Peace? My Way!

Chaim came back from a long trip to Minsk. “Minsk is a crazy city!” he told his friends.

“Why?” they asked.

“Well, in Minsk I found a socialist, a communist, a Zionist, a Bundist, a leftist, a rightist, a devout religious, a secular, a closed minded in the box and a free thinker!”

His friends didn’t understand: “But isn’t that a normal community, where you have different people with different ideas?!”

“Ah, said Chaim, you don’t understand;

“This was all the same person!”

***

We are a nation who argues. A lot.

From ancient history when Abraham and Moses argued with the divine, to the present where the bricks and cement of synagogues and Jewish social halls vibrate from the sound of verbal battle on the widest spectrum of subjects, from how-cold-is-it-really-outside-including-the-windshield, to the ‘only’ solution to global hunger.

Life as we know it. I say yes you say no.

But then we hear the peace loving nudniks who cry for peace; “Why must we argue?” “We are all sons from the same Father!” “All problems arise from disagreement!” and a whole lot of peace babble. ‘If we would all agree to agree’, life would be so simple and harmonious. Blah blah.

Now could anyone please tell me where this notion that we must think alike originate from?

I’ll tell you who came up with the idea of mouth shutting due to “it’s gonna cause a fight!”? The tyrants, the dictators, the communists! This is not and never was a Jewish concept.

Our history is full of rabbis and teachers debating arguing and defending their ideas and thoughts. The Talmud is but a microcosm of hundreds of years of debates on a myriad of topics. It is but part of our psyche.

All the way back when it all began, the Jews had come to Sinai for the giving of the Torah, as they prepared for this momentous occasion, Rashi says they camped “as one person and one heart”. Peace.

Notice how he says “One heart!” No mention of ‘one brain’, because we are not supposed to share brains!

Imagine what the world would be like if we all looked the same, thought the same, and agreed on everything, following the leaders like a bunch of zombies. One man says something and we all nod.

I guess it would look like Israeli politics.