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Last night I babysat for an American family who made Aliyah; last Shabbat I ate a meal with nine American seminary girls; and all last week I helped out an American family here for the chagim.

I’ve been talking a lot of English and I’ve been spending time with a range of Americans: some live here; a bunch wish they could live here; and others are happy they don’t live here.

To be frank, I felt very American. Which is a good, because I am. But I was also comfortable with that feeling. Which surprises me because I’m usually not.

I am careful to speak Israeli and look Israeli and act Israeli.

It’s an issue with which I often struggle: I want to properly acclimate to Israel’s culture and social setting and yet I cannot disregard my American roots; I will always be American. The desire to become “Israeli” is appealing and complex and impossible all at once.

I was caught off guard, therefore, when I found myself in conversation with one of those nine seminary girls. She was American and intelligent and this was her first time in Israel and she was frustrated. Israelis are rude, she generalized: at restaurants the waitresses are impatient; people rebuke her for crossing the street when the light is red; and the Israeli girls outside her seminary yell out crude, or perhaps clever, variations of the word ‘American’. She described them as malicious and abrasive.

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A short anecdote and a short observation:

Anyone who has ever visited Jerusalem’s City Hall knows that they are serious about their hours. The Arnona Department, specifically, is inundated by swarms of residents eager to file for property tax discounts. Similar to many of Israel’s bureaucratic offices, it is a place no one really wants to be. And, truthfully, it doesn’t seem that they are too eager to keep anyone there. The one o’clock closing time is strictly enforced and as closing time approaches the gate abruptly closes, locking out a crowd of unhappy Jerusalemites.

Last week I was one of those unhappy Jerusalemites—on the other side of that closed gate: I wasn’t locked out; I was stuck in. The hour was after one and I was sitting on a chair waiting for my roommate to return with a document that needed to be urgently signed. The kind secretary assured me that if I remained she would allow my roommate to reenter with the necessary paperwork.

So I sat there and waited. For an hour. Alone. With nothing to do.

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Last month I spent a day in the hometown of today’s murderer.

I was in East Jerusalem on an organized trip in which Jewish men and women explore and experience the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through interaction and dialogue with those of the latter group.

On the most basic level I can say that the trip was intense and meaningful; and yet I have been unsure as to what I want to say about it. I have been contemplating and procrastinating and waiting. Time passes and truths change and old experiences must be adapted to new realities.

And, thus, the reality of today’s horrific terrorist attack certainly demands careful reconsideration.

East Jerusalem was foreign to me. It was a Jerusalem I didn’t know existed and it was a Jerusalem that belied the “Unified Jerusalem” signs that hung amongst the streets of my Jerusalem. It was a Jerusalem that revealed contradiction and complicated the simplicity of what I always believed.

We toured the area with Ashraf Khatib, a field officer for the Negotiations Support Unit, and I walked along the “security fence” and I touched it and felt the paradox of physical manifestations as means of solving deep social conflict. We listened to an impressive presentation delivered by Walid Salem, of the Center for Democracy and Community Development and we sat in intimate conversation with Palestinian East Jerusalem residents.

The visual representation of the nature of the conflict was awfully powerful. Much of the value of the situation lay in the essence of the encounter. The ability and willingness to listen to the other provides great meaning.

There were moments, however, when speaking with Ashraf and Walim, that I realized the complexity of the situation: we are dealing with professionals who, despite genuine motives, eventually resort to formal rhetoric. When a Jewish participant inquired about the possibility of improvement of interpersonal relationships between the Palestinians and the Israelis, Ashraf, almost mechanically, responded that the solution to this issue is for the Israeli government to comply with the demands of the British Mandate.

Instead of remaining on the level of the micro, Ashraf resorted to the micro: he defines the personal question of relationships in terms of land and borders and thus obscures the essence of the conflict. It is a dynamic conflict involving people and feelings rather than technicalities of land and borders and straight lines. It is the question of rhetoric versus relationships.

With all the apparent paradox, though, the conversation and games with the Palestinian residents provided genuine dialogue. I heard the Palestinian narrative; I heard an underrepresented view. It was a moment in which stereotypes were shed; labels removed; and a sense of unity and humanistic empathy created. My most basic sensitivity to the plight of another human being and the understanding of human experience was aroused. They spoke of family, of friends, and of community; for a moment we shared a language.

The content of the dialogue was intense and complex: the definition of peace itself was unclear; and yet the mere ability and willingness to listen and appreciate the other weaved a delicate sense of togetherness.

I returned to West Jerusalem with appreciation and hope.

And yet:

It was late and I went to pick up my bike which I had left locked in a park. And yet, when I arrived at the park my bike was gone. Stolen.

There was a police officer nearby. He saw what had happened: “Why’d you leave your bike here? It was an Arab who stole it—obviously. It always happens.”

And without a moment for me to react, he drove away.

And then:

A Palestinian construction work plows his bulldozer into a bus and pedestrians and cars in the center of Jerusalem. He deliberately murders Israelis and wounds at least forty others. He crushed them; he crushed us—all of us.

