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LA trip takeaways
Apr. 14th, 2019 03:00 pmWeeklong LA Judaism school trip done!
Brief list of take-aways:
- The idea of "peace" to mean totality / every opinion being heard
- "You show respect and love for another person by taking their ideas seriously, but that doesn't mean you have to agree with them."
- "Saying that something has infinite interpretations is a cop-out, because it is the finite-ness that gives it value/meaning."
- The idea of figuring out the starting premise / first principles of an ideology and seeing if you can agree with that. (And if not -- then there's really no way to have civil discourse going forward)
- The articulation of "encountering world views that trigger an emotional response." Although I think it's also important to not just grapple with it philosophically -- world views are built from a host of different things: study, ideology, and lived experience.
- The idea that instead of censoring yourself because "if I'm too different from my congregation they will just reject me," you can spend time getting your congregation that can accept and grapple with a diversity of opinions. Basically, elevate your congregation instead of censoring yourself
- Instead of creating a "strawman" argument of your opposition, create a "steelman" argument -- figure out the most robust/legitimate version of their position.
- Delineate the extremes so that you can carve out space for the middle majority to work. (Examples: if you cut out the extremes of "Torah can't be fixed" and "Torah is untouchable", that still leaves everyone from Modern Orthodox to Reform. If you remove the extremes of "Israel should not exist as a state" and "Palestinian/Israeli Arabs shouldn't have rights", it leaves a fruitful middle.)
- "You can't just reduce something down to a technical problem, solve it, and then pretend that it's fixed."
- The fact that if a group were largely illiterate, it means that they have a shorter period of collective public memory
- The idea of a "Women's Torah" that was not written down but is still equally legitimate
- "We need rabbis with as much authority as the Talmudic Rabbis" (as in, modern challenges are as serious as what the Talmudic Rabbis were grappling with)
Brief list of take-aways:
- The idea of "peace" to mean totality / every opinion being heard
- "You show respect and love for another person by taking their ideas seriously, but that doesn't mean you have to agree with them."
- "Saying that something has infinite interpretations is a cop-out, because it is the finite-ness that gives it value/meaning."
- The idea of figuring out the starting premise / first principles of an ideology and seeing if you can agree with that. (And if not -- then there's really no way to have civil discourse going forward)
- The articulation of "encountering world views that trigger an emotional response." Although I think it's also important to not just grapple with it philosophically -- world views are built from a host of different things: study, ideology, and lived experience.
- The idea that instead of censoring yourself because "if I'm too different from my congregation they will just reject me," you can spend time getting your congregation that can accept and grapple with a diversity of opinions. Basically, elevate your congregation instead of censoring yourself
- Instead of creating a "strawman" argument of your opposition, create a "steelman" argument -- figure out the most robust/legitimate version of their position.
- Delineate the extremes so that you can carve out space for the middle majority to work. (Examples: if you cut out the extremes of "Torah can't be fixed" and "Torah is untouchable", that still leaves everyone from Modern Orthodox to Reform. If you remove the extremes of "Israel should not exist as a state" and "Palestinian/Israeli Arabs shouldn't have rights", it leaves a fruitful middle.)
- "You can't just reduce something down to a technical problem, solve it, and then pretend that it's fixed."
- The fact that if a group were largely illiterate, it means that they have a shorter period of collective public memory
- The idea of a "Women's Torah" that was not written down but is still equally legitimate
- "We need rabbis with as much authority as the Talmudic Rabbis" (as in, modern challenges are as serious as what the Talmudic Rabbis were grappling with)
