community.  Session recordings will be emailed to registrants but not posted online.  We will not share recordings with anyone else.
  
  
• Spirituality.  We will bring to these conversations the same spiritual intentions as prayer and other expressions of the Jewish heart and soul.
  
  
• “I” language.  We will speak in the first person about our own views, emotions and perspectives.  We will avoid cross talk and calling people out.
  
  
• Multiple truths, not alternative facts.  We acknowledge that diverse and conflicting narratives can arise from different perspectives, many of them motivated by partial truths.  We also acknowledge that nobody is entitled to their own “facts.”
  
  
• No “reading in.”  We will avoid attributing motive (especially ulterior motive) to what others say and appear to think and feel.
  
  
• Safety and triggers.  Without censorship, we will co-create a safer space for these discussions, acknowledging that these subjects might not ever entail total emotional safety.  For that reason, we acknowledge the possibility that conversations may trigger us or others.  We will hold triggers with gentleness and compassion.  We will keep a notebook handy to write down our own triggers in real time, and bring them to R.  David offline. 
  
  
• Chatbox.  These guidelines will apply both orally and in the chatbox.

​TO REGISTER, CLICK HERE.