Tikkun Magazine, September/October 2009 Under 25 Essay Competition

by Samantha Kirby

Every morning when I read the paper, I think about the following question: what do religious affiliations-our deepest tribal ties-mean in a globalized world increasingly filled with sectarian violence?

Most days when I am at work at the Interfaith Youth Core, a non-profit organization in Chicago, I think about the following question: what does it mean to be an American Jew (or Muslim or Buddhist or Humanist) living among the great diversity that above all else defines our nation?

And then, one day last December, I was faced with this question: what does it mean to be an American Jew working to build interfaith engagement when violence breaks out in Israel/Palestine?

In the year since I graduated from Northwestern University, my perspective on these questions has changed. I used to think the grand questions mattered most-the ones that address overarching global trends, the ones that I thought made the world spin round and kept powerful people up at night. But I have come to realize instead that it is the narrow questions-the personal and complicated ones that I used to avoid in academia so elegantly-that are transformative.

Like most progressive twenty-somethings recently minted with a liberal arts degree, I stand firmly for many things. I believe in dignity, equality, and freedom for all. Women (and men) should have control over their bodies (and minds). Access to education is a right, not a privilege; occupation of other lands is unacceptable.

During the Gaza attacks, the Interfaith Youth Core-whose mission is to mobilize a movement of young interfaith leaders promoting religious pluralism and cooperative action-held an all-staff meeting to discuss our response to the situation. I happened to be the only Jew in the office that day sitting in the conference room facing my Muslim, Christian, and nonreligious colleagues. And as I looked from face to face, I realized an unpleasant truth: no matter how skilled you are at dialogue facilitation, talking about Israel/Palestine is uncomfortable.

The common misconception about the people who work at interfaith organizations is that they 1) practice a watered-down religion, 2) believe all religions are equally valid, or 3) are hippies who only want peace. None of these is true of the staff at Interfaith Youth Core. Many people here hold deep, exclusive truth claims; are incredibly devout; and have a clear stance on geopolitical conflicts.

So when I talked about the situation with my colleagues, the conversation was not about peace, love, and relativism. It was a challenging and demanding discussion of how we should respond to this situation and provide our network with tools to process the crisis, no matter our own personal or political ties.

During the roundtable, I understood my colleagues' frustration at the disproportionate means being used by Israel, and I shared their outcry at the number of civilians killed and injured. But I didn't wear a kaffiyeh. While I don't think that anyone should have to live in fear of air raids, I don't think people should have to live in fear of rockets, either.

As an American Jew, I can't speak for the government or people of Israel, and I won't defend the killing of innocents or the defacement of mosques.

But as an American Jew, I can't pretend that I think the Jewish claim to a homeland is unreasonable or unfounded.

And above all, as an American Jew, I won't accept the common narrative that for my people to have a place in this world, others must suffocate. Loving Israel doesn't have to mean sacrificing the inherent dignity, humanity, and right of Palestinians to their homeland.

Some call this riding the fence.

I call it bridging the false divide between honoring my heritage and my humanistic values-the same values that are echoed throughout Judaism.

During our meeting that day, we realized that the issue at hand was not how to create a two-state solution or how to convince one another to think the same way. Instead, we needed to come up with a way for diverse communities-even those with strong, close relationships-to respond to issues of unrest in the Middle East without compromising the bonds they worked so hard to build. Every time a bomb explodes thousands of miles away, Jews and Muslims in the states can't turn on one another.

It is at these very moments of heightened unease that we must come together and recognize that while we might disagree on who is right or wrong over there, there is still much work to be done here. There are parks to clean, houses to build, and mouths to feed. We need both sides working together to realize our shared vision of a better America.

I don't know how this situation will be resolved, or if I will see it resolved in my lifetime. But I know that when I first heard about the Gaza offensive, I thought of my favorite professor of Arabic, who moved to Chicago with his family from the West Bank. He helped me prepare for studying abroad in Morocco, where I lived with a Muslim family and studied the Jewish community in Casablanca. When I returned to school the next year, he and I drank coffee and spoke darija, the Moroccan dialect of Arabic, sharing stories of our experiences in Morocco-mine more recent, his as an undergraduate in university there years ago.

Until there is peace, I hope that we can at least treat one another like we believe in it.

And figuring out how to do this in the face of widespread violence? That is the new question-provocative and personal-keeping me up at night.

Samantha Kirby is an executive associate at the Interfaith Youth Core in Chicago. A native Californian, she studied religion at Northwestern University.

This essay was submitted to Tikkun's Under 25 Writing Contest in the summer of 2009. The other essays can be found here or hit the back button if you got here from the Writing Contest intro page.