What do they want? And who are They, anyway? Because They told me they wanted peace and claimed support for non-violence conflict resolution and yet They want to steal and kill and disturb the social order.

And truthfully, I believe both of Them. I truly believed those Palestinians when they smiled and we sat in the confines of the American Colony Hotel and they told me of pain and aggravation and hope.

But then I returned the mundane happenings of life; and as much as I wanted to yell at the police officer for the-matter-of-fact manner with which he asserted a Palestinian had stolen my bike, inside I believed it as well. And a month later, I believe that murderer today, whose hometown I had visited, when he brutally killed three human-beings and caused me pain and aggravation and told me he doesn’t want peace.

My hope, though, I’m unsure about: I’m not sure what’s left of it; I’m not sure what will be of it; and I’m not sure who’s in control of it.

It’s been almost a month since it happened; and yet it is taking time to process its events. The images, interaction, and memories remain clear; and yet demand clarity.

I was on the bus home from school. It was a long day and it was late in the evening and we were approaching Mea Shearim, the Haredi neighborhood of Jerusalem. And then we stopped moving. I peered out the window, as I began to smell smoke, and noticed the garbage bins in the distance: they were set on fire and placed along the main road of the neighborhood, and thus there was only one very narrow lane for traffic.

The streets were mobbed with men and young children dressed in black and white and earlocks and velvet hats and bekeshas. The kids were disturbing traffic; they were taking smaller garbage bins and throwing them in front of the passing cars; they were shouting; they were causing me to feel as though I was a stranger in a foreign city with foreign people.

I was stunned. Traffic was stopped. People began murmuring on the bus. No one knew what was going on.

And so I got off the bus. I approached a haredi woman standing on the sidewalk. She was married and relatively young—perhaps late twenties.

What’s going on here?

I’m not sure of the exact details. Apparently, a young boy died in a car accident and the government won’t let them bury him. They want to perform an autopsy. A tragedy. A tragedy. Unbelievable. Can you imagine if you had died and they wouldn’t let you be buried?

She spoke passionately. She was staring at the fire and the words floated out of her mouth, sounding a bit premeditated.

I remained standing with her. I was intrigued and emotional and frustrated and I shared those sentiments with her. I insisted that while I can empathize with her pain, such a means of action will provide no solution.

She was convinced otherwise: this is the only way that the government changes things; we go out and protest and this is how things change. I am very proud of them; this is the right thing to be done.

Passer-byers stood and watched. People noticed us. People watched us. People, I assume, wondered.

I though, could not accept her arguments. I asserted that such action—while on a local level may provide solutions—foster greater splintering within the Jewish community; this is surely no conduit to empathy and understanding. The innocent onlooker—the outsider—experiences distance and frustration and disunity.

And she had a quick response: I’m not looking for unity. There’s not chance of that and that’s not what I daven for. I daven that one day the chiloynim will come back. And that’s all I can do until everyone comes back.

And no, she’s not going out there. She’s not trying to bring them back. Because—like she said—she doesn’t want any contact with them unless the chiloynim come to them. She doesn’t want to have anything to do with them. Her kids see them driving on Shabbat and scream goy goy. And they think that the woman without a head covering is a goya or an arab. How can she teach them otherwise?

Her words were bewildering. I was shocked—in the truest sense of the word: the abrupt and simple manner with which she disregarded all attempts of unity was painful.

It is difficult to fathom any united effort if, as she claimed, there is no incentive to reach unity; the absence of a common goal precludes any common action– of which I strongly believe.

Eventually, perhaps frustrated, the woman mentioned that her kids were waiting for her at home and that she was worried that someone would walk by and record our conversation and she walked off.

I too, though, walked off frustrated: I was frustrated at her harsh and insensitive words; I was frustrated at my inability to empathize with her; I was frustrated with the paradoxical reality I attempt to decipher; I was frustrated that I felt like a foreigner; and I was frustrated with the abruptness of the conversation’s ending.

And yet, amongst the inundation of despair I embraced this intimate moment. For me it was a unique moment which provided the haredi woman a forum to define herself and defend herself against the other. I appreciated the encounter as an attempt at dialogue—a means of expression, of understanding. Appreciation, I think, is integral to the development of a solution.

While I do recognize that this woman’s words represent her alone and that she was, perhaps, an extreme representation of the community, I remain slightly despaired and yet forever hopeful.

Martin Buber has a powerful book entitled On Intersubjectivity and Cultural Creativity. He writes elegantly and poignantly. And, perhaps, herein lies a viable approach to the solution of this conflict.

Here’s what I read:

“A time of genuine religious conversations is beginning—not those so-called fictitious conversations here none regarded and addressed his partner in reality, but genuine dialogues, speech from certainty to certainty, but also from one open-hearted person to another open-hearted person. Only then will genuine common life appear (47).

Genuine conversation, and therefore every actual fulfillment of relations between men, means acceptance of otherness. When two men inform one another of their basically different views about an object, each aiming to convince the other of the rightness of his own way of looking at the matter, everything depends so far as human life is concerned, on whether each thinks of the other as the one he is, whether each, that is, with all his desire to influence the other, nevertheless unreservedly accepts and confirms him in his being (65).”

