If you emailed me this week, you (hopefully!) received my autoreply that I was attending the CCAR (Central Conference of American Rabbis) Convention, an opportunity to spend several days reconnecting with colleagues, doing deep textual learning, participating in meaningful t’fillah (prayer) experiences, and exploring some of the shared challenges and opportunities facing rabbis and Jewish communities today. I look forward to sharing more of what I learned with all of you at Shabbat this week and in the weeks to come. One of the most outstanding sessions was with an organization called Resetting the Table, on building a culture of dialogue across difference. This is truly the hardest and most sacred work any of us can engage in these days – and we have many in our congregation who have remained dedicated to building relationships across the lines of faith, even when it is hard and even heartbreaking.
We practiced two different conversational techniques for hard conversations, allowing us to share the stories that shaped our moral groundings, and to probe, gently, at some of the toughest conversations a group of committed Jewish leaders can have in 2025, around how we relate to Israel, what it means to live in the Diaspora, and the impact of antisemitism on our communities. Resetting the Table posed what the facilitator called “the million dollar question”: How do we replace rigidity with receptivity while addressing charged differences directly? When we can sit in these charged interactions – with each other, with family members, with neighbours, with friends (but not on Facebook – it’s nearly impossible to compassionately engage in hard conversations online), and truly listen with openness and curiosity, to hear what’s important to the person we’re in dialogue with, to respond with empathy, we have the potential to replace rigidity with receptivity, to move from self-absorption to recognition of the Other, and shift from reactivity to centeredness.
One of the methodologies that Resetting the Table introduced is called “demonstrating understanding,” and involves an explicit check-in with your conversation partner, asking, “Did I get it right?” This framework calls us to know and assume that we will get it wrong! That we won’t understand the Other, fully, on the first try – but we can keep trying, and keep checking in, until we really understand what they’re saying.
One of my favourite Yehuda Amichai poems, “From the Place Where We Are Right,” speaks to this need to accept our mistakes, in order to bridge the differences between us:
From the place where we are right
flowers will never grow
in the spring.
The place where we are right
is hard and trampled
like a yard.
But doubts and loves
dig up the world
like a mole, a plow.
And a whisper will be heard in the place
where the ruined
house once stood.
When we can lean into our doubts and our loves, to make space for our very humanity, perhaps we can rebuild the world.
