Is there a Jewish Answer to this problem?
I started teaching this class last Sunday. I want to look at basic principles and values that come into making Jewish choices in a secular society. Before I could get started I saw one student scarily looking at me. I know what she was thinking: “please don’t tell me that my politically conservative opinions are not Jewish.” Another one could not help himself “Tell me, how could Lieberman be against Health Care Reform?” I will try to keep it to basics and show how historically our tradition could embrace a wide variety of opinions in the greatest range of issues and how decisions were made taking into account precedent and contemporary reality. Yet in a sea of diversity usually a consensus emerged. Though I have strong opinions and think I can ground them all in our Jewish texts this is not what I want to do in these sessions. The most important teaching will hopefully be that we can argue with each other without denying the humanity of the other and that, in our arguing, we will discover that we all subscribe to principles and values that can and will lead to consensus.
Posted November 04 2009 by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)