How to argue
Recently, during a break between class activities, I joined a conversation many of my students were having about the upcoming election. I revealed that this is the first election I can remember in which I am truly frightened of what our country might become if a particular leading candidate gets elected President. One student told me that the other candidate scares her. Why, I asked? "She's a crook!" There just wasn't anywhere for that conversation to go.
While waiting in line to vote, it became quickly apparent that the people waiting in line in front of me were voting for the other team. As soon as I made that connection, I found myself instinctively reacting against everything that those people said to one another, even when the topic turned away from a direct discussion of the election to neighborhood matters and other such things. I ventured to offer an argument to one of their ideas once, and one man literally laughed in my face.
In the past couple of weeks, I have seen a number of Trump/Pence signs pop up in my largely conservative suburban neighborhood. But the sign that most caught my eye read: "Democrats: we're not perfect, but they're nuts!" It made me laugh...until I realized how much utter disrespect that sign showed for roughly half of the people in our country. And how that lack of mutual respect has both permeated and typified this entire political season.
As you can see, I've been giving a great deal of thought lately to what has been passing for political discourse over the last half-year (or longer), and I've come to the conclusion that today's American people need to take some advice from the Jewish people, who in their several-thousand-year history have quite literally raised arguing to an art form.
So here, without further ado, are some of the things I have learned from the Jewish people over the past year about how to have a healthy argument:
1. Seek first to understand. No matter how convinced you may be that you are right, there is always something to learn from the thoughts of another. The great sage Rabbi Hillel was said to have never given his side to an argument until he had both listened to and considered the arguments of the other side. Because of this act of consideration, the sages of future generations were more likely to give weight to Hillel's arguments. After all, not only did he show himself to be a nice guy and an open-minded one as well, it is only through understanding the other side that we can truly come to know our own.
2. Embrace subtlety. Life is not black-and-white with no room for gray areas. It is certainly not Left and Right with no center and no room for compromise, as one would seem to think from the current election rhetoric. Today absolutely as much as throughout its long history, Judaism strives to explore the gray areas and to claim them as its own. Judaism is neither pro-life nor pro-choice, for example: it has a more nuanced position that embraces the subtleties of the situation. In today's heated debate about whether one has to keep one's birth gender or not, Judaism has long recognized that gender is not a black-and-white concept in the first place (the rabbis, in one bit of Talmud, list out six possibilities for a person's gender). Our national political discourse used to be one that started with extremes and aimed toward compromise. Today, we seem to start with extremes and then work to push each other farther away. Political dogma rules the day and doesn't accept that the best answer might not be the "conservative" one or the "progressive" one. Jewish tradition says: jump in to the fuzzy areas, explore the shades of gray, find the balance in the middle.
3. Let the majority rule if it has to, but still honor the minority view. One of the most cited reasons given by atheist-skeptics about why they cannot take the Bible seriously is that it contains contradictory ideas. These people would go crazy if they tried to read a page of Talmud. My oldest son once described his brief encounter with Talmud as "pages and pages of arguments, with no answers!"
You see, the genius of the Jewish tradition is to see that, when two contradictory ideas exist, they may still both be good ideas. In many cases, the Rabbis of old had to make a decision about what the law was to require, and they had to simply let majority opinion rule. But here's the thing: they recorded every word of the minority opinion, and gave that opinion just as much respect as they gave to the opinion that ruled the day. Because those people had good ideas, too. And you know what, someday the situation might change and we might find that the other opinion needs to be given its chance to rule the day instead.
Growing up Christian, I knew that however much we argued about a particular bit of scripture of a particular theological idea, the expectation was there that we were all supposed to agree on the One Right Answer by the time the discussion wrapped up. What I have been surprised -- disconcertingly at first and then pleasantly as time goes by -- to find in a year of Torah studies and Judaica classes in and among Jews is that they are usually quite happy to discuss every side of an issue and let all of the possible answers stand. Imagine if our political debates and water-cooler discussions went this way, with every idea respected and allowed to stand on its merits.
