Learning to Disagree

This past Wednesday, my wife and I were out for dinner to celebrate her birthday. We spent the whole time talking. And then, toward the end of our meal, this random stranger came over and said, “Excuse me. I’m sorry to interrupt you. But, I just wanted to say, it was so lovely to see the two of you sitting here talking all night. You never took out your phones. You just talked. You never see that anymore. It was really nice. Anyway. Thanks. Have a good night.”

I think that was the sweetest chutzpah I’ve ever experienced!

This guy had a point. In our day-to-day experiences we are replacing a lot of face-to-face communication with emails, text messages, and Facebook comments. Now, I don’t want to be a luddite and say that we should throw our phones and computers out the window. Technological advances have allowed us to connect more quickly with more people in more places around the world. And that is a great thing. But, at least as far as our technology has taken us so far, we still miss out on some of the crucial human elements of conversing.

You can’t hear intonation in an email. And you can’t read someone’s expression in a text message. The internet replaces emotions with emojis. And it makes it easier for us to dehumanize people with whom we disagree. When other people are just a screen name and a profile photo, it’s easier to slip into vitriol and unfair argumentation tactics.

We may see more of it there, but logical and moral fallacies are not limited to the internet. We see plenty of it in face-to-face interactions as well. In fact, we get a few examples in this week’s parsha.

In the midst of the Israelites’ desert wanderings, Dathan and Aviram join up with Korach in his rebellion against the leadership of Moses and Aaron. Dathan and Aviram say:

...הַמְעַט, כִּי הֶעֱלִיתָנוּ מֵאֶרֶץ זָבַת חָלָב וּדְבַשׁ

Is it a small thing that you brought us out of a land flowing with milk and honey so we could die in the wilderness…And moreover, you haven’t even brought us to a land flowing with milk and honey. 

(Numbers 16:13-14)

Now…wait a minute. Did you hear what they did there?

Suffice it to say, it’s usually a bad move for characters in the Torah to refer to Egypt as a “flowing with milk and honey.” Dathan and Aviram at best misunderstand and at worst maliciously distort the history of Egyptian slavery. And then, when it comes to the journey to the Land of Israel…they deliver an exaggerated, even dangerous “are we there yet?” They break the rules of fair argumentation, upset that along the journey to the Promised Land that they are not already in the Promised Land.

As Dathan and Aviram argue with Moses, they don’t argue on the merits and instead break norms and rules of conversation. And Pirke Avot, wisdom from our sages, has something to say about that. They say that there are two types of arguments: arguments לשם שמים, for the sake of Heaven, and arguments שאינה לשם שמים, not for the sake of Heaven. Arguments for the sake of Heaven seek truth and greater understanding. The parties maintain a relationship. Arguments not for the sake of Heaven, according to Pirke Avot, are like Korach and his gang of Dathan and Aviram. They are about lifting themselves above others. They are not about truth but are about self-aggrandizement and defeating the other rather than finding shared values.

And, as I think my new friend from the Vietnamese restaurant brought up, we are not spending enough time flexing our conversation muscles. We are getting worse at having arguments לשם שמים, for the sake of Heaven. How much easier to put down others, lift ourselves up, and ignore basic rules of etiquette and social convention when we don’t have to actually look face-to-face at our conversation partner?

When we don’t speak, when we don’t meet face-to-face, we can forget the humanity of the people with whom we disagree. We can forget that their lives matter. If only we could find a way to talk and to know each other…think of how we could start to replace fear and anger with love and hope.

And I think I know of a solution: Shabbat. A chance to put our phones on airplane mode or silent, or maybe even to turn them off all together. To sit around a table. And to talk to each other. To hold ourselves accountable to fair and moral rules of conversation. To consider the other people around us when we speak.

Around our Shabbat tables, we still have important, difficult, and maybe even contentious conversations. I mean…it’s inevitable! Who has never argued around a Shabbat or holiday meal table with family? We can argue! We can disagree! But when we do so, we should do it לשם שמים, for the sake of Heaven and not fall into the trap of Dathan and Aviram. They lost their ability to air what may have been legitimate grievances because of the way they chose to go about making their claim.

And this Shabbat, I pray we can learn from their example. May we be blessed with Shabbat tables full of lively conversation. May we sharpen each other with our wit and dig deeper through lively, loving conversation. And may we always join in a search for deeper truth and deeper commitment to the people, families, and communities around us, so that, together we can march to the Promised Land.

This sermon was delivered at my summer internship at Temple Judea in Palm Beach Gardens, FL.