Unity in diversity should be the aim

BEVERLEY MAY

Discussion during this panel session examined the fact that polarities should not always be resolved and, in fact, the tensions that result from disagreement are necessary for growth and creativity.

In 2012, during heated correspondence about women singing at communal events, David Saks made the point that debate can and should, lead to positive outcomes. When there was a belief in the community that there was “insufficient space for more ‘pluralistic’ expressions of what it meant to be Jewish”, the result was the successful implementation of Limmud, now an annual event in Durban, Cape Town and Johannesburg.

Saks also made the point in the Jewish Report of May 11, 2012, that “it is not controversy that is draining the life out of Diaspora communities the world over, but simple, numbing indifference”.

I agree. Disagreement and friction as a result of diversity are not the enemies; apathy and indifference are.

It could be said that it is in our DNA to strive against “the other” and that our longevity can, in part, be ascribed to internal struggles. Our challenge then, is how to reconcile a desire to be a united people circumscribed by a clear Jewish identity and the understanding that this identity is subject to debate.

This is often accompanied by fears that our Judaism will be compromised, in spite of evidence that change has been a consistent characteristic – “Judaism has always been a dynamic tradition that responds to and addresses the changing realities of the world. It is anything but static”. (Rav Eitan Bendavid, Cape Jewish Chronicle, November 2011).

As South Africans who have been part of a society that, for the last 20 years has been learning to embrace differences, we should be particularly comfortable with diversity. During Nelson Mandela’s memorial service in the FNB Stadium in Johannesburg last December, Rabbi Warren Goldstein reminded us that “Nelson Mandela, like the biblical Joseph, rose up from jail to become president of a mighty nation; he too transcended his personal pain and years of suffering to forgive and to embrace his brothers and sisters who had inflicted so much pain on him and so many millions of others, in order that our diverse South African family would not be torn apart by hatred and division”.

In an article entitled “Being Jewish in the New South Africa” in the Cape Times of November 9, 2011, Dennis Davis said that “living in a society under construction is not conducive to certainty, but if one wants rigid certainty, Sydney or Auckland are beckoning!”

Justice Davis also wrote (in 2000), referring to “a hatred of difference”, that “the individual is then subsumed under the weight of obligations to the group, Judaism then becomes a custom-made product, and the possibility of individual development implodes.”

Our community, however, has found it difficult, at times, to deal with diversity. As part of her PhD thesis, Dr Chaya Herman wrote in 2006: “Open debate or criticism of the establishment has been curtailed in order not to ‘divide the community’. By silencing dissenting voices the ‘imagined’ cohesiveness of the community has been preserved and its boundaries have been maintained” and that “the perceived unity of the community has been maintained by advancing exclusion and seclusion.”

Our history and culture is cluttered with examples of duality: Ashkenazi and Sephardi, Progressive and Orthodox, Observant and non-Observant, Egalitarian and non-Egalitarian, etc. In his book, Jews, G-d and History, Max Dimont writes: “A challenging and perplexing duality runs through the five books of Moses; there are not only two peoples, the Hebrews and the Israelites, but also two Moses – the Levite Moses and the Midianite Moses.

“There are also two G-ds, one referred to as Jehovah and the other named Elohim. Later we read of two kingdoms fused into one and broken in two. There are two rival temples, one in the kingdom of Judah in Jerusalem, the other in the kingdom of Israel, in Bethel.

“There are two versions of many other events as perceptive readers may have noticed. Are we dealing with two versions of the same story or with two different stories merged into one?”

Let’s also consider that success is not necessarily mutually exclusive. The “exclusion and seclusion” of streams of Judaism, for example, with whom we do not agree, with the intention of hindering their growth in the interests of advancing our own growth, is a short-sighted strategy. We all benefit if all the groups in our Big Tent are successful. As in commerce, a vibrant Jewish community can only exist if there are lots of winners.

In his book, Wanderings, Chaim Potok says: “The writings of Maimonides generated bitter public controversy when first published. This controversy highlighted the two essentially irreconcilable approaches at the very core of Judaism: one rational, facing outward toward the world and general culture, eager for all worthwhile knowledge, prepared to enter the market place of ideas.

“The other mystical, facing inward towards its own sources, possessed of its unalloyed vision of Jewish destiny, feeding off its inner strength and rejecting vehemently any small distortion of its vision of reality from civilisations alien to what it sees as the pure essence of Judaism.

“These two elements at the core of the Jewish tradition, rubbing up against each other, generate the friction and bitterness of controversy and, one hopes, the sparks of creativity.”

We should seek sparks of creativity to foster unity in diversity; our goal should be the unity of our whole community, in spite of and because of, our differences.