Arabs paint mosque blue and white for Israel’s 60th.

No, this is not a leftover April Fools’ Day joke:

Galilee Arabs paint mosque blue and white for Israel’s 60th

In an unusual gesture of solidarity for Israel’s 60th anniversary, villagers in one Arab-Israeli town have have painted the dome of their mosque in the national colors, blue and white.

The gesture in A-Taibeh, a village in the Galilee near the Gilboa, comes at a time when Arab-Jewish relations in the reason have been marked by tensions, and many Israeli Arabs have vowed to boycott the anniversary celebrations and commemorations. (Haaretz)

The mayor of the Israeli-Arab town had this to say:

“We are residents of Israel. Our religion encourages love and closeness among nations. Jews, Muslims, we are all cousins, right? …We decided to paint the mosque’s dome, the most important, dear, and holy site for us, in the national colors. We are all citizens of the state of Israel. As far as we are concerned, there is no difference here between Jews, Muslims, and Christians.”

Way to put it, dude. It is such a wonderful thing to read in the paper, especially when we’ve been getting hit with a lot of bad domestic news lately.

How can a mediator be both impartial and fair?

I’m spending my Saturday night writing a short paper for my course in Ethical Dilemmas in Mediation. The paper is covering an article by Susan Nauss Exon called, “How Can a Mediator Be Both Impartial and Fair?:
Why Ethical Standards of Conduct Create Chaos for Mediators.”

She makes a great point: The Standards of Conduct meant for mediators are either too vague or too restricting, depending on how you view them. Impartiality and fairness could be mutually exclusive one way, or totally  harmonious another.

On top of that, they are both difficult goals to attain, however necessary they might be. So shouldn’t that be resolved if mediators are truly having so  much trouble with it? Well, are they?

Turning drug addicts into people, one story at a time.

I joined a class field trip to a drug addict recovery center in south Tel Aviv today. We had a discussion with one of the administrators, young woman who was very passionate about her job, and then we heard from about eight recovering addicts about the conflicts and issues their drug abuse had caused their families, as well as what kinds of family trauma led to their drug use.

As you may have realized, I’m a huge fan of contact theory and I viewed today as a chance to spend face time with a demographic I really don’t know much about aside from stereotypes. This group were in the process of becoming clean or were already somewhat clean for months. You could see the struggle in their eyes, along with the love, pain, fear, laughter. They were married at some point, or on the verge of getting so; they had kids or the desire to create them; they had jokes to tell and empathy to share.

There were a few big points that I got the feeling these men and women wanted us to walk away with:

First, the matter of turning to drugs was not an issue of life getting bad and not knowing how to handle the pain. It was a matter of - due to family trauma as youngsters - never learning how to deal with life, good or bad. Whether it was losing a job, struggling through a marriage, a newborn baby, or making money, these folks did not have the emotional tools to handle life and needed an escape or a way to numb it all. Heroin (in most cases) was that tool.

It was fascinating that these people had varying backgrounds - Russian, Arab or Arab Jew - and they all had family trauma in common, whether it was an abusive father, drug dealer parents, absent parents.

In addition, it is not often the case that these people were bored and turned to drugs and got caught up in a serious and deadly cycle. At this recovery center, most of the addicts or former addicts experienced serious traumas in their childhoods caused by screwed up family relations or abuse. The drugs were the result of such a situation. These people stopped experiencing normal emotions at a young age, and, coming out of that daze now they are picking up where they left off - at age 9, 13, 18, etc.

For instance, one man in his 50s was telling us about his father who made him, at age 13, his secret-barer and assistant in doing drugs and drinking. The boy would have to hide this from his mother and help his father set up his pipes.

A mother of two described growing up in a home where her father was the dominant and her mother the submissive. To escape it, she ended up getting married - to her father all over again. Without any control in her life, she started on drugs, with the added bonus that her verbally abusive husband was strictly anti-drugs.

Another point was that it becomes a disease where the drug addict cannot make informed decisions any longer; the substance plays the master while the human mind becomes a slave. Once this relationship exists, it takes a lot of struggle to break free of those chains and every. single. day. is a battle to be waged and won by the human mind and physical condition.

A young father of three explained that the on-and-off periods of drug abuse and keeping ‘clean’ are not to be taken lightly. A person who has kept clean for thirty years can fall as low as a current addict with just one hit.

I am glad I got to participate in the discussion. It became clear how much these people hurt their families and themselves, but also how much they have been hurt. I don’t think I’ll ever forget some of those faces.

If a bumper sticker can communicate…

Walking through a residential Jerusalem neighborhood today, I spotted this Israeli bumper sticker I thought I’d share:

“Ze lo yigamair ad she’nidabair”

“It won’t end until we talk”

While I’m not so interested in bloodying myself with Palestinian Israeli politics at the moment (it’s too pretty of a day), I do want to mention how true this statement is for any conflict - especially our own personal ones.

For instance, how often have I thought I disliked someone until I had a meaningful conversation with them? We all go through this and it seems that we all forget the power of communication until we find ourselves doing it.

Just can’t communicate that enough!

Newsflash: No money in mediation.

In class yesterday we were discussing the ethical dilemmas with making mediation an obligation from the courts. The subject turned to mediators’ payment and how some courts are trying a new approach, making the first meeting with the mediator an obligation, but free for the disputants. That way, they don’t have to focus on the money in that first introduction but rather on the possibilities offered by the process.

