“I am saddened that the debate over Israel’s decision regarding two US congresswomen is tearing the Jewish community apart. Can we keep our eye on the ball? Israel was founded as a state as a safe oasis from anti semitism. Shall we now use debate about it to tear ourselves apart and hate on one another? Whatever your opinion, why the vitriol? Sigh. And don’t do it in the comments please. Don’t lobby. Don’t pontificate. Comments should be related to Jewish unity only – unity without uniformity.”
This is my Facebook post from last week and it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. As someone who travels throughout various echo chambers, and especially in the Trump era, I’m increasingly dismayed at the power of the human being to see the world through exactly one set of glasses: his own opinion.
I’m turning 45, which means according to google I am going to now be middle aged. Mazel tov! And from this vantage point I can’t think of another era in my adult life that has been this polarizing in terms of politics.
Whether it’s Trump’s personality, gun control, immigration, it seems every day is another emotional and intellectual roller coaster. Maybe I’m just more “woke” than I used to be? Or maybe it’s the effect of too much smartphone? Still, I can’t remember another presidential election that sparked so much deep angst and personal friction.
I wonder though: can’t we see a world that is bigger than Trump? Can we see people beyond their political opinions? And even if you say that what we call “politics” is merely the aggregated effect of humans on our planet, and therefore we cannot simply ignore politics, or agree “not to talk about politics” – really? So are we doomed to arguing till our throats and thumbs ache instead of noticing all the things about which we agree?
In allowing the disagreements of our country (aka “politics”) to color our real and virtual interactions, we have said goodbye to something very important, and that is unity.
In my capacity as an educator for Momentum, an organization that sponsors thousands of Jewish moms on a birthright-style trip to Israel, we have four goals. One of them is “achdut l’lo achidut” – unity without uniformity.
See, wholeness (what we call “shalom”) is only significant in the face of brokenness. That we are so prone to fracture is what makes unity all the more a prize. We can stay connected despite our differing views, and as a Jewish community, we must. It’s not optional.
To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, the world will little note – nor long remember – how different we are. Our enemies will always morph us together into one homogeneous mass, yet we persist in engaging in what Freud called the “narcissism of small differences” – the thesis that communities with adjoining territories and close relationships are especially likely to engage in feuds and mutual ridicule because of hypersensitivity to details of differentiation.
What makes hate possible is the redefinition of another human being as a one-dimensional creature, and a sub-par one that the world would be better off without. We have devolved into a society that defines others by one issue: Donald Trump.
And that is a shame.
Hi, Ruchi. This was an important post, and I am not sure that I am qualified to reply, since I am not Jewish nor “really” American. But I have caught the echo of the debate you are referring too, and despite not having, so to speak, a horse in the race, I was also saddened by it. And I feel that those dynamics are replicated everywhere in society, and reflect increasingly terse relationships all across the spectrum, and therefore are worth addressing. So I hope this comment is not totally out of place, though I won’t talk strictly about Jewish unity because, again, I am in no way qualified to discuss it.
There are many interesting points that you raise and severals I agree with, but I’d start with one I am not totally convinced of: the “narcissism of small differences”. Now, you might have had something specific in mind that I am not getting, but I think the real problem here is that some disagreements (in this matter as in the others you’ve mentioned like gun control and immigration) is that the differences are perceived as anything but small. I am under the impression that more and more people (on every side) feel there is something existential at stake. They feel that we are no longer dealing with political opinions such as “Should we allow 18 years old to drink?”, but with threats to their position in society, their safety and ultimately their life, and that makes them way less prone to compromise or even to hear the other side(s). This fear triggers a set of defensive reactions which are not meant to deescalate or to seek common ground, but to thwart and delegitimize the perceived threat.
Now, I am not interested in saying whether and to which extent those fears are legitimate, for several reasons including the fact that what I really think is that there is no way we can know. Even if we study history and learn to recognize the (supposed) red flag that have heralded certain events, the fact is that we influence history as it unfolds. Sometimes the fear of falling into a certain trap – which we historically know – might lead us into another trap, which we couldn’t foresee. Does this mean that we should ignore red flags? No. That would be very naive and, uhm, not very intelligent. But we should think carefully about how we are going to address them.