Imagine if we really believed that our friends and neighbors who disagree with us had at least given enough thought to their ideas that those ideas should be allowed to stand. Imagine if we didn't treat the "loser" of an election as though they and their ideas had just been disproven for all time, but kept these (respectful) discussions going into the future. According to Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson's commentary on this week's Torah portion, after Noah's flood "the rainbow is a reminder of the need to build coalitions with others" if we are to keep the world from once again being flooded with violence.
4. Argue with the ideas, not with the person. Too often this political season, debates have ignored ideas and gone personal. Granted, this is not new in American discourse: in my college paper, the letters to the editor page was named "The Firing Line" and typically followed this pattern of discourse:
Person A writes an article, op-ed, or column of some sort.
Person B: "I disagree with Person A's article/op-ed/column because of some half-baked reason that I can't really explain in a four-sentence letter"
Person C, writing to defend Person A: "only a complete idiot would disagree with Person A's excellent work, and Person B showed that they were a complete idiot anyway with all that lousy reasoning!"
Person B, writing back: "Person C is a miserable excuse for a human being"
Person C, writing back: "Person B's mother..."
Among Jews, on the other hand, even in the most heated of arguments, I have never been personally insulted. Furthermore my ideas, even very wrong ones, have always at least been given the courtesy of a thoughtful rebuttal instead of just being told that they were wrong, and furthermore stupid ideas at that.
In this week's Torah portion, God makes a covenant, through Noah, with all of the people of the earth. Jews remind ourselves that we are not the only ones in covenant with God, the only ones capable of being righteous, the only ones capable of right thinking. To paraphrase Rabbi Artson, a "righteous gentile" is every bit as much a child of God, every bit as worthy of our consideration, as a mitzvot-following Jew.
At the end of a long and often hurtful election season in which people often jump to gut feelings and vicious insults about the other side, the Conservative rabbinate is circulating an election prayer that, among other things, asks "May we strive to care about those with whom we disagree as dearly as we care about our own ideals."
Now, go forth and argue. Respectfully dive into those gray areas. Build coalitions with ideas different from your own. And care about those with whom you disagree. May it be God's will.
While waiting in line to vote, it became quickly apparent that the people waiting in line in front of me were voting for the other team. As soon as I made that connection, I found myself instinctively reacting against everything that those people said to one another, even when the topic turned away from a direct discussion of the election to neighborhood matters and other such things. I ventured to offer an argument to one of their ideas once, and one man literally laughed in my face.
In the past couple of weeks, I have seen a number of Trump/Pence signs pop up in my largely conservative suburban neighborhood. But the sign that most caught my eye read: "Democrats: we're not perfect, but they're nuts!" It made me laugh...until I realized how much utter disrespect that sign showed for roughly half of the people in our country. And how that lack of mutual respect has both permeated and typified this entire political season.
As you can see, I've been giving a great deal of thought lately to what has been passing for political discourse over the last half-year (or longer), and I've come to the conclusion that today's American people need to take some advice from the Jewish people, who in their several-thousand-year history have quite literally raised arguing to an art form.
So here, without further ado, are some of the things I have learned from the Jewish people over the past year about how to have a healthy argument:
1. Seek first to understand. No matter how convinced you may be that you are right, there is always something to learn from the thoughts of another. The great sage Rabbi Hillel was said to have never given his side to an argument until he had both listened to and considered the arguments of the other side. Because of this act of consideration, the sages of future generations were more likely to give weight to Hillel's arguments. After all, not only did he show himself to be a nice guy and an open-minded one as well, it is only through understanding the other side that we can truly come to know our own.
