B'Yachad: A Time to Come Together Parashat Vayetzei: Listening Across Difference

We have to be able to reach across the divides and listen. We even have to listen when it looks like the other side doesn’t want to listen. [ . . . ] You should have the strength of character to enter into a dialogue in which at the first meeting or two they only yell at you. [ . . . ] Because very often, not always, after they yell and they see that you listen, you’re willing to acknowledge some of their grievances, sometimes they calm down and they’re willing to listen to you.
[“Peacemakers in a Time of War” Forum at Temple Beth-El, Richmond Virginia. November 12, 2023. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=285370747828581 ]

Modern Tales: A Plea for the Survivors 11/16/78
What About Us Disturbs The Enemy
What is it in us that moves us to wish to remain Jewish? And what is it in the enemy that disturbs him about us? That makes him wish to see us disappear? Would he prefer a world without Jews? And, you know, on one hand [00:30:00] I understand occasionally why the enemy hates us so much. We drive him crazy. Our survival drives him insane.

In the Talmud: Rabbi Zeira — Commitment to Israel 11/5/81
We Don’t Love Israel Enough
Let us not worry if we are accused of loving Israel too much. If we are accused and rightly so, it is [that] we don’t love Israel enough. And those who may use our love for Israel as a reason to hate us, they hate us anyway. [01:09:00] And those who may produce more anti-Semitism, anti-Semitism I no longer believe is a Jewish problem; it’s their problem.We shall go on. But how they will go on hating, when all hate generates self-hate — I don’t know.

Tolerance in the Talmud 9/14/06
Why This Hate For Us?
An anti-Semite is someone who hated me before I was born. The anti-Semite cannot stand me because I am too Jewish, or not enough, meaning too assimilated; rich or poor; young or old; pious or agnostic; educated or illiterate. All the contradictions of human nature converge [00:32:00] in anti-Semitism.
Why this hate for us? Is it because we are the only people from antiquity to have survived antiquity? Is it that in spite of persecutions and attempts to convert us, we have refused to disappear from history? In 1945, I was convinced that there would no longer be anti-Semitism, that it passed away with its victims in Treblinka and Auschwitz. But I was wrong. Only the victims perished; anti-Semitism is alive and well.
A sad statement. If Auschwitz has not cured the world of anti-Semitism, what can and what will? What the world seems to forget is that a person who hates a Jew also hates other minorities, other religions, other ethnic groups, and ends up hating all humanity. It is a cancer whose cells devour [00:33:00] others — unless action is taken to stop them.
https://www.92ny.org/archives/elie-wiesel/elie-wiesel-on-antisemitism

Sometimes I lay under the moon
And I thank God I'm breathin'
Then I pray don't take me soon
'Cause I am here for a reason

Sometimes in my tears I drown
But I never let it get me down
So when negativity surrounds
I know someday it'll all turn around because

All my life I’ve been waitin' for
I been prayin' for, for the people to say
That we don't want to fight no more
They'll be no more wars
And our children will play, one day
One Day, One Day, One Day
One Day, One Day, One Day