Ep. 175: How to Restore Civil Discourse – A Talmudic Guide
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Both sides of the political spectrum see their opponents as threats to democracy. You know, not just wrong, but really out to get them. We can do things to make less harmful discourse, but do people really want that? Once you've been in a tank together, it doesn't matter that one of you comes from a hilltop settlement and the other one comes from a left-wing kibbutz.

There is something that binds you together far, far more deeply. There's a humanity that needs to come into our conversations even as deeply as we are committed to our political principles.

This episode of Think Twice is sponsored by the Jewish Future Promise, ensuring a vibrant and thriving future for Jews and Israel. Hello, and welcome to Think Twice. This week, we have an interesting conversation for you with former Israeli diplomat and international lawyer Daniel Taub, the author of a new book about discovering the Jewish art of constructive disagreement.

But before we start today's program, I want to remind you, as always, to like this video and podcast, subscribe to JNS, and click on the bell for notifications. Also, you still don't have to wait a full week for more of our content. There is a Jonathan Tobin Daily podcast where I share more news and analysis with you about the most significant issues we're facing today. You can find The Daily Show under Jonathan Tobin Daily on the JNS channel, wherever you get your podcasts.

And now to today's program. In the age of the Internet and politically bifurcated societies and national conflicts, which may not allow for compromise, is constructive disagreement, a concept that is at the heart of traditional Jewish religious study, even possible? I'll confess that I'm far from confident about it.

As some of you may know, I participated in a traveling public program with a politically liberal colleague from 2016 to 2019 in which we debated Jewish issues like the two-state solution and how to think about Donald Trump all over North America. We always ended it with an exhortation from both of us to try to remember that both as Americans and Jews, we still had more in common than the things that divided us.

I believed it at the time and still think it an idea to promote. But after the COVID pandemic, the 2020 and 2024 elections, January 6th, the attempts to jail Trump, and so much else that impels both sides of the political spectrum to view their opponents as threats to democracy, I'm not so sure about it in an American context.

I'm just as skeptical about the ability of Israelis to hold together, even in wartime, after the debate about judicial reform and the one that is going on now about whether it is more important to ransom hostages and therefore empower Hamas, or if the priority should be to defeat the terrorists and ensure that the tragedy of October 7th can never happen again.

similarly what kind of constructive dialogue can there be with people who are indifferent or actually supportive of the efforts to allow the perpetrators of october seventh in hamas to prevail let alone those who are openly advocating for the destruction of the state of israel and the genocide of its people

Still, there are ways to work toward both more honest debates and viewing political discourse as something other than a zero-sum game, and traditional Jewish Talmud study does provide an example of how that might work. One person who has done a great deal of thinking and studying about this question is Daniel Taub, and we're pleased to have him with us today on Think Twice.

Born in Britain, Daniel Taub, Maid al-Ayan became a lawyer and diplomat representing Israel in various peace negotiations with the Palestinians and serving from 2011 to 2015 as the Jewish state's ambassador to the United Kingdom. A professional mediator, he's also written for the Israeli TV and theater, as well as the British stage, and is the author of Parashat Diplomatit, a collection of diplomatic insights on the Bible.

and the newly published, Beyond Dispute, Rediscovering the Jewish Art of Constructive Disagreement. Daniel Taub, welcome to Think Twice. Thank you. Well, thanks for taking the time to join us today. I want to start by asking you what specifically led you to write this book now? What is it about public discourse, whether the give and take of politics or

or on the Internet and social media that impelled you to look to seek a solution to help people get along better and to speak in a way that is more constructive argument?

So thank you, Jonathan. You know, sometimes it amuses me that people say, what gave you the idea of writing a book about difficult conversations? I feel like saying, I come from Israel. Have you ever visited Israel? And, you know, if anybody was in Israel before October the 7th, they will remember that the society was about as divided as it has ever been. We really did have, you know, unfortunately, very toxic debates. At the time, I was...

I was helping prepare a course for universities on issues in Israeli democracy. And I was behind the one-way mirror of a focus group. And I was listening to these young people who were really having a hard time finding common ground on all those terrible issues that divide us until one of the students said, I hate talking to people who disagree with me. And that seemed to be the only thing that people could disagree on.