2. Embrace subtlety. Life is not black-and-white with no room for gray areas. It is certainly not Left and Right with no center and no room for compromise, as one would seem to think from the current election rhetoric. Today absolutely as much as throughout its long history, Judaism strives to explore the gray areas and to claim them as its own. Judaism is neither pro-life nor pro-choice, for example: it has a more nuanced position that embraces the subtleties of the situation. In today's heated debate about whether one has to keep one's birth gender or not, Judaism has long recognized that gender is not a black-and-white concept in the first place (the rabbis, in one bit of Talmud, list out six possibilities for a person's gender). Our national political discourse used to be one that started with extremes and aimed toward compromise. Today, we seem to start with extremes and then work to push each other farther away. Political dogma rules the day and doesn't accept that the best answer might not be the "conservative" one or the "progressive" one. Jewish tradition says: jump in to the fuzzy areas, explore the shades of gray, find the balance in the middle.
3. Let the majority rule if it has to, but still honor the minority view. One of the most cited reasons given by atheist-skeptics about why they cannot take the Bible seriously is that it contains contradictory ideas. These people would go crazy if they tried to read a page of Talmud. My oldest son once described his brief encounter with Talmud as "pages and pages of arguments, with no answers!"
You see, the genius of the Jewish tradition is to see that, when two contradictory ideas exist, they may still both be good ideas. In many cases, the Rabbis of old had to make a decision about what the law was to require, and they had to simply let majority opinion rule. But here's the thing: they recorded every word of the minority opinion, and gave that opinion just as much respect as they gave to the opinion that ruled the day. Because those people had good ideas, too. And you know what, someday the situation might change and we might find that the other opinion needs to be given its chance to rule the day instead.
Growing up Christian, I knew that however much we argued about a particular bit of scripture of a particular theological idea, the expectation was there that we were all supposed to agree on the One Right Answer by the time the discussion wrapped up. What I have been surprised -- disconcertingly at first and then pleasantly as time goes by -- to find in a year of Torah studies and Judaica classes in and among Jews is that they are usually quite happy to discuss every side of an issue and let all of the possible answers stand. Imagine if our political debates and water-cooler discussions went this way, with every idea respected and allowed to stand on its merits.
Imagine if we really believed that our friends and neighbors who disagree with us had at least given enough thought to their ideas that those ideas should be allowed to stand. Imagine if we didn't treat the "loser" of an election as though they and their ideas had just been disproven for all time, but kept these (respectful) discussions going into the future. According to Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson's commentary on this week's Torah portion, after Noah's flood "the rainbow is a reminder of the need to build coalitions with others" if we are to keep the world from once again being flooded with violence.
4. Argue with the ideas, not with the person. Too often this political season, debates have ignored ideas and gone personal. Granted, this is not new in American discourse: in my college paper, the letters to the editor page was named "The Firing Line" and typically followed this pattern of discourse:
Person A writes an article, op-ed, or column of some sort.
Person B: "I disagree with Person A's article/op-ed/column because of some half-baked reason that I can't really explain in a four-sentence letter"
Person C, writing to defend Person A: "only a complete idiot would disagree with Person A's excellent work, and Person B showed that they were a complete idiot anyway with all that lousy reasoning!"
Person B, writing back: "Person C is a miserable excuse for a human being"
Person C, writing back: "Person B's mother..."
Among Jews, on the other hand, even in the most heated of arguments, I have never been personally insulted. Furthermore my ideas, even very wrong ones, have always at least been given the courtesy of a thoughtful rebuttal instead of just being told that they were wrong, and furthermore stupid ideas at that.
In this week's Torah portion, God makes a covenant, through Noah, with all of the people of the earth. Jews remind ourselves that we are not the only ones in covenant with God, the only ones capable of being righteous, the only ones capable of right thinking. To paraphrase Rabbi Artson, a "righteous gentile" is every bit as much a child of God, every bit as worthy of our consideration, as a mitzvot-following Jew.
At the end of a long and often hurtful election season in which people often jump to gut feelings and vicious insults about the other side, the Conservative rabbinate is circulating an election prayer that, among other things, asks "May we strive to care about those with whom we disagree as dearly as we care about our own ideals."
Now, go forth and argue. Respectfully dive into those gray areas. Build coalitions with ideas different from your own. And care about those with whom you disagree. May it be God's will.
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