Kaplen JCC to host panel discussion with faith leaders on February 25 at 7 p.m.

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, zt”l’s 2002 book, “The Dignity of Difference,” was a response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S., but the lessons he drew then remain relevant and sharp as Israel and the Jewish community respond to what many have called Israel’s own 9/11.

After 10/7 and in times of war, we might instinctively want to be among our tribe, to find in it safety, solace and understanding—the unity that the Jewish people have displayed since October 7 has been uplifting and strengthening. But I believe it would be a mistake to remain sequestered among our coreligionists, and we can turn to “The Dignity of Difference” for why this is so.

Post-9/11 and in an increasingly globalized and uncertain world, Rabbi Sacks sought, in contradistinction to the terrorists’ evil acts, a role in the world for religion that would be healing, productive, and creative. For most of history, he reminds us, people’s religious attitudes did not have to be challenged because they lived with and were surrounded by others who shared their faith, their stories and worldviews. That is no longer the case.

And that can be scary. The gap between what we believe and what others, especially those who hate us, hold true might seem too large to bridge, and difference may appear to be an enemy, something to be avoided. Rabbi Sacks asserts that this primordial, tribal instinct that makes us view difference as threatening will not serve us well in a globalized time when all people’s destinies are intertwined. This is especially so in an age when religion continues to play such a prominent role on the world stage, despite a post-Enlightenment belief in its diminishing importance.

Therefore, religious leaders must ally with business and thought leaders to offer a moral stance and to pursue peace in ways that offer freedom, justice and equality for all. Rabbi Sacks highlights that the pursuit of peace can be in many ways much messier than war. War is easy, he says. There is an “us” and a “them,” and these neat categories satisfy the mind and make us feel justified in our resentment of the other.

But it is in the other that we must learn to see God. Citing the Tower of Babel story, Rabbi Sacks says God shows us that there is “unity in difference” and that serving the Creator is done by and through respecting diversity. This by definition makes the path to peace messy: It is hard to compromise in a diverse group. One has only to consider the famous expression that says compromise means no one is happy.

But that is the point. In compromise, in learning to live alongside someone who is not like me, I must give up my entire notion of what is true and settle on a partial notion of it. That can feel frightening and dangerous and, in the usual ways we think about religion, possibly blasphemous. But that is why Rabbi Sacks’ claims are so bold. From a place of deep commitment to Torah law, he makes us see that an appropriate stance for the challenges we face today is to understand that God wants us to embrace unity through diversity.

But how? For Rabbi Sacks this has always been through dialogue. He writes, “The greatest single antidote to violence is conversation, speaking our fears, listening to the fears of others, and in that sharing of vulnerabilities discovering a genesis of hope.” He emphasizes that much interfaith and cross-cultural work encourages participants to gloss over differences and to focus on commonalities, but he says doing so is a mistake. The way we can truly figure out how to get along is by stepping into the deeply uncomfortable space where we don’t agree with each other, where we have past resentments, and/or where we hold seemingly irreconcilable truths.

This can happen when people are primed to have difficult conversations, ones where people’s identities and worldviews are challenged, and so their responsive instinct might be to grow defensive, lash out, and deny the other person’s worldview. It doesn’t help that social media inclines people not to have difficult conversations, but to engage in tough talk with a take-no-prisoners mentality. How many of us have started a Facebook response with “I know no one changes their mind on Facebook, but…”

That’s because changing people’s minds about an idea or a group of people takes time, patience and dedicated resolve. It takes thoughtful research and a willingness to meet others with openness and curiosity. In my interfaith and cross-cultural work, I’ve found that to be true. We had a class at The Idea School, the school I ran from 2018-2023, called Allied Against Hate, a community-based learning class created by Professor Jonathan Golden at Drew University. The class explored Black and Jewish relations from the Civil Rights era until today, examining when the two groups were allied and how deep divisions between them formed.

Drew University, The Idea School and Teaneck High students learned and discussed texts together and separately on the course topic, heard from myriad distinguished speakers who were Jewish, Black and Jews of Color, and worked on projects that would benefit the community. They also got to hang out. On one such occasion, when the students were at The Idea School for a Chanukah party, I got to speak to a Drew University student as we were all hanging out and eating pizza. She told me the class had opened her eyes to the experience of the Jewish community and that when she went back to her own community and heard antisemitic comments, she now spoke up.

Sue Gelsey, chief engagement officer at the Kaplen JCC on the Palisades, has formed and been working on Community Calls, a more expansive interfaith and cross-cultural program for adults. Before October 7, she had already organized 20 partners of different faiths, races and ethnicities in the Northern New Jersey area. With funding from the Russell Berrie Foundation, she has been able to gather the groups and run programming for them. The relationships post-October 7, she shares, have held.

It is in this spirit of willingness to engage in conversation that Gelsey asked me to join her for “Dialogue in Good Faith,” a panel on February 25 at the Kaplen JCC with Imam Abdullah Antepli of Duke University, Dr. Terrence Johnson of Harvard Divinity School, and Rabbi Hilly Haber of Central Synagogue in NYC. All three thought leaders have done extensive work in building relationships with and among vastly different groups of people, and they are bravely reaching out to each other and to us in this difficult time to see if we can, as Rabbi Sacks says in another one of his books, “heal a fractured world.”

I met Antepli when he spoke at The Sacks Conversation at Carnegie Hall on October 31, 2024, right after the October 7 massacre. At the event, he eloquently and roundly denounced the attack and told the audience that Islam says we must “replace evil with what’s better.” That idea has stayed with me, inspiring me, pushing me in the months since Antepli shared it.

The IDF is currently in Gaza rooting out evil for Israel and for the global Jewish community. When the soldiers come out, let’s offer them, each other, and peoples of good faith all over the world something better. Join us on February 25 to start doing that.

To register visit http://tinyurl.com/fdmu2vv6 For more information, contact Sue Gelsey at [email protected].