Yes, we can talk to people we disagree with about Israel. Here’s how.
Nearly eight months since Oct. 7, talking about Israel still feels hard. Illustration by Odeya Rosenband/Canva
By Jodi Rudoren May 31, 2024
After a rabbi in Atlanta hung pictures in her shul’s sanctuary of Israelis taken hostage by Hamas last October, a young woman in the congregation refused to step inside. She thought the faces of people being killed in Gaza should be shown as well. “I really struggled having a conversation with her,” the rabbi said all these months later. “She turned around and walked out.”
A Jewish couple in Miami went to dinner with a couple they met on a cruise years before. When talk turned to the war, “I could feel my body get hot,” the Miami woman recalled. Her husband put a hand on her arm to calm her. “The conversation went elsewhere,” she said, but “in the back of my head I have this thought, like, I don’t know if I want to see these people again.”
Then there is the former Manhattan synagogue president who is an active member of the liberal Zionist group J Street. He and his adult children just cannot talk about Israel at all.
It shouldn’t be this hard. Nearly eight months after the Oct. 7 terror attack, and more than 76 years after the founding of the Jewish state, how is it that we have not figured out how to talk about Israel with people who disagree?
The Atlanta rabbi, the Miami couple and the Manhattan synagogue president shared their stories of difficult conversations at a workshop I led this week about dialogue across generational and ideological difference. It was part of a two-day conference called ReCHARGING Reform Judaism where leaders debated, among other things, whether anti-Zionists should be admitted to the movement’s rabbinical school, given the challenges they might face finding a pulpit job.
For my workshop, Rabbi Tracy Kaplowitz, the conference coordinator, suggested a paradigm outlined by the writers Robbie Gringras and Abi Dauber Sterne: that dialogue is based on boundaries. For Reform Jews, Koplowitz offered, perhaps everyone has to agree that Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state, and that “every human being in the territory” has the rights of “peace, security and representation.”
That would leave out a lot of Jews I know — on both points. It also reminded me of something profound I heard at the 2020 conference of the Z3 project, which bills itself as “where dialogue between Israeli and American Jews happens.”
Zack Bodner, Z3’s founder, was talking about the importance of a big tent on Israel — and about the boundaries of that tent. Yehuda Kurtzer of the Shalom Hartman Institute bravely noted that if the first thing you think about when erecting your tent is who has to stay outside it, maybe that’s not such a big tent after all.
This was in the Before Times, of course. Actually the before-before-times — before Oct. 7, before the pandemic. And before many young Jews joined thousands of college students in erecting tents of their own to protest the Gaza war.
I asked the folks who came to my dialogue workshop which paradigm resonated more with them: the boundaries Rabbi Koplowitz offered for entry into conversation, or the idea that talking about boundaries up front was misguided.
The Manhattan dad noted that “Israel as a Jewish state” would put his kids and thousands of their peers outside the tent. But the woman from Miami said the open tent was too scary; she likened the boundaries to rules for how toddlers should play in a sandbox — no throwing sand in someone else’s face.
Another rabbi in the room pointed out that this whole struggle over difficult conversations can be distilled into two fears. We’re afraid of losing a generation, he said, and we’re afraid of losing our identity.
There is no subject I’ve been asked about more over the last eight months — and indeed the five years I’ve been editor of the Forward — than this one. Mostly it’s from parents like the former synagogue president, struggling to talk to their own kids.
Last night, as the internet exploded with reactions to the guilty verdicts rendered in a New York courtroom, I had to chuckle at this post from the Brooklyn writer David Meir Grossman: “A big thank you to President Donald Trump for creating the space for Jewish parents and their children to have a normal conversation.”
In preparation for the workshop, I reread two powerful pieces we’ve published: “How to talk to people who hate Israel,” by our senior columnist Rob Eshman, and “How to talk about Israel with people you disagree with,” from Elliot Cosgrove, senior rabbi of Park Avenue Synagogue.
Rob said the key is to ask the person, “What do you want?,” meaning what would they like to see happen with Israel/Palestine. And: Don’t be defensive.
Rabbi Cosgrove offered three guideposts: Judge generously. Reject thought police. Ask a good question.
I like all of these. We also published this very smart response to Cosgrove from Diane Shane Fruchtman, a religion professor at Rutgers. To get anything out of these difficult conversations, she suggested, ask yourself two key questions: Am I willing to truly consider that I may learn from this person? Am I willing to truly consider that I may be wrong?
The rabbi at the workshop who spoke about our dual fears also talked about context. Conversations only work when participants understand the other person’s. That means young adults need to empathze with an older generation’s experience of war and antisemitism. And boomers need to generously engage Gen Z’s perspective on rights, responsibilities, intersectional identities and more.
I asked the rabbi from Atlanta what happened with the young woman who walked out of the sanctuary after she hung the hostage photos. They have not spoken about it since.
“It weighs on me,” the rabbi said. “I mean, I feel strongly how I feel. But at the same time, one of the people in my community isn’t feeling whole. That conversation sticks with me, and when I preach on Israel, I try and open up space with people who maybe are uncomfortable with the decisions that I’ve made.”
The young woman came to synagogue with her parents for a family yahrzeit, the rabbi said, but stayed in the lobby rather than enter the sanctuary where the hostage pictures were hung. So not quite inside the tent, but not outside it either.
Close enough to continue the conversation — if they want to.
Correction: The original version of this article misspelled the last name of the rabbi who organized the Recharging Reform Judaism conference. It is Kaplowitz, not Koplowitz.
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