One thing that really, negatively, surprised me about the Trump-Omar-Tlaib-Israel affair, and more generally about the anti-semitism debate on social medias (especially Twitter), was how little people seemed ready to give the others the benefit of the doubt or to recognize that the others could be speaking in good faith.
(Disclaimer: it’s not that I expected them to give the benefit of the doubt because it’s a mitzvah and I expect Jewish people to stick to mitzvot. I don’t think Jewish people should be held to a higher standard than anyone else. I mentioned giving the benefit of the doubt because I believe that it is a smart thing to do that could save a lot of anger and misery, I am convinced everybody would benefit from doing it and I am dismayed when this doesn’t happen – also in the Italian political debate, to give an example. End of disclaimer.)
Now, I did have a certain opinion on the whole matter (no worries: I won’t say a word on the merits of it). But I believe that other opinions were legitimate, too. Not all of them – some were outside the boundaries of what I consider proper political discourse; but other opinions, even though I couldn’t agree with their premises, or with their core, or with the general outlook of the person expressing them, were… legitimate political opinions that one can disagree with, even firmly, but that should not be considered blasphemy. And I wondered why very little people were framing the discourse in a way akin to “Hello, everybody. I see where you are coming from. Probably, if I had made your same experience, I would say something very similar. However, I would like to share my somewhat different opinion along with a few things that happened to me that contributed to shaping it. Make of it whatever you want”.
And then I realized it: it was easy for me to frame it like that, because nothing of what was going on was existential, for me. I will now engage in a perilous exercise called “imagining what other people might think”, which is not great because a) each person has a slightly different set of ideas, and therefore talking about “group” opinions is bound to be a generalization and b) even this generalizations could be grossly inaccurate: so I am open to the idea that what follows is not what actually goes on. But my two cents are the following. The people who vehemently opposed Netanyahu and Deryh’s decision are afraid for the future of democracy in both Israel (I was about to write Italy. Freud knew it) and the US. They are afraid we are on a slippery slope from which we won’t be able to come back. They are afraid of the consequences that might arise – consequences that might be lethal. They do not see Trump as merely the 45th president of the US. They see him as a very dangerous man, and they are shocked and disappointed by the fact that Netanyahu seems to be oblivious to all that. The people who defended banning Tlaib and Omar, on the other hand, worry that the very future of Israel is at stake. They are afraid of the “corbynization” of the democratic party, and fear that this will result in a permanent and dangerous shift in the way Israel is perceived in the US discourse. They do not see Israel has a state akin to Greece or Ireland or Uzbekistan, but as something more vital (not necessarily religious-wise) and therefore feel that any perceived threat to Israel, big or small, is a threat to their own safety.
And the tragedy – imho – is that very few of these people are exacerbating the situation out of malice. They are not exploiting “myths” to score political points. They are acting as everybody would if they felt their life was at stake. The strength of our emotions, the fact that we feel with all our hearth that our opinions are right kind of blinds us to the possibility that, in fact, such opinions might not be right. Or that other opinions could also be right. Or (at the very least) that even if they are wrong they are birthed by a state of deep distress which shouldn’t be ignored or ridiculed or delegitimized. “If I am feeling with all my core something or someone is a danger, how can you disagree? You must be pushing an agenda”: this is what I am afraid most people feel. Which is also why some reject the appeals to unity altogether: what unity can there be with those that – in your opinion – are siding with a mortal danger? Again, this is hardly unique to the Jewish community in the US. A good number of Italians do that too, over different topics. It is the dynamic I was speaking about, that worries me so much.
How do we change this dynamic? I wish I knew, because it saddens me and scares me. I think there is very little that we can do from the outside. Certain experiences I had convinced me that you cannot stop the noise by screaming louder, even if what you are screaming is right. Sometimes it’s more advisable to wait for the storm to pass before intervening (but there is a storm everyday nowadays, so…). I also think that there is only that much that can be done online, especially on mediums like Twitter, which by default promote shallowness and soundbite-like conversations. I personally prefer talking with real people that know me and trust me or respect me (I know this is absolutely inconsistent with the fact that I have basically written an essay. Online. On the blog of a person which doesn’t know me IRL). I also think that there are several ways to strengthen society and to make it able to withstand crisis. I don’t know what you exactly do with your program, but I think that working to promote unity among Jewish women which might come from different walks of life is important. It won’t work overnight, but it might help people to build a comfortable enough relation among them to then have the patience and strength required to listen to an opinion that is radically different from theirs whilst acknowledging the good faith of the other person. This is what I would like to do within my society.
