Peace, Love, or Understanding

B"H

I am wondering whether there are any good writings by psychologists or rabbis or other scholars, on the limitations of "understanding" between persons. Here's what happened to me this morning: First, I read about the wrapping of Guantanamo prisoners in Israeli flags during torture. Second, I read in this contribution to the Vancouver-based Muslim-Jewish Discussion list that, "the central obstacle to peace between our peoples [is] the political struggle between Palestinians and Israelis over a territory that both claim as their homeland." Third, I was so upset with these two pieces that I wound up yelling at Kyla, my "token Muslim best friend," who had just come online for the morning. (Sorry, Kyla.)

In all that kneejerk disgust, the beef is this: When it seems so obvious that the violent animosity between Jews and Muslims in our time is little more than the crowd-control tool of a global empire that is neither Islamic nor Jewish; when any holistic reading of the Holy Land's bloody modern history can't but suggest that both "Zionism" and "Jihad" have been co-opted, and their G!d-loving believers used, for many generations, by third parties aspiring to power; when there is a serious Big Picture for us to see behind the political tides of our culture clashes and "holy wars;" this identification of a simple political struggle over territory as The Obstacle to peace makes me crazy, because it is so desperately narrow. It is also exactly what those in power (or pursuing it) want us to think. It keeps us occupied, so to speak.

I can't even tell which is more frustrating: Islamic culture's refusal to admit that the Palestinians' outrageous oppression is not unique in this time or any other; or Jewish culture's refusal to admit that our enemy in this age hates us no more, because they know us no better, than our enemies in any of the countless times past when someone tried to dupe someone else by pointing and shouting, "look out for that Jew behind you!" It's an academic distinction, I suppose. Jews have been around this block so many times, you think we'd recognize the old scapegoat pattern and try to help our enemy overcome their deeper struggle, or that we'd at least show some compassion and stop short of naively demonizing the weak, to say nothing of participating in their oppression, making perverse theological rationalizations, and lamely protesting that we have no choice. Then again, scapegoating Israel has become no less of a daft enterprise over the centuries, and the zeal with which Islamic culture accepts this putrid red-herring of an insult to its own intelligence is, arguably, its own elective downfall. In any case, both sides have the access to history, if either could be bothered to read it. The broad tides of power are not obscure -- unless, as Kyla bravely reminds me, one's own wounds make one too painfully allergic to the simple, obvious truth.

The thing is, I could spend my entire life trying (and failing) to convince Jews and Muslims to look at the forest for the trees, to stop believing so stubbornly that there is nothing deeper to our relationship than a dispute over land. I could make a full-time job of picking apart the arguments of well-meaning would-be peacemakers, trying to explain that no self-honest Jew will ever be convinced that Israel's occupation of "historical Palestine" is more unfair than the prospect that the Jews should not have their very own sovereign state, on the tiniest sliver of desert, from which we were forcably expelled, out of our one and only Holy City and into two thousand years of being raped, maimed, and murdered in nearly every other place on earth. I could live out my years doing nothing but trying to describe the emasculation of one people to another emasculated people, until they finally understood.

But where would that get us? We are not G!d, so our capacity to understand is limited; and What emasculated people has the strength to truly understand another's emasculation? More to the point, why does it matter? If G!d's intention for us is not that we fully understand each other (for this would, ultimately, require that we fully understand G!d), then why do we constantly put understanding before love, practically as its precondition? G!d's judgement of this flagrant chutzpah is clear: There comes a point in any deep relationship when a choice must be made between love or understanding -- and the way of peace is to choose love, in faith that all the understanding we need will follow in time; therefore when we do not choose love, and insist on understanding (or on being understood), we are denied, because we deny ourselves, the gift of peace.

In terms of the politics, Haseena reaches essentially the same conclusion that I do: In the end, Palestine-Israel must be a single sovereignty, governed by Torah values but open, and just, to all who know it is their home (that is to say, governed by Torah values). Our own tradition describes the Holy Land in this way, radically open, by representation of the Beyt haMiqdash, where there is always room for everyone to bend to the ground in worship. This is one of its defining miracles (see: Pirkey Avot 5:I-forget-the-posuk). We can never understand how there is room for more G!d-lovers' prayers, beliefs, dreams, humility, life, than seems possible. That's why it's a miracle! And what apikorsus (heresy) would presume that this miracle applies only to G!d-fearing Jews? Nowhere is such a distinction made in our sources.

So why then did Haseena's piece whip me into such a tizzy? I think it is an attitude I read in her words -- the way in which we tend to address political unrest or strife in our time, as cancers to be sized up and cut out, rather than a form of Divine Guidance to the homing of the soul (a.k.a. "Jihad" -- or "Zionism"). I think this sentence sums it up: "In respect to peace between Muslims and Jews, the only aspect of Judaism that I care about is the belief held by some Jewish people (as I understand it) that Jews have a God-given, or Biblically-granted, right to historical Palestine." Now, any believer knows that a single religious belief cannot be understood without context, in a vacuum, and yet the claim here is that understanding this single unimaginable belief is the only matter, the only attribute of the Other, that is relevant to peace. In other words, the desire Haseena describes is not really to understand what the Other believes, but to understand more precisely how the Other is wrong.

We need to learn that peace is not the product of understanding. Understanding is the product of peace, and peace is the product of brotherhood, which depends upon honor and love. If my only interest in You is in where you differ from Me, then I am not really interested in You at all; I'm only interested in the ramifications of your existence upon the me-ness of Me. Therefore, we can't make peace by talking over our differences, not unless we end up caring about the other, unpredictable, idiosyncratic things that the other holds dear. On an average day, most North American Jews have many concerns closer to their hearts than the State of Israel. The same is true of most North American Muslims with respect to Palestine. Preoccupation with Middle East politics distorts our identities to each other, and thereby occludes the building of brotherhood between us.

For my part, I long to understand how many modern Islamic political positions are theologically justifiable. But I know this too is a disingenuous longing. What I really want is assurance that the Other is Human and of G!d exactly as much as I am, not more and not less -- because otherwise my monotheism is flawed, and that prospect threatens my very relationship with G!d. I long, simply, to love my fellows and to not be hated. I don't think I am alone.

How this bears on Mishkaneering can be stated simply: To make space for Holy-dwelling, we must humanize, we must love, in advance of understanding. Love has to come first, and understanding must be allowed to follow. This is a bare mechanical fact of Creation. It's a lesson we are forced to learn from marriage, or from parenthood, and are meant to apply back to brotherhood. (Just look anywhere in Genesis.) Jewish-Muslim interfaith forums would do well to focus on the exchange of loves. The obvious starting point, it seems to me, is in relating (and the more personal the terms, the better) our shared love of the Holy Land, or our common dedication to the life of Belief as a religious minority in North America. As for Mishkaneering in the more specifically Jewish sense, it would behoove us greatly to drop the sectarian brand-name fever and spend more energy trying to share different dimensions of Torah, and of our lives in Torah, with each other -- rather than worrying so much about how the other guy is treyf. (There is an acute need in this day for halakhah to be unfolded toward promoting such an open-table Jewish society. Such work will be critical to the Mishkaneers' success, B"H.)

So screw understanding. Where it is held out as a precondition to dignity, to recognition, to love, that's when communities split, war breaks out, brotherhood fails (G!d forbid). Understanding is one of the great fetishes of modernity. Its value should not be underestimated, but it must not be overestimated either. It is not our highest calling in this life.