Rabbi's Week in Review Blog

This coming Sunday, December 7, beginning at 2:15 PM, at Independence Bld. Church, 606 Gladstone Blvd., there will be a showing of the movie “No Other Land.”  This movie, which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary, tells the story of Palestinian activist, Basel Adra, and Israeli journalist, Yuval Abraham.  It is a story of the destruction of Basel Adra’s Palestinian village in the West Bank.

I have been asked and will be one of the panelist for a post-viewing discussion. Full disclosure, I have not seen the movie, and it is not my intent in this week’s blog to convince anyone of taking a side one way or the other.  I am certain that within our Kol Ami community and the broader Jewish community there will be those who react with at least discomfort, if not anger.

As a Jew “of a certain age,” I think I bring a somewhat different perspective than many Jews of a younger generation who did not grow up with Israel as a central focus, and an essential pillar of our Jewish existence. I think it is important to bring that perspective into the space if only to bring understanding about how a part of our Jewish community has responded to October 7 and all that has followed.

My view will be one view in the room amongst many, including Palestinians with family in the West Bank and Gaza, and Jews who were not raised as I with Israel at my Jewish center. In other words everyone will hear viewpoints at least somewhat at odds with their own.

In this moment of great polarization, both within our Jewish world and externally, we are in need of space where contrary viewpoints can be shared and people feel heard.  If we as Jews bring nothing else into this space, we should bring our tenet of Machloket L’Sheim Shamayim - Argument for the Sake of Heaven. It is a tenet that much of the Jewish world has forgotten these days. Let us undertake the difficult task of bringing it back.