By Rabbi Rich Kirschen, Director, NFTY in Israel
Whether your children are now deep in the desert, up in the hills of the Galilee or smack in the middle of the country, there is one part of their program that remains consistent throughout their journey and that is the emphasis we place on the importance of “Conversation.” I am not talking about conversations that involve logistics or social issues, which are all part of the experience; but rather I am writing about the conversations that happen as these young people move through history and more importantly – as history moves through them. This summer every site is presented as a multi-layered text that demands interpretation, that creates discussions and more importantly becomes a process that involves – ARGUMENTS. Yes…Arguments. One of the central values of Judaism is known as “Makhloket L’Shem Shamayim (Argument for the sake of heaven). This concept teaches us that for the Jewish people an argument that takes place “in order to make sense of the world we live in and improve it,” is in fact a Mitzvah, a commandment.
Not only is Jewish tradition not monolithic but we know how to embrace the dialectic. In the words of the late Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik ZT’L,“The religious life doesn’t lead to paradise, it leads to paradox.” This is why centuries ago the rabbis taught us that there are 70 different faces of Torah. On our NFTY in Israel buses there are 40 different faces of Torah and what is truly remarkable is watching these young people explore an event or a dilemma that happened in Jewish life and then begin to look at it several different ways. When you observe these conversations/these arguments you realize that the name for our people in the Torah is fitting – for we are indeed an “Am Kasheh Oref” we are a “Stiff Necked People”, and we belong to a stubborn tribe. Let’s face it, you know your kids are stubborn and you know where they learned it from. But, it is this stubbornness that makes our arguments more thoughtful, deeper and ultimately our Jewish life all the richer.
There is the joke, “Why is the library an anti-Semitic institution?” And the answer is, “Because you are not allowed to talk in the library.” Unlike the library, the Jewish space for study is known as the Beit Midrash (the house of study). For our people, study and learning (not only prayer) is a form of worship. As the saying goes, “Where is God?” and the answer is, “God is looking through the windows of the Beit Midrash (the house of study) …”
For NFTY in Israel our Beit Midrash is mobile, it can be on the bus, on top of a mountain in the desert, in Jerusalem, in fashionable Tel Aviv, or overlooking the Sea of Galilee. And of course, throughout this whole process our “Arguments for the sake of heaven” (Makhloket L’Shem Shamayim) are conducted with Derech Eretz, a Hebrew value that means behaving with respect and being polite. There is a nice word play here because the literal translation of the words Derech Eretz mean “the way of the land”. This summer as our participants are traversing “the way of the land” they are engaged in conversations that are animated, loud (did you think otherwise,) intense, filled with passionate arguments and of course all of this happens with Derech Eretz.
Wishing you a Shabbat Shalom from Israel.
