Year of Civil Discourse Initiative
Remember when you saw your neighbor’s toddler walking out of their front door, proudly wearing two different color socks and you smiled, thinking what a creative child; maybe their son bounced a ball on someone’s car (not yours!) and their other daughter listened to some crazy music, and you recalled, fondly, your own childhood adventures and thought how much fun youth is? Then you turned around and saw your own child aiming for the door with quite an unusual clothing combination; the ball your son just got went into the cranky neighbor’s yard, and your teen skipped 6th period to hang with friends, right under your nose! What?! My darling, perfect offspring?? In my house?!
Before you knew it, you heard yourself utter some incomprehensible comments, most likely those things you heard your parents say and you swore you’ll never repeat because you will be “understanding” and “modern”… You might have needed some time to decompose and recompose, wondering if your whole life’s efforts towards positively contributing your share to making the world’s next generation a better one and tikun olam has completely failed… We know how easy it is to lose our objectivity, sense of humor, kindness – as well as boundaries or even appropriate toughness – when it comes to those closest to us. It’s been said that “common sense is not common”, and it’s often even less common when things hit home.
We’ve all been there in one way or another. We’ve seen on our kids’ faces; we’ve done it to our parents. What we might overlook is that we repeat this pattern in our lives as a People, especially in the ways we talk about our child, that is – when it to Israel. We have many challenges when talking about this child.
First is the fact that she has a huge family, for not only the Jewish people, proud and self-sufficient as we imagine ourselves to be, were involved in this child’s creation. Pause for a moment the check: How many other states came to be following a U.N. resolution? The world voted on the Jews’ homeland; a homeland whose capital is a city holy to three religions. No wonder everybody feels invested. No wonder it’s loaded. Israel is unique. And while we can argue, explain and email back and forth about the recent or other events, if nothing else, we know one thing: Israel appears in the news in a disproportional amount and level of interest. Indeed, since in so many ways, Israel is our child, it’s no wonder we are sensitive when we enter any dialog on our child.
It just means we have to treat it with that much more respect. And we have to come informed. You don’t want anyone to tell you anything about your kid, least of all if they don’t know who she is and what they are talking about, or, worse, if they don’t care. But when you sit down with someone who truly seeks to find good solutions for her wellbeing, there is openness. We can learn to distinguish between true and false alarms, for while many things are scary, not each is an emergency, life-threatening situation. And we can smile and agree to applaud her for her great achievements and give her support for the growing she has to do. Maybe if we know we’re talking about our child whose existence we are all concerned about often beyond what we dare admit, then we can hold the conversation better. After all, we do love her even when she walks out in public in crazy colors, blasting the neighbors’ ears with her unique tunes.
On December 12, 2010 our community shared in the opening event of the Year of Civil Discourse Initiative, A JCRC, SFJCF & Northern California Board of Rabbis Project. More than 250 members of our community, from different and often opposite points of view, gathered to listen and learn.
- by Michal Kohane, Israel Center Director
