Francine Klagsbrun
FRANCINE KLAGSBRUN What does it mean to be in the middle? Is it a position for the thoughtful or a refuge for the thoughtless? Among the guests at a dinner party I attended some time ago was an...
...When another guest suggested that, while basically she might agree with him, there were several sides to the issue that he had not addressed, he pointed an accusing finger at her and shouted, 'That's what I call 'on-the-other-hand-edness.' That kind of thinking—on the one hand this, on the other hand that—leaves you in the middle with no clear-cut stand on anything...
...Legally we must support pro-choice, I tell young people, but ethically we may never take abortion lightly...
...You care everything about the country, and you hold tight to that center because that is best for the country...
...But there is more to being in the middle than paying attention to the shadows and the gray zones of existence...
...Such people, I believe, fit into the category of paralyzing on-the-other-handedness, allowing each argument to cancel out another until an issue has been trounced, flattened and reduced to nothingness, and no action is possible...
...To be in the middle, to see yourself as a centrist, is to examine many sides and to recognize several viewpoints but then to arrive at a definitive stand of one's own that takes into account those sides and viewpoints...
...As I left the party, the phrase reverberated in my head, and with it his words of admonition: "You get no place waffling in the center with on-the-other-handedness...
...There is picking and choosing your stance on individual issues irrespective of party lines...
...I, on the other hand, contend that it is the only place for a thinking adult to be...
...Journalist Francine Klagsbrun unites and lectures on such Jewish issues as family, social change, ethics and feminism...
...Fortified by the importance of his position, he dominated dinner-table conversation...
...Yet I remain aware always that while not a complete life, a fetus in halachah is cherished as a potential life, whose destruction is a serious matter...
...And if you state that it is disgraceful for anyone, including a Jew, to equate Israel with South Africa, the Left brands you a right-winger...
...Sometimes holding the middle, therefore, involves compromising, arriving at a golden mean, being, as the sage Shimon ben Elazar taught, "supple as a reed...
...I choose these positions although I may be criticized for them by other feminists...
...Still, if you are in the center regarding Israel, as I am, you care far more about the country than about the criticisms...
...You hold tight to the center reKLAGSBRUN continued from page 9 garding Israel or abortion or feminism because you think the center has something to offer the extremes: clearheadedness, perspective and language unencumbered by rhetoric...
...It is not only part of a woman's legal right to privacy, but it is a right supported by halachah (Jewish law), which views a fetus as less than a person and a woman's life (and by extension her welfare) as taking precedence over that of her unborn child...
...Months later, I find myself still thinking about those words...
...Is such a viewing really a way of equivocating and avoiding commitment...
...The abortion issue is a case in point...
...Among the guests at a dinner party I attended some time ago was an editorial writer for a prominent news magazine...
...Is it a position for the thoughtful, as I had always believed, or is it a refuge for the thoughtless, as the editorial writer I met would have it...
...I am a feminist, deeply committed to women's full participation in Jewish religious life...
...Yet I stop short of changing the Hebrew liturgy, as masculinized as it is, holding it too sacred for change (except for such minor insertions, as names of matriarchs with those of patriarchs...
...Tfiere are people so "evenhanded" that they assign equal merit to all sides of every issue, shunning the responsibility of having a point of view...
...Certainly there is some truth to that writer's pronouncements...
...Determining your stand when you are in the middle, especially as a Jew, means acknowledging ambiguities, respecting the untidiness of life, accepting the reality that there will always be loose ends...
...But being in the true middle, as I see it, is something else, far removed from on-the-other-handedness, something that eludes that editorial writer—and many people like him...
...But, if you point out that ignoring demography and Palestinian nationalist aspirations can harm Israel in the long run, the Right dismisses you as a left-winger...
...And what does it mean to be in the middle...
...But often it also involves maintaining a position passionately, even while keeping sight of other legitimate stands...
...On-the-other-handedness" soon became his operative response to any attempts by others to question the journalist's decisive stance on every topic discussed...
...Of major interest to him was the United States invasion of Panama, which he and his magazine supported wholeheartedly...
...Is a person who views issues from many sides guilty of on-the-other-handedness...
...You have to choose a side and stay with it...
...The editorial writer I met may view placing oneself in the middle as waffling, a form of on-the-other-handed-ness...
...I resist feminizing God language, viewing such substitution as reverse stereotyping, and I oppose any reference to goddesses in Jewish worship, viewing that as paganism...
...If you maintain that the territories can and should be negotiated for peace, the Right attacks you...
...I can, as I do, remain uncompromising on a woman's right to choose to have an abortion...
...If you argue that—in spite of excesses in containing the intifada—portraying Israel as the oppressor and the Arabs as victims is a distortion of history and reality, the Left accuses you of chauvinism...
...And if you maintain that the occupation cannot end now and that the form Palestinian self-government ultimately takes must be a product of negotiations, the Left attacks you...
...When you are in the middle, you must constantly make choices and constantly expect criticism...
...She is the author of Voices of Wisdom—Jewish Ideals and Ethics for Everyday Living (Jonathan David, 1986...
...At a time of profound polarization in the Jewish community, if you are in the middle, as I am, some of the hardest choices and fiercest criticisms concern Israel...
Vol. 15 • August 1990 • No. 4