I like to think of this approach as my guidance. I like to hope that this model will transfer from the ideal to the realistic.

The next step is the general implementation of such a motive; the next stage is genuine education. And, as always, the question remains: is it possible?

You may think that was a sigh of despair. And in a way it was. But more importantly, I think, it’s a sigh of concern—of deep distress.

Last Shabbat while reading the Chareidi magazine Mishpacha, I came across an interview with three influential Chareidi rabbis on the “Burning Issues of Chareidi Jewry”. A prominent section of the article discussed the respective rabbis’ positions towards the Reform, Conservative and Modern Orthodox movements. Here’s a bit:

“Members of the Conservative and Reform movements are all from our beloved Jewish brethren, may they one day merit to see the truth. The movements themselves, though, cannot, in all honesty, be viewed as Jewish movements. Since the goal of their movements is to distort Judaism, eliminate belief in Hashem, and eliminate mitzvos and Torah, there is no other way to view them.

Our approach to Conservative and Reform Jews should be to speak to them, let them know we care about them, introduce them to Torah, and try to get them to understand how much they are missing by not having Torah.

Before World War I and World War II, Orthodoxy joined the other movements in certain organizations to empower the Jewish community before the government, perhaps for the sake of the Jews overseas.

…But there are more problems created than solved when such bodies represent the Jewish people in the eyes of the government.

Number One, it gives them legitimacy in their own eyes and makes us recognize them. Inevitably, we will be sitting down with them at the table and calling them “Rabbi this” and “Rabbi that” when they possess no scholarship, and are utterly undeserving of being called a rabbi in any way.

…Number Three, giving them recognition causes us to stop and look at them as people who are lost and in need of being healed and helped. We will stop looking at ourselves as rescuers, and begin to see ourselves as their equals, or just another sect.

…I would say that Modern Orthodoxy is not a Torah movement, but I wouldn’t say it doesn’t have Torah value.”

I was stunned.

(Admittedly, I did include the excerpts that emphasize the impact of the expressed opinions and I do recommend that you check out the website where the article should appear by the end of the week; yet the potent shock and paradox is undeniable.)

And then yesterday I came across this article posted on the Haaretz website professing that “We have had it up to here with the ultra-Orthodox”:

“These are painful statements, but they must be said loud and clear: Two peoples live in this land, both Jewish - they and we. They are the ultra-Orthodox, who see themselves as emissaries of God on earth. We are all the rest - secular, traditional and religious. It is not that we have suddenly separated; we never were one people. We tried to delude ourselves that we were. They knew all along that we were not.

What did we not do to preserve unity? We were ready to admit that they personified the true Judaism; we accepted marrying and divorce according to the laws of Moses and Israel based on their version; we accepted - willingly or gritting our teeth - limitations on our lifestyle; we agreed to ignore the status quo agreement that was wrung from us as hush money, so that they would not show up before the United Nations investigative committee and persuade it to prevent the establishment of the Jewish state; we sent our young men and women to defend them, while they spend their time at yeshivas or just wandering the streets; we agreed to support them, since after all they do not have time to work for a living; we even came to terms with their spitting at us, we whose “wagon is empty” while theirs is full.

All these things did us no good. They continued to take the fruits of our goodwill from us, while giving nothing in return. A unilateral treaty was created in which we give and they take.

…Therefore we have had it up to here with their insults. We are no worse Jews than they are. On the contrary: Good manners come before Torah. Humanness is not the antithesis of Jewishness, but rather stems from it.”

Again—stunned.

But then I took a moment to understand: the attacks are coming from both sides. They are hurtful and often unfounded; they are piercing and unnecessarily blunt; and although I do see elements of truth in each argument the truth remains irrelevant. What concerns me is the form in which each author presents the facts: verbal wars are certainly not conducive to meaningful reform. Tasteless words and biting phrases will certainly hamper progress.

In this splintered society we must disregard focusing on the differences and attempt to produce a network of empathy and understanding. We can no longer assume a position of superiority and importance: I believe that there is truth in my way; yet that does not preclude belief in the other way— a belief in both ways.

We have a common tradition; a text: we have the Torah. From there arises dissention as a plethora of interpretations produces an even greater number of opinions. We must, however, trust the proclaimed intentions of the other and validate every individuals desire to forge a relationship with God.

The approaches are each very different; yet the complexities that produce a system of customs—the very habits, symbols and values that characterize one group—are a means of personal expression and demand appreciation.

At the end of the day, though, we must expose mutual ground. I do recognize that nice thoughts and happy ideals are partially meaningless. And this is where you come in. The question remains: how do we alleviate this tension? How can we create a common living ground which honors the respective differences? Even if there is dialogue—what issues shall be discussed?

It seems it’s always someone: Arab and Jews; Religious and Secular; Modern-Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox.

Oy.

Deep down I am hesitant to post these articles. Perhaps they will only exacerbate the present schism rather than alleviate the discord. Ultimately, though, change and productivity result from awareness.

So here it is. It all depends on us.