One student rightly mentioned that there seemed to be a neutrality issue there; that the mediator had the incentive to convince the disputants that mediation is worthwhile because then they can get the case afterward (and get paid). My professor laughed and said, well, there’s not much money in mediation anyway (in Israel). Anyone who is a mediator is also doing something else to earn a living… Thousands of people take the mediation certification course and only a handful are actually practicing - and after that, only a handful are making a living off it.

Hmm… Not so encouraging, but I think I was prepared for that anyway. Mediation has a long way to go as a career field in Israel. I think it has to do with the general public learning what it means and why its beneficial. Lately I have been thinking about alternative kinds of manifestations of my conflict management degree, including online dispute resolution projects.

The gift of perspective.

Last night I attended the burial of a 91-year-old rabbi who could boast perfect health but was involved in a tragic accident last week in New Jersey. The reason I was there, really, was because that rabbi was the father of my own hometown rabbi, who I have known and respected since… forever.

Anyway, if you don’t know the whole circumstance of his untimely death, you can read about it here. In short:

…Rabbi Zev Segal, 91… headed to Livingston, N.J., on an errand.

He never arrived.

On Thursday, Rabbi Segal was found dead inside his car, submerged in the Hackensack River.

The authorities here say that Rabbi Segal… may have driven his car… off Duncan Avenue, which dead-ends into the Hackensack River… (nytimes)

Perspectives… I think it’s important to not get too caught up in the tragedy of his death but to remember the amazing things for which he was known. He was a major rabbi in the New York area and committed his life to attaining many goals for observant Judaism, including leading a large congregation in New Jersey.

To put this in another perspective: At his funeral, it was made known he had expressed his wish that at his funeral there should be no time spent on eulogies, but instead spent on reciting the tehillim prayers.

After the burial, I waited around to pay respects to my own rabbi, this man’s son. Of course, funerals are not comfortable or happy places, but they are usually enlightening if you let them be.

He walked over to me and offered the following, his own perspective:

The death was in fact not a tragedy at all (he smiled when he said this), but one last job for him in this world. When he went missing, it is said that over 200 Jewish volunteers searched for him in the New York-New Jersey areas for over 24 hours. Hundreds - if not more - Jews spent time praying for his safe return. Hatzolah, a Jewish-run emergency service, organized worldwide, was on top of the search mission before the New Jersey police came on the scene. They were complimented by how organized and efficient they were. If this is not a kiddush Hashem - a display of good behavior honoring God - than what could be?

Now, I’m usually skeptical of religious rationalization, but when it comes to significant life events, the truth is, after seeing the peacefulness in my rabbi’s eyes as he shared this insight with me, I felt completely engulfed in comfort and peace. It was a kind of human spirit overtaking my sadness.

When you take a step back and manage to gain perspective on something - happy or tragic - I believe it adds to our humanity. The human experience is guided by perspective and it is our job to shape our skill for gaining it so that it comes to us with ease as we grow older and, hopefully, wiser.

It’s a gift we are born with, but too many of us lose sight of it… Perhaps that is something else we can take from this tragedy - that it needn’t be a tragedy at all if you see it through the right perspective.

Is there really a ’separate but equal’?

So much for optimism in the midst of tragedy. I just found this article on Ynet news:

Poll: 51% of Israelis want separate secular, religious neighborhoods

A majority of the Israeli public believes religious families ought to live in separate neighborhoods, and even cities, to their secular counterparts, according to a new weekly poll new poll conducted by Ynet and the Gesher Organization.

When asked where a national religious family should ideally reside, 51% of respondents indicated that separating the various religious factions would be best. 29% of respondents indicated that religious families ought to live in their own specially designated communities, where as 22% supported the establishment of segregated oreligious neighborhoods within “religiously diverse” cities.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be shocked… I would have thought that most ultra-religious would opt for religious-only communities, and sure enough, according to the survey, the majority do:

When breaking down this survey data according to religious affiliation, it appears that haredi respondents favored segregation most, with 61% of haredi respondents indicating that they preferred to live in separate communities and neighborhoods.

Not sure where the numbers fall for secular populations; personally, I’ve found that secular citizens fall under a scale of possibilities, from religious observance-tolerant, to religious observance-friendly, to religious observance-intolerant, to religious observance-spiteful.

I just don’t think ’separate bu equal’ works, although I guess that depends what exactly you are trying to accomplish. Without any contact, the differences and view points are only going to deepend, widen and get more intense. What about those mandatory times when we must be unified? How is this one Israel, then? How does the nation stand any chance again enemies without any union?

And, perhaps, forget enemies for a moment: Where is the Jewish value of brotherhood? If the religious communities close themselves off, how do they expect other Jews to love the religion? Where is the good example? And how can secular Jews, with liberal values, expect to be followed in tolerance when they don’t show it?

But there’s always a middle ground, no matter how small. According to the survey, 33% respondents answered that they would favor joint communities with both secular and religious inhabitants.

That would be where I fit in. I’ve chosen to live in a mixed community, myself - majority secular, but religious-friendly - and I hope to raise my children here so that tolerance is ingrained in their mindset. That’s an extremely important value to me and look forward to a future where that only gets easier and easier. But if this survey has any grain of truth to it, well… It’s just more work for me and the rest of the 33%.