Summer of Strife and (some) Solace
Andrea Hendler, Director of Leadership Innovation
Having just returned from an extended trip to Israel, I have been thinking a lot about the varied experiences I had and the primary leadership lesson I learned through them.
I arrived to an Israel that was remarkably different than the country I had left just 10 months before. On the one hand, Israel seemed rocked by a tension so palpable it could almost take your breath away. On the other hand, it seemed pregnant with the possibility of an energized political discourse and a renewed focus on issues that need urgent attention. Large-scale social protests that have been taking place across Israel in response to the government’s push for a wide-ranging judicial overhaul have caused many Israelis (including this one) to probe and reexamine the Jewish and democratic foundations upon which the State of Israel was built. My objective this summer was to try to more deeply understand that which I was only able to watch from afar in Baltimore and to look at every experience and interaction as a social anthropologist might.
While there were too many fascinating experiences to recount them all here, I will highlight three that helped me learn my most significant leadership lesson of the summer: that the acts of communicating and, perhaps, even more importantly, of listening are among the most significant leadership acts one can take. Notably, in his book, The Dignity of Difference, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, of blessed memory, asks: “How do we live with moral difference and yet sustain an overarching community?” The answer, he suggests, is “conversation, not mere debate but the disciplined act of communicating (making my views intelligible to someone who does not share them) and listening (entering into the inner world of someone whose views are opposed to my own).”
Just a week or so after my arrival, I attended my first anti judicial reform/”pro-democracy” protest, which started just across from the Histradrut (national labor union) and continued to Jerusalem’s Rabbinical Court. At the Histadrut, despite being a bit overwhelmed by the crowds and the sound of incessant squawking from bullhorns, I was finally able to participate in the civic action that had eluded me since these protests began in January. While walking from the Histadrut to the Rabbinical Court, a friend and I sought out some shade at Hadassah Academic College, where we encountered two young women who seemed to be looking at the protesters with some combination of disdain and curiosity. I watched/listened while one of them turned to the other and made a derogatory reference to “smolanim” (or leftists) who, at least at the moment, were perceived as preventing them from attending their courses.
Rather than continue on, my friend and I decided to engage these young women in conversation to try to get a sense of why they felt so threatened by the protesters. After ample conversation about how and where each of us grew up and after having explored each other’s deep commitments to the version of Israel we wanted to see for ourselves and our families, it was clear that we shared far more than that which divided us (i.e. a desire to safeguard Israel as a homeland for Jews around the world, a commitment to the ethics and values that undergird our Jewish tradition, a devotion to creating spaces where all can practice their religion as they choose without infringing on the rights of others to practice as they choose, etc.).
Lest you think that this encounter ended with all hugs and smiles, as we were ready to rejoin the protesters at the next location, these young women thanked us for speaking with them and told us that we were, fortunately, not “those kind of leftists.” While gratified to have learned about the hopes and dreams of those who think rather differently than us, we wondered what options are available when, “thankfully, you’re not ‘those kind of leftists’” is the best we can do.
Around the same time, I was forwarded a video clip that had been going viral, showing a young(ish) man who decided to conduct a social experiment. He would stand outside of a mall in the center of the country to engage people in conversation about the judicial reform debate. He attempted to talk to anyone who would talk to him before they headed into the mall and asked them what they thought about the judicial reform. If they told him that they were in favor of it, he would tell them that he was against it. And, if they told him that they were against the reform, he would tell them that he was for it. In each case, he gave the people a gift (i.e. bottle of wine, chocolate) and asked for a hug when they departed. While this was, apparently, not the first time he had engaged in a social experiment of this nature, what struck me as unique about this instance was how open people seemed to be to engaging in conversation (when asked) and to hugging a stranger who took the opposite position as them on this highly polarizing issue.
A few weeks later, while on a bus passing through the Talpiot industrial area, I was curious about a few people I viewed out my window standing near a table with a sign reading “come speak to us and receive a flower.” Small groups of people seemed to be congregating around them and I, later, discovered that this was an initiative of Bo Nidaber (or Come, Let’s Talk) to encourage conversation between people who think quite differently than each other on the judicial reform debate. Similarly, I had hoped to attend at least one “Israeli salon,” small gatherings (hosted in private homes) designed to foster community conversations with people professing a range of viewpoints on the judicial reform debate. Both of these efforts – while perhaps outside the norm – seemed to me to be some form of antidote to the “all or nothing” rhetoric I was hearing on the streets, in supermarket check-out lines, and around some Shabbat tables that I was honored to grace.
Looking back at my experiences in Israel, my most poignant memories are of moments of dialogue when, despite their differences, each participant treated the other with curiosity, gratitude, and dignity. I am reminded that, for a country to survive, or even to thrive, we must see one another not as competitors in an existential fight for existence but as partners in a complex and difficult dance. To begin, we must each be willing to take the other’s hand, ask a question, and then deeply listen. We must do this for the sake of our shared future.
