Thursday, August 28, 2008

Diversity in Israel and Diversity in America

A guest post by TikunOlam

So I have been spending most of my 2 weeks in Israel staying on a truly wonderful Dati yishuv. I was in conversation with one of the residents here about the yishuv and he explained that this particular yishuv is very "diverse." I asked how he could consider it diverse if they close the gates for shabbat and there is mandatory quiet time for 2 hours on shabbat! I mean, how diverse could it be? We agreed that it is all relative.

See, in case you are new around here, I am a very big fan of diversity. And when I mean diversity, I mean something more along the lines of the "diversity" that I have in my town in the USA. And there are certainly more diverse areas than where I live. Afterall, I live in area heavily populated by Jews. But where I live, when there is diversity among the Jews, that means that there are multiple shuls that include Orthodox, Chabad, Conservative and Reform. And of course my town has lots of people who are not Jewish. My neighbors on both sides are African American and considering how many different churches there are within ten minutes of my house, it seems that there is certainly a diversity of religions in my town as well. We don't have everyone represented in my town, I don't live in NYC, but I like and appreciate its diversity.

There are two major reasons that diversity is important to me. The first is that lack of exposure to "others" tends to breed fear of others which then leads to bigotry, stereotyping and prejudice. People who have had opportunities to befriend homosexuals, are less homophobic, Blacks who have had positive relationships with Whites are less racist etc. It is not a mystery as to why there is far less bigotry in the big cities than there is in rural America, it is exposure to and experience with people who are different that makes all the difference.

As a Caucasian Jew who works mostly with African Amercian staff and patients, I have had countless experiences being told by African Americans with little exposure to Whites or Jews things like, "White people aren't so bad once you get to know them" or "I didn't realize that Jews also believed in . . . (usually something humane, prosocial, charitable)."

For Jews, it concerns me even more when diversity is limited to "well here some people have TVs and some people don't. On some yishuvs it is not as diverse." I can certainly see why the insularity is appealing to so many. People want to be around people who share their values. They want their children raised with certain beliefs that are reinforced by everyone around them. They enjoy the extended, supportive experience of having a community that serves as a big extended family.

But the downside, in my opinion, is that it is also important to teach children that the world is a diverse place where there are people of value to meet in every walk of life. By virtue of hiding children from a diverse world, the message given is that the world out there is not as good as our world, we want to keep those others out of our lives, others are unsafe, or less desirable. And in a country where Jews have such a difficult time seeing eye to eye on so many things political and sociological, it seems it would be especially important to raise children side by side with their differently Jewish brethren. Raise them to respect each other and understand where the other is coming from.

The second reason that I think that diversity is important is that I believe that the sum of a group of diverse people is infinitely more than the sum of its parts. When you spend time only with people like you, you don't grow, you don't develop new ideas, new ways of thinking or new ways to solve problems. And with all the hate and war in this world, and both in Israel and the U.S. - so much of it based in difference between peoples, I think that it is so important for people to get out of their comfort zone, at least once in a while, to build relationships with people different than themselves.


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Buy his book already. (it is what all the cool kids are doing)

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