Anyone watching current events in Israel during this season of Passover and Ramadan knows about the violence at Al Aqsa Mosque, the military raids in the West Bank, the rockets out of and into the Gaza Strip, and might be wondering if this is the beginning of a new Intifada.
This might not seem the most auspicious time to reflect on a new way of thinking. Our passions and grievances (and perhaps our reptilian brain) lead us to the inevitable conclusion that we must take sides. “My side” is the right one, of course. And we put all of our energy (even during times of quiet and somber reflection during Ramadan and Passover) to proving the “other side” is wrong.
Deb Reich, author of No More Enemies, and an American-Israeli-Jew who lives on a kibbutz in southern Israel, has chosen this time to write about the need to think differently, act differently, and strike out on a transformational evolutionary path that values partnership. She writes:
Science has suggested that a long evolutionary process has molded us in certain ways because those directions helped us survive as a species. But a clear-eyed look around should be sufficient to demonstrate that some of those once-useful tweaks are now obstacles to our further evolution… beyond the zero-sum adversarial behavior that’s gotten us this far but arguably isn’t working any more. To save ourselves while being sufficiently compassionate to the planet and all its other creatures, because we’re all in the same boat, we urgently need to learn this one, crucial thing: how to function, when it counts, if not all of the time, in a win-win partnership mode that transcends our many differences and puts us all on the same problem-solving, solutions-crafting team.
Partnership (not Zion) is the Promised Land, The Times of Israel, April 3, 2023.
This might actually be the perfect moment to write because it’s easier to see the light when it’s juxtaposed with the darkness. Please read her entire blog post here, and see if you agree.
لماذا غزة؟ Why Gaza? 