But most of all, people have to work within themselves. I used to be very partisan on certain issues. I saw it as a sign of intellectual and moral purity, an “I don’t compromise with the beast” sort of statement. It took me a while to actually understand that I might actually have end up feeding the beast, or, worst of all, being the beast. Truth be told, now I am struggling with the opposite tendency (i.e., understanding where I draw the line and how I rationally explain, to myself and to others, the line-drawing), but I think society would benefit if more people tried to understand the point from which someone is speaking. They can still think it’s awful and harmful, but at least they would know why a certain person holds awful and harmful views. But again, this requires a kind of detachment which is very hard to have in times of emergency. So I don’t feel like blaming those who don’t manage. There is no easy solution. Maybe there is no solution at all, and we are bound to keep chasing a dream of unity that it’s not meant for us in this world.
I don’t really strive for “unity”. I would say that I strive for “harmony”. I imagine society as an orchestra (this is a metaphor that I once read on Andrea Grinberg’s blog): for the final result to be harmonious, different group of people must, actually, play different parts. But I think that this is ultimately what you mean by “unity without uniformity”, and so I am really engaging in narcissism of disagreement. But what I really wanted to say is this: when I think of “unity”, sometimes I think of chain. Not all links are connected to one another, but still, they are all connected though others, and the chain is one. The gulf between some people’s worldview and mine might be too wide to bridge, but another link in the chain (or two, or three, or five) might still hold us together, and allow us to function as a family, a community, a society. I really hope that, in a quest for purity, we don’t break the links that hold more than us together.
TL;DR This is a very scary tendency that I see everywhere. I think it comes from a very deep fear that makes some different opinions seem life-endangering and therefore unacceptable. Groups of people see other groups as enemies and why would you want unity with them? I think it’s pretty hard to fix; most work should be done on the inside in order to recognize that even vastly different positions might be held in good faith. This helps eventual debates from turning very nasty and – ultimately – pointless. Working on the sidelines to create venues for interaction might also be very helpful. But ultimately I am clueless like everyone else, so I just hope the situation magically solves itself because we are headed somewhere dark if it doesn’t. Or maybe we aren’t, but internet makes us drama-queens. I’d rather not know.
THE END.
I am still processing all the brilliant things you said here
Camilla, I love what you wrote. I am also very bothered by the increasing polarization, where anyone who doesn’t agree with someone is the enemy. There’s an inability to understand complexity. People think that anyone who voted for Trump must be an evil, uncaring, hypocritical bigot. Both left and right think the other side is immoral.
I actually do know people on both sides, and I know they are caring, intelligent people. They care about the poor, the oppressed, etc. Often the real differences have to do with what each person thinks is the most pressing issue. Some people who voted for Trump have no love for him; they just thought he was not as dangerous as the alternative. I know some people would be appalled to hear this, but Trump is not entirely responsible for every problem in America today. He isn’t blameless, but he doesn’t deserve ALL the blame. Some of his actions are actually positive, although the other half of the country can’t see that because they’ve identified him as the epitome of evil. And in some cases, his policies are not that different from previous policies. The biggest difference is the way he has presented them. He isn’t trying to come across as nice. He’s trying to come across as powerful, as a “winner.”
I see things that my friends have posted on Facebook and I want to respond, but I expect what I say to be taken the wrong way — as if I’m the enemy. It’s happened to me. The situation has become ugly.
I like what you said about harmony. We have to accept that disagreeing with us doesn’t necessarily make a person evil. That most people are caring and want to help others. That different opinions (within certain bounds) enhance the orchestra’s sound.
There’s a great book I just started reading about this:
https://www.amazon.com/Love-Hate-Your-Politics-Relationships/dp/1250200393