Shockingly, Jewish unity hardly has any priority

This is something that must change immediately

The Sages and Rabbis teach us that Jews hating each other on no grounds, slandering, and lacking unity are delaying Redemption, humanity reaching perfection and the end of all suffering still in the world. You would think: Solving that must have the highest priority. But, it hardly registers.

Reminds me of the scare that humanity could become extinct in 50 years, with crossing a point of no return (pardon the pun) in 10 years. You would think: What could be more important? I’ll tell you what’s more popular: to make money, fight wars, and eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. If we continue like that, this certainly will be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But, if we would pull off Jewish unity, all other problems must fall away.

Deep-down, Jews are united. Antisemites know that when they hate all of us equally. It also shows in times of serious distress. But we don’t want to ‘force’ G^d to give us much stress to bring out this underlying reality.

Gentile friends can play a superb role in fostering Jewish unity because they see our infighting as silly at best. They lack irritation, lack of patience, partisanisms, and hopelessness many of us seem to have in abundance.

Why then don’t we Jews spend 10% of our free time and income on creating Jewish unity? Beats me. Let’s think about what it would take.

For Jewish unity, it’s not enough to be tolerant of everyone we agree with. We need to take a hard look at Jews who are different from us, Jews different from us, especially the ones we can’t stand.

Some groups of Jews cancel other Jews.

• The ultra-right: the ultra-left (“‘erev rav, malshinim“).
• The secular: the religious, and vice versa (“I know they hate us”).
• Israeli Jews disliking US Jews (“imperialists”).
• US Jews looking down on Israeli Jews (“primitives”).
• Jews: Converts from Judaism (“traitors, liars”).
• Jews with warm Gentile friends: those without (“Those racists”).
• Ethical people: con artists (“They make you want to run”).

These are some of the things we can do:

• Invite Gentile friends to help us.
• Should Jew-haters kill them? No? Then, see them as precious.
• Let’s motivate ourselves. No Antisemites can harm us when we are united. (Yet, it’s still not our fault. They also couldn’t harm us without gravity. That doesn’t make gravity guilty.)
• Give a deserved compliment to a fellow Jew you can’t stand. (Don’t admit what gave them the honor. I did once. Bad idea.)
• Publicly defend Jews who you can’t stand without buts and ifs. We have plenty of enemies who abuse us. We don’t need to help them.
• Think about the kind of Jews you can’t stand the most, look for such Jews, and notice what they are great at, how they are an asset to Judaism and humanity, and say so. (What you do when your partner, kids, or students irritate you to no end. Look for the good.)
• Don’t be so sure that such ‘terrible Jews’ are so terrible and wrong. Argue with them. See how good your ideas are. See who wins.
• Israeli soldiers and physicians defend and fight for everyone, no questions asked. Be like them.
• Don’t attack our leaders, faulty as they are. Don’t do the opposite: don’t idolize some of our teachers. We’re all human and imperfect.
• As activists, let’s make sure we attack policy, not people.
• Refuse to read/listen to Jews slandering Jews and other ego trips.
• Always consider that Judaism has high standards, and Jews have much scar tissue from attacks by our enemies. Don’t blame victims.
• Don’t expect Jews to be super-human. That would end in disappointment and exaggerated condemnations.
• Don’t be a chauvinist justifying all the unjustifiable. But, do highlight the abuse ‘unacceptable Jews’ first received. Not to excuse, but to motivate us to stop all abuse. Yigal Amir was canceled as Yemenite.
• Learn more empathy. This can be learned. Would you have done better in their shoes? How would you feel, and what would you need in their place? Could you provide that to them a little?
• Focus on what you like about fellow Jews, not on dislikes.
• When we see someone’s faults, it is our task to get them on the right path. This includes not attacking them.
• Not caring about someone is worse than hating them.
• Love yourself to know what it feels like.
• Be proud as a Jew. Then you don’t need to trash others to feel good.
• Improve yourself to remember how hard it can be.
• Out loud, recall daily some ways that Jews, Israelis, and Israel are remarkably great. See that our imperfections aren’t exclusively ours. If divisiveness didn’t work for 2,000 years, maybe just stop it?
• Smiles all day keep wars away.
• Don’t live in a bubble. Be a loyal part of communities with their inevitable wicked people. On them, we practice baseless love. Darling people are hard to love ‘regardless.’
• Do we hate Jews because they seem to dislike or not care about us, we envy them, or they once said no to us? That is baseless hatred.
• It’s harder to love than to hate; let’s be ambitious.
• Stop all talk that these kinds of Jews are all such-and-such. There are good and bad apples in every basket. (In Hebrew: yesh weyesh.)
• Get to know Jews in different communities and see for yourself how the stereotypes are not true of some if not of anyone.
• Don’t drink alcohol ‘for fun.’ It brings out the worst in us. There are enough Gentiles to drink up the world’s alcohol production.

There are exceptions.

• Con artists, for whom words have no meaning and human closeness is a threat. Get away from them. Conspire to disempower them. But don’t hate them. Pity them.
• Oppose abusive, bigoted, and antisemitic Jews, but don’t hate them.
• As a measure of last resort, we must sometimes scold abusive Jews but only for constructive reasons. Make sure your motives are pure: to protect their victims, to show bystanders not to stay silent in the face of evil, to diminish the abuser’s suffering in the future world, to make the world ready to corner dangerous people collectively, and on the off-chance that that would help the villain to repent.

What things do you see we can do for Jewish unity?