Let’s do something difficult and challenging together. I want to share with you a story. Because this experience hurt me and made me think. Because I believe if we can hold multiple truths, we can move through this terrifying time of polarization towards unity. I believe we do this through bravely sharing our own stories while bravely hearing other voices. Especially the voices we don’t agree with. I’m mustering my courage to share in hopes for reflection which could lead to change. Will you come with me? Muster your courage to hear something uncomfortable? Here goes…
Jewish Voice for Peace seems to be the primary partner at the table in post-October-seventh dialogue.
I recently was part of a virtual presentation exploring Jewish-Muslim relations and interfaith work one year after the horrifying events of October 7, 2023. A leader of the Muslim community in a different part of the country shared harrowing stories of hate, ignorance, and discrimination against her friends and her family. She has also been my friend for 15 years.
She shared that she and the Jewish community leaders where she lives are not in conversation anymore (hopefully just for right now) about bridge-building, story-sharing, or supporting one another through a deeply painful time for everyone.
She shared that the only Jewish representatives coming to the interfaith table where she lives is Jewish Voice for Peace.
When I heard this, my heart sank. My guts turned. What does the interfaith dialogue look like when only one voice of a diverse people is part of the conversation? When a more extremist voice stands for all of our voices, how can we do the sacred work of coming together, even when we feel torn apart?
I live in a tiny corner of southeast Georgia where there are very few Muslims. Historically, we, the Jewish community, have tried to hold space for the minyan (10 people) of Muslims here, like after the mosque shooting in Christchurch, Australia. Just as after the events in Charlottesville, we opened the doors of the synagogue so we all could be comforted by each other’s presence.
Since October 7 of last year, we have been mindful of the complexity of the situation in both Israel and America. We know that the way forward is a way of peace which includes voices from multiple perspectives. It includes ears which will listen and hearts which will hold more pain than perhaps is reasonable. In this last year, I met an American woman who grew up in Gaza. We work out at the same gym. Our kids are similar in age. And when things in the Middle East are impossible to handle, I often reach out to her because my other non-Jewish friends do not viscerally understand the agony of this year in the same way she does. While some beliefs divide us, we are united through the shared experience of misery, of loss, of anger, of despair.
At the same time, I have a dear rabbi friend in a different part of the country whose Christian colleague sent her a note late last October saying, “I can no longer be in relationship with you.” Her synagogue was the subject of a grotesque antisemitic publication, which left everyone rattled, anxious, and on high alert. And none of the other faith leaders denounced it or reached out to check in. How is she supposed to return to a table that doesn’t want her, or perhaps is no longer there?
I write this immediately following the second election of Donald Trump as president and a few days after a seeming pogrom took place in Amsterdam when Israeli soccer fans and locals clashed violently. I am an optimist. And yet, I know the answer is not just to love your neighbor. Perhaps a new question to ask ourselves is: How do we love our neighbors when our neighbors hate us? Or when we hate them? Or when we don’t trust or like or believe in one another? There is no asterisk to the love we are commanded to hold for one another. No exceptions. As Rabbi Joachim Prinz wisely shared, “Neighbor is not a geographic term. It is a moral concept.”
I spoke at our local college about where we are now, one year after October 7. I described layers and layers of complexity pertaining to identity, racism, privilege, pain, loss, love, and duty. The moderator asked me about how to hold these multiple perspectives all at once. My reply was, grow without fixing. What if we didn’t need to decide anyone else’s response to the heinous events taking place around the world? What if our part is not to determine who is right and who is wrong, but rather just to have the courage and commitment to show up and listen?
A last vignette: Two men, an Arab and an Israeli Jew, sat down together for a sacred conversation in a Ted Talk early in 2024. When the Arab man was a child, his brother had been murdered by an Israeli soldier. The Israeli speaker’s parents had been murdered on October 7th. And what they said to each other before all of us viewers, what they affirmed, was we chose not to pursue vengeance. We cannot be pursuers of peace if we are pursuers of vengeance, resentment, or grudges.
Let us seek peace and pursue it. Let us return to the tables and keep the conversations alive.
Rachael Bregman is the Berman Family Rabbinate rabbi for historic Congregation Beth Tefilloh in Brunswick, GA. She was ordained from Hebrew Union College in 2010. She grew up in the northeast and now lives in The South which makes for a very interesting experience. She is a hiker, a baker and an antiracist. Most importantly she is a mom to a tiny human and two rescue dogs