We have to stop.
Here’s where our deep-seated mistrust and resentment has gotten us, just in the past week. A community cries foul when one of its identifying members is arrested upon suspicion of endangering her toddler son’s life. The strong evidence is dismissed as libelous propaganda, part of a much wider conspiracy to discredit and incriminate the woman’s community.
The community erupts in disruptive protests, destroying public property, crippling traffic, and in a number of instances, causing bodily injury to those representing the government. The government responds by suspending the municipal services tendered to the larger community in those areas that are affected by the violence, citing the danger to municipal employees in their stations and places of work.
The conflict dominates the local news and makes splashes in international news. “Jews attacking Jews in the holy city of Jerusalem.” And that’s all it needs to say, really.
Have we had enough?
The headlines don’t identify which group is the “aggressor” and which is the “victim.” To the world, there is a bloody, messy, fiery image of Jewish infighting. It’s a picture of how we treat our most sacred city, and how we behave within it. Visitors of the world, please do not come and disrespect or defile our city. We would rather do it ourselves.
Pay attention. We do it. This is our collective responsibility. We gain nothing by pointing fingers at a particular community, or at the government conspiracy, for that matter. We are supposed to be one community. We are expected to be one community. We are one community. We are not fighting with foreign entities, with enemies from without. We are fighting with our brothers. We are fighting with ourselves.
The problem is that we don’t mind. The rift of values runs so deep that we have lost interest and motivation in resolving the conflict. But in the meantime, we viciously tear away at the common bonds that necessarily bind us. We neglect, trivialize, and ignore how interdependent our lives are and how much we need each other.
This is actually not a new problem. We’ve been in this situation before. The Talmud describes how just under 2000 years ago, the Jews of Jerusalem were also divided along religious and political lines. And instead of finding a common course and presenting a unified front, the factions cannibalized each other and literally destroyed their own resources if only to strike at the other factions. The end result, of course, was that Jerusalem was defenseless in the face of the belligerent enemy, and the Temple was destroyed. And this, we know, took place in the same season, the same weeks, in which we find ourselves now.
The labels, the deep-seated mistrust, the alienation, the stereotyping, and the apathy have to go. The distinctions that we draw between ourselves are relative and superficial. We adhere to these barriers at our own peril.
We have to stop.
With hostile neighbors busily bolstering their arsenals and issuing their insults and threats, the last thing we need to do is to weaken our own defenses and fight ourselves. To the others, the intermarried American journalist Daniel Pearl is as much a Jew as the Chabad emissary in Mumbai. When the international community sees us as a singular unit with a common fate, why don’t we see the same thing?
Here’s where our deep-seated mistrust and resentment has gotten us, just in the past week. A community cries foul when one of its identifying members is arrested upon suspicion of endangering her toddler son’s life. The strong evidence is dismissed as libelous propaganda, part of a much wider conspiracy to discredit and incriminate the woman’s community.
The community erupts in disruptive protests, destroying public property, crippling traffic, and in a number of instances, causing bodily injury to those representing the government. The government responds by suspending the municipal services tendered to the larger community in those areas that are affected by the violence, citing the danger to municipal employees in their stations and places of work.
The conflict dominates the local news and makes splashes in international news. “Jews attacking Jews in the holy city of Jerusalem.” And that’s all it needs to say, really.
Have we had enough?
The headlines don’t identify which group is the “aggressor” and which is the “victim.” To the world, there is a bloody, messy, fiery image of Jewish infighting. It’s a picture of how we treat our most sacred city, and how we behave within it. Visitors of the world, please do not come and disrespect or defile our city. We would rather do it ourselves.
Pay attention. We do it. This is our collective responsibility. We gain nothing by pointing fingers at a particular community, or at the government conspiracy, for that matter. We are supposed to be one community. We are expected to be one community. We are one community. We are not fighting with foreign entities, with enemies from without. We are fighting with our brothers. We are fighting with ourselves.
The problem is that we don’t mind. The rift of values runs so deep that we have lost interest and motivation in resolving the conflict. But in the meantime, we viciously tear away at the common bonds that necessarily bind us. We neglect, trivialize, and ignore how interdependent our lives are and how much we need each other.
This is actually not a new problem. We’ve been in this situation before. The Talmud describes how just under 2000 years ago, the Jews of Jerusalem were also divided along religious and political lines. And instead of finding a common course and presenting a unified front, the factions cannibalized each other and literally destroyed their own resources if only to strike at the other factions. The end result, of course, was that Jerusalem was defenseless in the face of the belligerent enemy, and the Temple was destroyed. And this, we know, took place in the same season, the same weeks, in which we find ourselves now.
The labels, the deep-seated mistrust, the alienation, the stereotyping, and the apathy have to go. The distinctions that we draw between ourselves are relative and superficial. We adhere to these barriers at our own peril.
We have to stop.
With hostile neighbors busily bolstering their arsenals and issuing their insults and threats, the last thing we need to do is to weaken our own defenses and fight ourselves. To the others, the intermarried American journalist Daniel Pearl is as much a Jew as the Chabad emissary in Mumbai. When the international community sees us as a singular unit with a common fate, why don’t we see the same thing?
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