JACOB NEUSNER
JACOB NEUSNER The Jewish community sometimes tries to kill by silence or ostracism; it won't work. Long a weak and intellectual people, fearing violence, we Jews have made wars with words. We have...
...the last time I saw him in this world, we argued about whatever...
...When ideas are forbidden, when dissidents are ignored and driven away, when criticism is dismissed, that does not solve problems...
...Second, we may be right, and the other side may find our ideas compelling...
...This explains why everywhere in Jewish life today we pass sentence of administrative boycott on organizations that threaten...
...Because the boycotted party doesn't just go away...
...And people read even the books everyone says are "worthless" or "wicked"—especially those books...
...Confident people look for opportunities to persuade others...
...we avoid ideas we fear...
...All honor to him...
...NEUSNER continued from page 58 Boycotts and ostracism, and above all avoidance, turn problems into crises...
...And as to my daughter—don't ask...
...far from it...
...Take the case of Meir Kahane...
...But recently we have begun to deal with our differences through silence— to attempt to solve our problems through avoidance, ostracism, by pretending that the other side just isn't there...
...The Jewish community councils, supposedly representative of "organized Jewry," refuse to accept that Jewish organization as too far to the left...
...If you believe in yourself and know you're right, you do not exclude, dismiss, murder through silence (Todschweigm, as the Germans, experts in all manner of murder, say...
...The reporters got their story about a notorious crackpot, and the true believers rehearsed their holy faith...
...Debate is better than boycott for three reasons: First, we may be wrong, and the other side may teach us something...
...Ideas and policies will circulate, whether or not we like them...
...above all, we boycott people who say things we do not like or accept...
...To its credit, it resisted the pressure...
...The "organized Jewish community" cannot claim to constitute a "community council" and at the same time exclude Jewish organizations...
...Dealing with disagreement, listening to criticism, however unpleasant or unwelcome, informs and reinforces communities...
...When he came to Providence, Rhode Island, in order to create a sensation and encourage an audience, he publicly challenged me to a debate on whether or not the goyim are going to murder us all, and why we should kick the Arabs out of the state of Israel...
...Boycotts show weakness, not strength...
...When people argue, they often discover a common ground of agreement...
...So it seemed to me it would be dishonest for me to debate with Meir Kahane...
...My Israeli friends tell me that modern Hebrew has as rich a vocabulary of words for "insult" and "humiliate verbally" as Arabic has for kinds of camels and Inuit (the language of the Eskimos) has for varieties of snow...
...She really is always right...
...I grew up in a family that dealt with the disagreeable by silence—long, long spells of silence...
...It was not a healthy family, and it does not exist any longer...
...Rabbinical councils that include "all rabbis" but exclude women or Reconstructionists simply look foolish...
...We have become experts at the violence of language...
...Just now, for instance, Baltimore Hebrew University has had to resist pressure from leading donors to the university to silence (that is, to dismiss) its graduate school dean, Robert O. Freedman, for expressing prohibited thoughts about Israeli-Arab relations, specifically, favoring recognition of the PLO...
...And when you pretend the other side doesn't exist, you give the other side a free ride...
...What they destroy are the communities that conduct them...
...Avoidance is a form of murder—murder committed by people too weak to do what they really want to do, which is not to be silent but rather to "silence" the other...
...If you are strong and confident, you read the book and review it, you meet the proponent of the contrary view and argue with that person...
...True, Kahane did no better in Providence, without opposition, than he did in Cambridge, facing a first-rate debating partner...
...But quite aside from these benefits of debate over boycott, boycott never really works anyway...
...My wife grew up in a family that argued—constantly, about everything...
...Boycotts of ideas are not simply bad, they're stupid and destructive...
...if you don't want to listen, someone else will...
...A month later he was dead...
...The New Jewish Agenda isn't just going away...
...they do not avoid debate...
...I said to him, "How dare you agree with me...
...If you think I exaggerate the extent of ostracism as a policy for working out disagreement, count the number of times that women rabbis and Recon-structionist rabbis have been excluded from rabbinical organizations all over the country...
...That was highfalutin, self-serving nonsense...
...This, alas, is a sign, not of our strength, but of weakness...
...Books that are not supposed to be read or reviewed do make their way, if not here, then there...
...They form a foundation of shared and reasonable discourse...
...When Kahane challenged Alan Dershowitz, the brilliant Harvard Law School professor, Dershowitz took up the challenge, and, according to all reports, creamed Kahane...
...they build bonds of respect and communication...
...Almost from the first time I met him, my father-in-law and I argued, in person or by phone, almost every day, about everything you can imagine...
...Still, I have to admit it, it was one thing to argue with my father-in-law, it's another thing to argue with his daughter, my wife...
...Above all, making a place for difference and the dissident and the critic shows strength—and strengthens us...
...I declined because, stupidly, I thought debates should address issues on which one's mind is open, and on those questions, my mind is not open (and neither is his...
...it is making friends for itself among the many who will listen, despite the boycott of Jewish community councils...
...But Dershowitz served the community by rational debate (even about the unthinkable) and I missed that opportunity...
...Just now, for example, the New Jewish Agenda, favoring a two-state solution to the Palestinian Arab problem, has found itself ostracized by Jewish community councils all over the country which it has tried to join...
...It made no difference to that crank...
...On the contrary, when you invite everybody but the one who should be there, the absent one becomes the paramount presence in the room...
...Third, right or wrong, in going over our position in an exchange with another view, we will surely strengthen our own convictions and emerge more confident of them...
...That does not mean the audience—in Cambridge as in Providence, one-fourth reporters, three-fourths Kahane's true believers— changed their minds...
...then he turned to me and said, "Well, maybe you're right...
Vol. 15 • February 1990 • No. 1
