Humainologie creative dialogue Intercultural Communication this Wednesday February 3

“Love in action is service to the world.” - Lynne Namka “If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking” By Emily Dickinson If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain; If I can ease one life the aching, Or cool one pain, Or help one fainting robin Unto his nest again, I shall not live in vain. The topic this coming Wednesday, with Erica Amery facilitating, will be intercultural communication. There is synchronicity in the United Nations February 1-7 World Interfaith Harmony Week, https://bit.ly/3alsnmx brought to my attention by Sophie Mann. I’ve appended below this message my synopsis of a book relevant to our topic, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel, by Ari Shavit. I’ve included a bit more of my own rambling commentary than I usually do at the end of the synopsis, and I would welcome your feedback. Here’s a full presentation by Ari Shavit about his book, a little over an hour long, that he gave when the book was first published: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tv8nr7m25nY&lc=UgjdJkXX-6NJIHgCoAEC We are all familiar with debates and arguments, and I’ll suggest that creative dialogue might be far more productive in achieving optimal outcomes. For example, instead of the argument / counterargument approach, it could become standard practice to start with the question Where do we want to go from here? - and then develop two or three options; pick one (or two) and explore how we would get from here to there. This type of approach, if it becomes standard operating procedure, might surprise us with its success. We can explore this approach in our weekly team practice here in Calgary. Similar initiatives already exist, http://president.vassar.edu/dialogue/ although ours might have the greatest potential. Here are a few good questions for our team practice this coming Wednesday February 3, just to get us moving: · How is our topic for February 3, Intercultural Communication, related to our theme for February, Love and Service to Others? · From your own experience, please share an example of an interaction or relationship you have had with one or more people from other cultures, perhaps something that extended over a year or more, that has significantly enriched your life. · Imagine at least one ethnic or cultural or social group with which you have had very little interaction in your lifetime. Can you imagine anything you might gain by initiating a series of interactions with that group? If you were given the challenge of setting up such a series of interactions, how would you go about it? And here once again is the Zoom link for team practice on Wednesday: Topic: Humainologie creative dialogue team practice Time: February 3, 2021 06:30 PM Mountain Time (US and Canada) Every week on Wed, until Feb 24, 2021, 8 occurrence(s) Feb 3, 2021 06:30 PM Feb 10, 2021 06:30 PM Feb 17, 2021 06:30 PM Feb 24, 2021 06:30 PM Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81306921476?pwd=QnJ3bkFvSXVQSWVacXJ4Wml4cTEwUT09 Meeting ID: 813 0692 1476 Passcode: 12345 Arthur Book: (Ari Shavit) My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel (2013, 2018) A prominent Israeli writer, Ari Shavit was born in Israel in 1957. In this book, he begins by emphasizing that the history of Israel can only be understood adequately if both the urgent necessity for its creation, and the injustice done to the Palestinians in the process, are accepted and recognized as essential to understand it. Europe had ostracized the Jews for centuries; it was God and the ghetto that had previously guaranteed Jewish survival, the author explains. In the twentieth century, an even greater existential threat would emerge. “If it was to survive, the Jewish people had to be transformed from a people of the Diaspora to a people of sovereignty. In this sense, the Zionism that emerges in 1897 is a stroke of genius. Its founders, led by Dr. Herzl, are both prophetic and heroic.” The Jews had given shape to the genius of modern Europe - “think of Mendelssohn, Marx, Freud, Mahler, Kafka, Einstein” – but that golden era is quickly moving toward its end as Zionism arises in the 1890s. Drawing from many archival sources and using the present tense as he takes the reader through those early years of Zionism, Shavit creates an immediacy in his narrative. We almost feel we are there. “[My great grandfather] arrives on April 16 at the mouth of the ancient port of Jaffa. I watch him as he awakens at 5:00 AM in his first-class compartment. I watch him as he walks up the stairs to the Oxus’s wooden deck in a light suit and a cork hat. I watch him as he looks from the deck. …Do I want him to disembark? I don’t yet know.” The journey through the land – it could be called a colonial reconnaissance – takes place April 20-27, 1897. “Is this colonialism? If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck. …There is no ambiguity, no beating about the bush. His aim and that of his London circle is to colonize Palestine.” They seek the backing of the major European powers. “And yet…They do not intend to oppress but to liberate. …[Except for one prescient and aggressive-minded member of the group] no member of the delegation considers their mission as a form of conquest, dispossession, or expulsion.” Ari Shavit’s book is brilliant because he takes a specific historic case and examines it in detail and with brutal honesty. From that case, as presented to us in this book, we can better understand other cases in history. Each case will be unique, and yet the common themes will help us understand our own flaws as human beings driven by our own cultural compulsions. As the Jews become Israelis, they need to forget some things. Denial sets in. “To survive, they cleanse themselves of the past. To function, they flatten themselves. They turn into people of action, whose personalities are rigid and deformed, whose souls are shallow.” As human beings, we are