Communal debate to build a stronger community

BENJI SHULMAN

As I conclude a discussion with a resident of Jerusalem, the night-time air is punctuated by a dull thud. This signals the landing of yet another munition in the current Syrian civil war and a reminder that the chaos of the Middle East has not stopped menacing at the edge of the Jewish State.

Despite this reality, tonight’s discussion about the future of the Jewish people is not focused on external threats like ISIS, Iran or BDS. It centres rather on something far more abstract, but perhaps equally important – how to preserve the space for healthy Jewish debate.

You see, I am attending a conference organised under the auspices of the Nahum Goldmann Fellowship, a yearly meeting of Jewish lay leaders, professionals and activists for a cross-communal conversation about the state of the Jewish future.

Those who come to the conference are deliberately chosen to reflect the diversity of the Jewish community. The 2017 gathering is no exception – attendees come from 30 countries and every imaginable religious and political stream within Jewish life.

Included in this year’s list, is a conservative think tank director, a female rabbi, a Jewish film critic, a Charedi educator, a venture capitalist and a professor from Yeshiva University – to name just a few.

The goal of the conference is to try and get these Jews, many of whom would never had encountered one another in ordinary life, to learn together, eat together, even pray together – and, most importantly, to talk to one another about their perspectives on the path forward for the Jewish people.

I have found that we sometimes take the idea of community debate for granted. It is as if the institution of “two Jews, three opinions” was simply there, already existing in our collective Jewish lives, like the communal version of your grandmother’s chicken soup.

Unfortunately, there is reason to be concerned about the state of our Jewish conversation. The Nahum Goldmann Fellowship is carefully curated to be engaging but challenging, because as Jews, we are not immune from the age of Trump, Twitter and Brexit.

Certain topics that are addressed in Jewish life today often have us screaming at one another, instead of constructively debating the way forward.

We all know what these topics are. We see them in our Jewish media all the time – gender, religious observance, Israeli politics, South African history, the price of kosher chicken, the idea of even eating chicken and the status of our holy places.

Like a Somali sea pirate, they move in quickly and hijack the larger but more vulnerable communal conversation, continuously holding it to ransom, never allowing it to go forward.

To stand up for the idea of open debate is not always popular. Frankly, it’s much easier to troll on Twitter, disrupt communal events, boycott talks, issue threats of legal action or use Facebook for name calling.

Yet it is crucial to find ways of engaging that don’t damage our institutions or further erode some of our limited social capital both inside our community and in the wider socio-political environment.

More importantly, unnecessary, ugly fights inside the community, entirely put Jews off wanting to engage in the Jewish conversation. It is critical that those who want input, whatever it might be, into issues affecting the community, are treated with respect – even if they are being challenged vigorously.

If we don’t find a way to do this, the long-term price may well be very high; less engagement in our Jewish conversation means less innovation, less inspiration, more apathy, more anger and a downward slope to a diluted, weaker Jewish community.

Benji Shulman is the executive director of the South African Israel Forum and volunteers for several Jewish community organisations. He was a participant on the Nahum Goldmann Fellowship of 2017.