What Does a Call for Unity Mean?

Calls for unity often sound noble but vague. What does “unity” actually demand from us?

I recently wrote an article that culminated in a call for unity. Rabbi Scott Kahn asked me an important question: What does a call for unity really mean? In most contentious issues, there are genuine disagreements that need to be addressed to achieve unity. So what value is there in simply calling for it?

Problems must indeed be solved and compromises must be made. Yet there is still meaning in a general call for unity. What such a call expresses is that we must elevate peace and unity to a higher value than any other.

That may sound surprising. Is peaceful coexistence really a higher value than justice, charity, or even truth? Modern society doesn’t think so (and certainly doesn’t act that way), but the Torah does.

The Rambam, at the end of Hilchot Chanukah, writes that the entire Torah was given to bring peace into the world. God’s own name is erased to make peace between husband and wife. We are even obligated to alter the truth to make peace, as God Himself did between Avraham and Sarah.

Jewish society today has inadvertently absorbed the modern world’s false hierarchy of values. We have come to believe that shalom is not the highest ideal. This is a serious mistake with painful consequences. It’s precisely what a call for unity seeks to correct.

Of course, things aren’t so simple. Often, a deeply held value — like absolute justice and getting what we deserve — must be sacrificed to attain peace. True unity can only be achieved through compromise, when everyone gets what they need, even if not what they want. That’s difficult.

But precisely because compromise is so hard, we must first recognize its supreme importance. Only when we elevate shalom to its rightful place as our greatest value will we have any hope of achieving genuine unity.