And actually, as I mentioned in the book, I had an unusual experience. Although most of my life has been as a negotiator, I also volunteer in a community mediation center. And I was mediating a dispute between two Arab residents of East Jerusalem, and it was getting very heated.

And my co-mediator, who was an Arab sheikh, said, "Do you mind if I depart from the mediation protocol?" And he stopped speaking as a mediator. He stopped speaking in Hebrew, started speaking in Arabic as an imam, as a religious leader. And he was channeling a sort of spirit of sulha from the Muslim tradition, and the change in the atmosphere was absolutely remarkable.

And it made me think that actually sometimes those traditions that we think can only divide us may have the potential to bring us together. So I started looking into our Jewish tradition and thinking what tools we may have, you know, in a history of several thousand years of constructive conversation, disagreement. And I was really struck by how many of those tools in the rabbinic approach actually presage

and insights today in social science and conflict resolution. And the reason it struck me was because those approaches to argument that were developed some 2000 years ago were developed as a kind of survival mechanism against the social crisis then that is actually very, very similar to the social crisis Western societies are facing today.

a loss of trust in authority, a loss of trust in information, increased echo chambers and factionalism and so on. And so that's why my hope is that people will find these useful tools, not just for my history, but for our future. Yeah. In your book, I was very struck by the way that you discussed the origins of the Talmud in the aftermath of the destruction of the Temple and what was in a very deeply divided Jewish people.

which is a good reminder of today's Jews that we've been here before in terms of division. But I guess the question that that brought to my mind was can a people now that is divided between secular and religious in a way that they weren't then, as much as they were divided about how to practice their religion or what it constituted,

Can they profit from this analogy or will they even be willing to look to elements of faith for help in bridging differences when they are at odds with faith, or many of them are?

So, first of all, it's a good reminder that actually the Jewish people, if we go back a couple of thousand years, was far more divided, actually. Yeah, and things were actually much worse then than they are now. What? And things were actually much worse then than they are now. There's some small comfort. But actually, I don't think that the approach that I'm suggesting...

is a faith-based approach. I think it's an approach that looks at our tradition of argument without necessarily, I mean, one of the points that I make in the book is that one of the underpinnings of this approach was a radical re-imagining of what the idea of truth was.

And the notion that truth comes down on high with fire bolts is a very biblical approach. But the Talmudic approach is very, very different. And there's a striking rabbinic legend that talks about how God took truth and cast it to the ground and it broke into thousands of pieces, shards. And the goal of people is to actually assemble truth. Each one of them brings their truth together. And I don't think in a sense that

That leaves room for faith, but it doesn't require faith. And it's interesting, I find that these insights, these rabbinic insights, are now being validated and advocated by social scientists who come from the whole breadth of the spectrum, not necessarily just from people of faith.

What is it about traditional Jewish study, and particularly the study of the Talmud, that makes it an answer to what ails life in Israel, as well as throughout the West, which is the main point here, that these habits and these practices really do breed constructive disagreement because it is a tradition that is based on majority-minority opinions and debate about them without either side...

Although they may claim to without either side having the monopoly on truth. So I don't think the Talmud has a monopoly on this approach, but I think it's quite strikingly and refreshingly different from a lot of current approaches to argument. One of the points that I make in the book is that if you go online and look for a book about argument, you'll generally find books that fall into one of two categories. They're either fight or flight.

Either this is the way in which you can win every argument, you can leave your opponent lying in a quivering heap on the floor, or actually if you want to survive in your relationships, this is the way that you can sweep the argument under the carpet and carry on to live another day. And I think what the Talmudic approach says is there is a third way. Argument is an engine for creative exploration of new ideas.

And the trick is to realize that the value is, you know, the truth is not within me and the truth is not within you, but the truth is in the argument. The beautiful phrase that the rabbis used was argument for the sake of heaven. And it's not me that's for the sake of heaven. It's not you that's for the sake of heaven. It's the argument that's for the sake of heaven. It's a joint enterprise. And

And I think we sometimes lose sight of it. And I think it's very important. There's a sobering reminder, if we go back 2,000 years, that this rabbinic tradition was only one of many Jewish approaches at the time. And the other Jewish sects that adopted different approaches, and they were by and large people who thought that they were the sons of lights against the sons of darkness, whether they were the Sadducees or the Essenes, they disappeared into the midst of history.