adept at dealing with inconvenient truths. Shavit dissects the denial associated with the new state, and then observes: “It is highly likely that this multilevel denial was essential. Without it, it would have been impossible to function, to build, to live. …If Israel had acknowledged what had happened it would not have survived. If Israel had been kindly and compassionate, it would have collapsed. Denial was a life-or-death imperative for the nine-year-old nation into which I was born.” The author takes us to visit a housing project and gives us a glimpse into the lives of the residents, refugees from virulent anti-Semitism. His interviews and his archival research bring his subjects to life, with all their genius and flaws and passions. He takes us on the road to Dimona, Israel’s nuclear facility, which by 1967 had provided the wherewithal for production of nuclear weapons. We visit “the engineer,” who asks that his name not be mentioned. He’s tall, broad-shouldered, in his early eighties, and had been an athlete in his youth. Until his father was gunned down by an Arab, the engineer had been immersed in parties, sports, and girls. From that point, the engineer became dedicated to the survival of Israel. Over the years he obtained a chemical engineering degree, commanded an infantry unit, and drove Palestinian villagers from their homes. In 1951, he became involved in the history of Israel’s nuclear weapons. Yet as gifted and dedicated as the engineer has been, the author notes that “he does not have the ability to see his life’s work in perspective. His ability to do is derived from his ability not to see the implications of his deeds.” The West Bank settlements, in Shavit’s opinion, were a response to the 1967 Six Day War, in which Israel was triumphant; and to the 1973 Yom Kippur War, which put Zionism in retreat. He is convinced that the settlements have ruined Israel’s chances of survival. He is “angry and dejected” as he tells one of the founders of one of the settlements whom he had interviewed: “You have turned a conflict between nation states into a conflict between settlers and an indigenous community. By doing that, you endangered everything. …You brought disaster upon us, Wallerstein. On our behalf, you committed an act of historic suicide.” In Chapter 9, “Gaza Beach, 1991” the author describes his experience as a reservist, a jailer in the Gaza detention camps after the defeat of a popular uprising. When he first heard where he was to be assigned, he “seriously considered breaking the law, refusing to serve, and going to jail.” Then he decided he would write about his experience instead. We learn of the screams of prisoners being tortured, the self-awareness of the Israeli jailers of how their behavior is beginning to resemble that of Nazi guards at a concentration camp. And he says of himself: “And I am a part of it all. I comply.” He and every other person in the chain of events and commands that have led to this evil are just doing what they are compelled to do. In his interviews with key figures in Israel’s history, including one with a former deputy foreign minister, Yossi Beilin, who enabled the Oslo Peace Accord, he takes us chapter by chapter through the falling dominoes that have led to Israel’s current dilemma. In an interview with a former activist, Yossi Sarid, who had been a hero of the peace movement and even at some point a plausible future prime minister of Israel, Shavit criticizes him to his face for having offered only negation, nothing but protests and demonstrations. “Unlike the old Laborites, you never built anything. …You didn’t offer the nation a mature political choice.” While Shavit seems empathic toward the Palestinians, he seems myopic when he describes, in Chapter 16, “Existential Challenge,” the danger posed by an Iranian nuclear capability. Like Israel, Iran faces external enemies. The United States, for example, helped overthrow the Iranian government in 1953, then supported a widely despised government in Iran, leading to a strongly anti-American revolution in 1979. In my way of thinking, if you want Iran to clean up its act, then you must understand that the United States must lead the way by cleaning up its own act. That is not Ari Shavit’s way of thinking, in so far as I could tell. He was born in Israel in 1957; I was born in the United States in 1943. He is Jewish, I am not. We are, however, both human beings. In this book, he seems to find his identity primarily in being an Israeli Jew, whereas I find mine primarily in being human. He seems to lament the decline of ethnic identity among American Jews. As humans, we think, act, and behave as we do largely because of cultural and parental influences, and what has happened to us. I have lost most of whatever ethnocentricity I once had. I would like to see all of us moving toward a healthy global community. I think we need to get off the road of Us versus Them. I have read Ari Shavit’s book through that lens. Biblical teachings are contrary to ethnocentrism, tribalism, and racism. I think Israel has a golden opportunity to transcend ethnocentrism, use the Golden Rule as the basis of its foreign policy, and thus move not only toward greater security for Israel, but also toward world leadership. In these times, with divisiveness and violence rising in America, Israel might set an historic precedent for us, if only it could rise to the challenge. I’m an outside observer of Israel. The poet Robbie Burns pointed out that if we could see ourselves as others see us, we could spare ourselves a lot of trouble. Obviously, this book has got me thinking. It is deeply insightful, and I highly recommend it, not only for its perspectives on the history of Israel, but also because it is beautifully written. Shavit asks important questions about the future of Israel, and if we extrapolate from what he offers here, to place it in the larger context of our future as humans, this book might even inspire us for our journey on planet Earth in the new millennium.