The Hinam Center for Social Tolerance is returning to Teaneck on April 2. The center, whose mission is to promote and nurture a shared existence of tolerance and mutual respect between all tribes and sectors in Israel, will be sending a delegation to Congregation Beth Sholom for an interactive evening of sessions and workshops. The program won’t be a typical lecture, just like Hinam’s approach doesn’t follow a typical getting-to-know-you format.
Yaron Kanner, CEO of The Hinam Center, told The Jewish Link, “Hinam is an organization that tries to promote social tolerance in Israel. We are not a political organization or sectarian organization. We don’t have an agenda besides promoting tolerance. This is important because we are color blind. We bring together secular and Orthodox Jews, Arabs, Bedouin, Druze, Ethiopians, to name a few. We want everyone to be comfortable with one another.
“The second principle is that we don’t believe in short meetings as a tool to promote social tolerance. We want our participants to get to know one another through a deep process. We believe it’s always important to meet the other in his environment in order to know many aspects of his life—his family, culture, food, the difficulties of his life. We want them to get to know the whole picture of his life. The setting might be an Arab village or an Ethiopian neighborhood. The idea is if you spend enough time with someone, at some point you’ll stop seeing them as a label but as a person. If you do so, you will be more sympathetic to him and you will not hate him and you’ll be able to fight the hate and make the conversations between groups more respectful. All our other programs are based on this principle. Don’t try to change him; just be with him. And you’ll start to get to know him.”
As another example of Hinam’s unique approach, they have a center for tolerance in the Muslim Arab village of Abu Ghosh, outside of Jerusalem. Kanner shared, “What we have there is mainly a beit midrash. But it’s a special one because it’s the only one I know of that has no guards on the entrance. Everyone can come to learn and to teach. In a day you can see the head of the village teaching about the Koran and right after that you can see a charedi Jew teaching about charity from the Shulchan Aruch and then a reform woman teaching Talmud. There too, they are learning about one another and from one another.”
The Abu Ghosh center will soon open a midrasha of tolerance for post-high school/pre-army individuals. These students will learn about the different cultures and tribes in Israel. There will also be a gap year track for students from the United States interested in such an experience. For more information, email Tzofit Elitzur at [email protected].
According to Rabbi Joel Pitkowsky, rabbi of Beth Sholom, “There are two aspects that I find so interesting about Hinam. The first is that they strive to break down barriers between groups and allow participants to walk a few steps in someone else’s shoes. Having their Hinam fellows explore this notion of the different tribes and groups within the Israeli population is incredibly valuable. This work, of breaking down barriers so people are seen not only as members of larger groups but as individuals, can only have positive results. Second, I love that this is an Israeli coexistence program that is coming to the U.S. not only to strengthen their own group but to learn about our communities as well, and to see firsthand how we confront the challenges of coexistence.”
The goal of the April 2 event is to have a few Hinam participants talk about their unique journeys and why they are involved with Hinam and what the organization has meant to them. The audience will learn more about Israeli society and the Hinam group will learn more about what it means to be Jewish in America. Following those presentations, the audience will break up into smaller groups so that everyone can interact with one another. Each group will have a few members of Hinam and several members of our community.
Kanner promises anyone planning on attending the event: “You will not end up the same way as when you started. You don’t have to do something with that knowledge. If you understand, it’ll change the way you speak, the way you write, the way you think, the way you treat people, the way you teach your children.”
Congregation Beth Sholom is located at 354 Maitland Avenue in Teaneck. The event will begin at 8:15 p.m. and is free and open to the public. For more information, contact 201-833-2620.
By Sara Kosowsky Gross
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