Welcome to Soulful Jewish Living: Mindful Practices for Every Day with me, Josh Feigelson.
I’m grateful you’re here, and I hope you benefit from our time together.
Every summer for the last decade or so, my wife has spent a month or two working at Camp Ramah in Wisconsin. Her job is to help the counselors at this Jewish summer camp to create programs for their campers that will be both Jewishly and educationally appropriate and fun.
While this job initially started as a way for us to help pay for summer camp for our kids, it has turned into something much more than that for Natalie. Like many campers, camp is her special place. She’s one of those people who counts the days until she can go.
Even with the advent of work-from-home, it’s not so simple for me to take a month or two and join her at camp, which is a six hour drive in each direction. So, for me, the summer has become a bit of an experiment in independence: What happens when I don’t have to structure my life around some of the key relationships and responsibilities I experience the rest of the year?
I’ll tell you, it’s a very mixed blessing. On the one hand, there’s no negotiating. There are no texts at 4:30 in the afternoon that say, “Any thoughts on dinner?” I can make and eat what I want. There’s also no discussing who is going to walk the dog or clean the kitty litter or put away the laundry. We don’t have to agree on something to watch on Netflix. I get to do what I want to do without the anxiety that can come with discussion. And the absence of that anxiety can be nice.
On the other hand (and you knew this was coming) I find the solitude can get old pretty quickly. I miss our meals together and the messiness on the coffee table after Shabbat (which, I will cop to, is much more my mess than anyone else’s). No, I don’t miss the anxiety of having to negotiate a shared life, of persuading and being persuaded and finding common ground. But I do miss our shared life. When camp is over and everyone’s back home, I frankly feel a little relieved. And I feel reminded of why the anxiety of all that persuasion—about dinner, Netflix, the laundry—I feel reminded of why it’s worth it.
This is the fifth episode in our miniseries leading up to the 250th anniversary of American Independence on July 4th. As our guide, we’ve been reading Professor Jeremy Engels’s book, On Mindful Democracy. Today, I want to focus on an issue that’s really at the heart of democracy, which is persuasion.
In the last section of his book, Engels has a chapter whose title sums up the idea: “Democracy is about winning hearts, not wars.” He writes, “Politics is an argument, which is very different from a war. In a war,” Engels says, “the goal is to win at any cost… Though we might ‘win’ a war through physical or verbal domination, we do not win the minds and hearts of those we bully (and in fact, we likely stoke rebellion).” (Side note: As a parent, I can confirm this.)
“In an argument,” Engels goes on, “the goal is not to dominate, but to win over the hearts and minds of those who stand opposed. An argument preserves the freedom of all parties even as it seeks to shape the choices an ‘opponent’ makes, bringing them around to our way of seeing and doing things.”
For Engels, this reality about democracy flows from the fact that we’re all created equal and therefore all interconnected. If we’re not just independent but interdependent, then it doesn’t really work when we try to bully or fight our way to coexistence—we have to try to persuade each other. And while the work of persuasion can be anxiety-producing at times, it’s far preferable to the alternatives of war, subjugation, or the absence of other people. Just like in a family, in a democracy we’re all here—so we have to learn how to get along.
Judaism is not a pacifist tradition like the Buddhism that Engels practices. But I think we share a lot of this thinking. And we particularly see it in the culture of Torah study. The classical rabbinic argument—a machloket—is not a war to be won by silencing the opposition. When we look at the dynamic of chavruta study—that is, studying in pairs—or the way the Talmud preserves minority opinions, we see a system built on the belief that truth is multifaceted. In Talmud Torah—what we translate as the study of the whole Jewish textual tradition—the goal is to persuade through reason, humility, and genuine listening, not by imposing our views on other people.
Following Jewish mysticism, the Hasidic tradition teaches that the number of letters in a Torah scroll is the same as the number of Israelites who left Egypt. Which means that each of us has a root soul in the Torah. Each of us has a place in the Torah, each of us belongs. And, just as important, our collective understanding of Torah is incomplete without the full participation of everyone. I have a unique perspective—and so do you, and so does someone else. And that is so important because it reminds us that we are all interdependent in our pursuit of truth, so we have to listen, understand, and, when we have to agree, try to persuade one another rather than bully each other. Those are all lessons for democracy.
Here’s a practice to try. We can call this the “havruta shift.”
When we’re in a disagreement our natural instinct might be to start building our defense while the other person is still talking. This practice begins by overriding that reflex.
The next time you’re in a disagreement with someone, take a breath. Loosen your grip for a minute and just see if you can absorb their words. When they finish, do not counter them. Instead, mirror them. Say, “Let me make sure I’m hearing you right. It sounds like you’re saying…” Your goal is to state their position so accurately and fairly until they nod and say, “Yes, you’ve got it.”
Now comes some internal work for you. As they speak, and as you prepare to respond, check in with your body. Notice if your chest tightens or if your heart rate spikes. In a culture of domination, that discomfort tells us to fight harder, shout louder, and crush the opposition to make the anxiety go away. In the culture of the beit midrash, or a culture of interdependence, we can reframe that tension. Remind yourself: This friction is sacred. This person isn’t an enemy to defeat; they are the iron sharpening my iron. They are doing me a favor by testing the strength of my ideas.
Finally, consider changing your metric for what it means to “win.” When you offer your perspective, do it through persuasion—with logic, humility, and textual proof—not volume. And if they bring up a point or a piece of evidence that genuinely exposes a flaw in your thinking, do the ultimate Rabbinic power move: concede. Say, “You know what? That’s a really great point. I hadn’t looked at it that way.” Remember, when you argue for the sake of truth rather than ego, changing your mind isn’t a loss. It means you both just won.
I believe this is a tiny, radical act of democracy. You might try practicing it at the dinner table, in a meeting, or online. When you do, see if it helps shift the energy of the conversation from a battlefield into a house of study, from trying to dominate to trying to understand. Try it out and let me know how it goes.
Blessings for the journey. Know that I’m on it with you.
Thank you for joining us for Soulful Jewish Living: Mindful Practices for Every Day, a production of Unpacked, a brand of OpenDor Media, and the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. This episode is sponsored by Jonathan and Kori Kalafer and the Somerset Patriots: The Bridgewater, NJ-based AA Affiliate of the New York Yankees. If you like this show, subscribe, share this episode with a friend, give us five stars on Apple Podcasts. Check out our website, unpacked.media for everything Unpacked-related, and subscribe to our other podcasts, and check out the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. Most importantly, be in touch–about what you heard today, what you’d like to hear more about, or to dedicate an episode. Write to me at josh@unpacked.media.
This episode was hosted by me, Rabbi Josh Feigelson. Audio was edited by Rob Pera and we’re produced by Rivky Stern—who, I want to share, is the world’s biggest fan of the New York Knicks. Please join me in giving Rivky a special mazal tov on her team’s big win. Thanks for joining us.