The Stories We’re Given: Relating To The “Other”

In This Moment of Disconnection, how do we act toward people whose views seem diametrically opposed to our own, Contrary to the way many people react when they encounter someone with whom they vociferously disagree—which is to label them as evil, idiotic, or gravely misinformed—I’ve noticed my own attitude shifting. Where I once may have leapt to judgment, I now experience something closer to fascination. What fascinates me is how two people—neither evil, stupid, nor misinformed (at least about their own point of view)—can arrive at such radically different conclusions about the same events. Whether the subject is art, religion, war, sex, peace, identity, or politics, our divergences can feel staggering. But they’re rarely born of malice. More often, they’re the product of the stories we’ve been told.

Naturally, my thoughts drift to the making of my own identity as a Jew, an American, a staunch Israel supporter, a father, a grandfather, and a musician. This week, I posted something not merely political, but personal, about the bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities and the elimination of its top military establishment. Very quickly, my inbox exploded. Dozens of emails, texts, and messages—some angry, others bewildered.

One person asked, “Are you on FUC*ING crack?”
Another forwarded a quote celebrating the strange political bedfellows now united in opposition to the war: Bernie Sanders and Tucker Carlson. “Wait,” they wrote, “Peter, are you now agreeing with Trump?”
Someone else had written: “Do you think it’s OVER? That Iran won’t retaliate? The U.S. just started a war in the Middle East. People will die—maybe here at home.”
And finally, with sardonic scorn: “Celebrating death, are we?”

And you know what? I agree with some of that. It is possible to hold two truths at once: that it is good Iran’s nuclear ambitions have been hobbled, and that death—the death of any innocent human being—is a tragedy. That preemptive war, though sometimes necessary, is a clear indicator of failed peace-making. And that the pursuit of peace, while noble, is not always possible.

So again, where does that leave us?

Here’s the deeper dilemma. It’s one I’ve been grappling with. How do we begin to relate to others when what they believe seems so completely alien?
What if we start not with judgment, but with curiosity?

It seems to me the first step is this: we must try to understand how people come to their views in the first place. No one is born with hatred or prejudice. We all begin as children—unscripted, untouched. And very soon, our stories are handed to us. They shape the way we see and interpret the world. These stories are not neutral. They give us frameworks, lenses, boundaries. And we need those things. They help us survive. We cannot absorb everything, so we begin with what we’re given.

My own strong Jewish identity, for instance, wasn’t something I reasoned my way into. It grew from impressions, rituals, affections. I remember the sound of Yiddish—spoken by my grandmother, Rose. I loved her. So I loved the language. Even though I never learned it (my parents used it mostly when they didn’t want us to understand), it came to represent warmth and safety.

I remember my mother lighting Shabbat candles. Not every Friday night, but often enough for the memory to lodge itself in me like a song. There was quiet, there was radiance, there was belonging.

I remember Shabbat dinners. Kiddush. Gefilte fish. Challah. Pot roast. These weren’t “religious” moments as they would later become. But they were spiritual ones. There was a feeling of peace and cohesion that drew me in.

I traveled to Israel with my extended family at age eight, exactly a year after the Six-Day War. The warmth I felt there, the sense of connectedness, was literally life changing. I attended Hebrew school in the afternoons. Synagogue on Saturdays. There were maps of Jerusalem. Pictures of the Kotel, the Western Wall. The cadence of ancient prayers. The solemn melodies that are, in some ways, the foundation for every song I’ve ever written. These were early seeds, and they took root. They shaped the way I came to love Jews, Judaism, and Israel—not to the exclusion of others, but through the particularity of love itself.

Because love, as I see it, is never universal, never wholly abstract. It is always particular. It names. It chooses. It distinguishes. When we make music, we don’t press every note at once. We choose certain sounds and not others. In love, too, we bind ourselves to people and places, to customs and convictions—even while allowing room for empathy beyond them. The specificity of love is the basis for our potential to love more broadly.

And so, when I meet someone whose views diverge from mine—sometimes sharply—I am now trying my best to remember that they, too, were shaped. They, too, were given stories. They, too, carry within them impressions of safety and warmth, inherited loyalties and traumas, whispered songs of belonging. These things are not erased by adulthood. In many cases, they only deepen.

Which is why, when engagement is possible, I try to begin not with argument, but with close, attentive listening to their stories. Not to convert, not to convince, but to understand the foundation beneath another’s views. We must not assume others share our lens. We can only assume the opposite. We can only start by acknowledging they have a story at all.

This is not naïve. I am not suggesting we befriend our enemies or pretend away violence. I believe some threats must be confronted, sometimes with lethal force. I believe there are regimes in the world that are irredeemable, movements whose ideologies are genocidal, and political realities that leave no option but the actions we’ve seen over the past weeks.

And I also aspire to believe this: beneath most people’s beliefs—however misguided we may feel they are—there exists a human dimension. A remnant of the child they once were. A serenity in belonging. That is where we meet each other, if we ever meet at all.

And here’s what that might look like.

One of the people I mentioned above—the one who asked me, with an all-caps expletive, if I were on crack—has since become someone I’ve come to understand better. I don’t often respond to comments on my posts, at least not publicly. But it was late, my guard was down, and I wrote this:

Is this a rhetorical question or would you like an answer? Like you, I’m not a one-dimensional cartoon. I’m a real person with multifaceted opinions, just as you are. Let me know if you’re up for a phone call.

His response came sooner than I’d imagined. And it was warmer than I expected:

Thanks for encouraging me to reach out and have dialogue that’s way beyond the tone-deaf confines of social media.

We haven’t spoken yet, but we’ve exchanged a few texts. He’s told me about his health challenges, and about his wife’s health as well. I’ve wished him well and said I look forward to speaking.

As a microcosm of what is possible—for our society and for the world—this, for me at least, feels significant. It wasn’t symbolic. It was real.

And still—sometimes metaphor helps us glimpse what reality might someday resemble.

If we had been traveling in a spaceship for years, out of touch with any human contact besides our own voice, how would we feel upon seeing another person for the first time?
And what if that person had also been adrift in space for years, equally alone, equally unmoored?
What if loneliness and isolation had become your shared story?
And then—what if, as they stepped through the portal, you recognized them as the person you once feared, once mistrusted, maybe even hated?
Wouldn’t your need for connection supersede that now-ancient rift?

I believe that it would. I believe that enough time—and enough silence—would allow the heart to remember its true ache. A love remembered or unrequited. A sense of isolation or a feeling of closeness recalled.

And perhaps, it is in that shared recollection that a new story—a broader, richer story—might one day emerge.

Yes, I agree that this is a sort of Messianic aspiration. But aspiring, reaching upwards and outwards, doesn’t mitigate the inherent truth of our collective humanity.

It only makes it more real.
And more possible.