The problem with stories
This past Monday evening I attended a public event at the local United Church of Christ congregation, which was co-sponsored by a Reform synagogue. The worship space was filled with some 300 registrants. We had come to hear a presentation by two representatives of an organization called Roots, which promotes reconciliation among Israelis and Palestinians on the West Bank. (You can find an account of the event in the Santa Fe New Mexican, from which come the quotations below.)
The speakers were Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger, an American born émigré and Israeli West Bank “settler”, and Noor A’wad, a Palestinian peace activist and resident of Bethlehem. Schlesinger did most of the talking (A’wad said he couldn’t compete with a rabbi) but they both told powerful stories of their “conversions.” Each stressed how most Israelis and Palestinians have no contact with one another. In recent years, legal restrictions have made such interaction almost impossible, which makes Roots so remarkable. The organization’s main goal is to create opportunities for both groups to discover each other as human beings.
Both men also said that for most Israelis and nearly all West Bank settlers, Palestinians simply do not exist. That is, they are a “fake” people. There is no Palestinian state and never has been. They are Arabs who need to move to one of the other twenty-some Arab countries to live. And they need to leave because the land belongs to the people of Israel. For that reason, most Israelis also say there is no occupation. How can you occupy your own country? Israel is in the process of resettling its own land.
Schlesinger began by saying, ““We are here this evening to offer solutions — social, spiritual, educational and also political. We are here to light a candle in the darkness, the deep, gloomy darkness.” But the darkness of the chasm between Israelis and Palestinians described by Schlesinger and A’wad seems impenetrable.
Schlesinger was especially blunt in describing the situation. In his view today, both Israelis and Palestinians are peoples with legitimate claims to this ancient land. Until now, of course, both sides would have rejected such an interpretation, and most still do. In that understanding, one people can legitimately claim the territory as their homeland and other needs to get out.
Some time (probably not enough) was spent telling of Roots activities and programs, and its successes in creating new understanding and relationships between Israeli settlers and Palestinians. The realization Roots is seeking to create, as Schlesinger described his own experience, is to realize that “as glorious and legitimate as your story is, your people, your identity, there is another story out there, another people out there. And to mistake your story for the whole truth is very close to falsehood.” In the words of Ali Abu Awwad, who co-founded Roots with Schlesinger ten years ago, “You have to find a way to fit two truths into one heart.”
Despite the presenters’ best efforts, I left the event more pessimistic about the prospects for resolving this decades-long conflict. But perhaps that isn’t quite right. Rather, my appreciation of the intractability of this conflict was deepened by having a better understanding of what it was about. Bringing people together for mutual understanding and reconciliation is always of value. That doing so will lead to enough people learning “to fit two truths into one heart”, however, seems highly unlikely.
It was as Rabbi Schlesinger talked that I began to see the impossibility of his vision. A native of Brooklyn, Schlesinger is an unapologetic Zionist. In his view, Jews are a people of the land: a thousand years of residence followed by two thousand years of exile. And now they have returned. But—oops—someone else is already there. He has now recognized the injustice of just kicking these people out. Somehow, Israelis and Palestinians have to figure out a way to share the land and live in peace with each other.
But where does Schlesinger’s “story” come from? And why should everyone else accept what is essentially the story/belief of one religion? The story of Judaism is about as complicated a one as you will find. And it has only grown more so thanks to modern historical research. Much of the Old Testament tradition has been called into question. The two-thousand-year spread of diaspora Jews across Europe, Africa, Asia, and into the Western Hemisphere resulted in Jewish “identity” being a knot nearly impossible to untangle. To say modern Jews are “a people” only has meaning for those who claim such a designation.
But my point isn’t to criticize Jewish identity, or Palestinian, or anyone else’s. Rather, this week’s talk caused me to question again the purpose and value of the stories we tell about ourselves and the identities we claim based upon those stories.
As we all know, history is filled with accounts of wars, genocides, pogroms, ethnic cleansing, holocausts, and other kinds of destruction and slaughter inflicted by one “people” upon another. In most cases, those histories tell of divisions inflamed by power-hungry and self-serving “leaders”, often among groups which previously had been living with each other in relative tolerance and peace. Generational memories of evils committed by one group upon another can still be manipulated and stoked for political gain, as in the Balkans, Northern Ireland, India, and Rwanda, to name a few recent instances.
But where are these identities? Science can’t find them. There are no genetic markers for race, let alone ethnicity or nationality. And where are these stories? Only in our heads, implanted in our minds by our elders and by the culture in which we live.
National and ethnic identities are fast becoming a “luxury” the world can’t afford. The rise in global population means there is little if any vacant land for one group to go in order to avoid or end conflict with another. Similarly, many natural resources are becoming scarce, exasperated by the growing impact of the climate crisis.
Managing those shortages and ensuring fair distribution of resources becomes impossible when groups compete with each and rekindle past rivalries and animosities. It is acknowledged by many analysts, for example, that an underlying cause of much of the turmoil in the Middle East today is actually the shortage of water. National, ethnic, and religious rivalries distract from the actual problem and prevent its resolution.
As I’ve said, none of this is new except that such divisions are being dramatically intensified by our shrinking planetary home. Armed conflict today is too likely to spin catastrophically out of control for it to be a solution. But neither will diplomatic negotiation accomplish the compromises and cooperation needed so long as human separation is taken for granted.
One of the most startling quotations of Jesus is this portion of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5.
You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven, for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.
Many say that, however noble, this is Jesus at his most unrealistic. But that is because this statement and others like it are viewed as moral pronouncements. Jesus was not about creating a new moral code, however, though it is one of the most common ways of interpreting him. Rather, Jesus’ objective was to spark a new wave of human transformation through spiritual rebirth.
To claim to be a child of God has become an almost meaningless cliché in Christian circles. And while its pious overtones are now an obstacle for many today, Jesus meant it quite literally, as have countless spiritual teachers of all traditions down through the ages. Our true identity is divine. We are each one with the Source of all reality, the Ground of Being. Therefore, all human divisions are artificial and unreal.
Jesus says “love your neighbor as yourself” because it is literally true. We are one with all people. For the same reason, Jesus says here to “love your enemy,” because all our enemies are neighbors, as well. This, Jesus says, is what it means to live as children of God. And to drive the point home, he adds that God ignores the human labels of good and evil but pours life’s blessings on all people equally.
To the egoic self, wrapped in titles, roles, stories, and identities, all this is outrageous nonsense. But to our true self, the silent and formless Presence at our center, our conscious and peaceful eternal Awareness, such wisdom is the meaning of life: an eternal experience of grace and our union with the whole creation.
Is this really the path to peace in the Middle East? I have no idea. I do know that religion’s path of sin and guilt, law and morality, has not gotten humanity very far. It has tamed humanity’s worst inclinations but its capacity to do so in the future is in serious doubt. We don’t need more and better rules, commissions, and negotiating teams. What we need is a human awakening.
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