An Atmosphere of Acceptance

Healing comes in a number of forms. There's healing of body, mind, and spirit, there's healing of relationships among friends and family, there's healing among nations and there's healing among people within a group, just to mention a few. Healing is required because of a split or breakage that occurred involving the bonds that hold someone or something together. Tikkun Olam, the repair of the universe is simply another way of talking about healing.  A simple finger cut represents a breakage of the skin allowing blood to flow. Behaving with intolerance towards one another is a split in the bond that holds a nation together—a symptom of what's happening among Jews today. One example is the incident that took place between a Reform group praying at the Western Wall during Shavuot and several ultra-orthodox bystanders.

It seems as if peace with the Arab nations will prove to be an easier task than peace among ourselves. Yet harmony among Jews, both here and in Israel could occur if we could all learn the meaning of just one word-acceptance. It's a healing word; a word that binds the wounds of people together. Acceptance doesn't necessarily mean to agree with or to condone the behavior of someone else, it has more to do with recognizing the individuality of each person and honoring their right to an opinion that may differ from yours. No one but G-d knows the absolute truth of the universe, and it would be presumptuous to think otherwise.

At the root of this breakage lies a concern around the word 'belief' or the question of which among Orthodox, Conservative, or Reform beliefs are the true, the genuine, the authentic ones. Orthodox belief, for example, holds that the written and oral Torah, the will of G-d, were given to Moses on Mt. Sinai who handed it down through a succession of sages until it reached us in its present form. This literature including the commentaries of contemporary chochem, scholars cannot be amended, according to this view.

As a result, problems arise from extremely literal interpretations of the text, like the West Bank settlers who refuse to leave their homes and resettle in the safety of Israel on the grounds that one mitzvot forbids abandoning land bequeathed by the Torah. This is all in stark contrast to the Reform position whose interpretation of Mitzvot is nearly diametrically opposed. This split ultimately boils down to a controversy over mitzvot, particularly which ones to do and how to do them. In Judaism, it's not what you think, it's what you do.
Creating a healing environment, much like applying antiseptic to a wound can repair this breakage or any other. In this case we need an atmosphere of acceptance. Only through walking the balanced or middle path which transcends any form of belief, a mind-set that stands for neither one way or the other but staying centered, can we heal ourselves. This method not only heals splits within a nation, but between you and everyone else as well.

Can we deny that drawing closer to God is the supreme Jewish value? Can we understand that all of our prayer and all of our mitzvot lead to that direction? All these actions are to be performed from the moment we rise until the moment we retire at night, by which we become aware of the existence of God. So what would it matter if we found our own unique ways of becoming aware of God's presence? What would it matter if I meditated on the unity of G-d while someone else realized they were doing God's will by being of service to the needy? We need to accept each others styles in order to create a unified Judaism otherwise we face the risk of extinction like all those cultures before us who were divided in their beliefs.