And it was that small group that had the wisdom to realize that the search for truth is a collaborative enterprise that actually didn't just survive, but created an incredibly creative and energetic corpus.

Yeah. Tell us more about the elements within the Talmud study that do help bridge the gap that you write about, particularly when you're acknowledging the fact that experiences and identity cause us to see our truth as the only one.

with those with whom we disagree, but their same experiences and identity push them in the other way. How does this idea of argument for the sake of heaven transcend that? Because people are used right now, of course, it's all about owning the libs or owning the conservatives or owning whoever it is that you don't like.

rather than persuading them. People aren't interested in persuading their political opponents. They just want to obliterate them. So, I've had a chance to road test some of these ideas in difficult conversations, laboratories with particularly young people from very different backgrounds. And one of the things that's sometimes a little frustrating to them is they come to the first session ready to get into the cut and thrust of an argument, chaining at the bit.

And we start by looking inwards because actually if you want to hope that somebody else is going to change their mind, it's worth taking a moment to think whether you might be able to change yours and what would do that. And one of the things I think that you discover that I think is a little counterintuitive to people is that actually if you want to have an argument, you need to strengthen your own identity. You need to make your own identity more resilient.

If you have an insecurity, if in a sense your identity is dependent on the denial of the other side in some way, that's not going to give you the room for maneuver. So there's a wonderful phrase that the social scientist Adam Grant uses that I think captures this spirit. He calls it confident humility.

You need to come from a place of confidence about your identity, but you need to be humble about your specific positions on a particular issue because they really are a work in progress. And in the book, I bring some examples both from the Talmud and from contemporary life of people who had this extraordinary ability to say, this is what I've thought for many, many years.

But I am prepared to actually go back on that. There's a wonderful rabbi in the Talmud who basically, you know, chucks his life's work. And when his students are appalled at him, he says, in the same way as I received the reward for the elucidation, so I will receive a reward for the renunciation. And I think that kind of confident humility is the secret.

So that's a lesson about looking inwards. I'll say a word about the way that we think about our partners as well, because I think it's also very relevant. I think the attitude that you were describing, which sadly reflects many people's approach to argument today, really views the other side as an adversary and comes close to demonizing them. And I think if you can reframe that thinking to realize that

They are actually a partner. Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Prize winning economic psychologist, talked about his partnerships with people who he disagreed with and the research that they would do together to find out who was right. And he called it adversarial collaboration. And to my mind, that is the best translation of the traditional Talmudic approach of studying through Havrota.

which is that we are going to spark each other. We are going to create a ladder together. And, you know, often we make the terrible mistake of, in arguments, doing what's called straw manning. Straw manning is deliberately picking a weak version of the other side's argument that we know we can easily knock down. But if you think about it, that's really like choosing to practice with a weak sparring partner before a big fight.

And what we should really be doing is steel manning. We should be choosing the strongest possible argument. Again, there's an amazing story in the Talmud of a rabbi who loses his study partner and his students bring him another one who is very brilliant, but agrees with everything that he says.

And he loses his temper. He says, what, you think I don't know that I'm making a good point? Unless you disagree with me, we are not going to increase knowledge in the world. So I think learning to look at our partners in that way, as a disagreement, as a way of building the runs of those ladders is an important part of the approach.

Yeah, I think that's very true. And I'll just share with you, I took part in what I think was kind of an interesting experiment that goes with what you wrote about. From 2016 to 2019, with a liberal political, liberal Jewish journalist who was a longtime colleague and friend, I did what I guess you'd call a debate program that we did literally about 70 times all across North America.

Debating Jewish issues, two-state solution, what do you think about Trump? The range of issues.

And the point of, you know, the conceit of it was, is that we would disagree as we did civilly. We would joke, we would laugh with each other. We would, you know, probe each other's opinions. And then in the end, each of us in our own way would sort of give a conclusion about how, okay, you've listened to us for an hour, an hour and a half. Now let's remember that what unites us is what is far stronger than what disunites us, what divides us.

And everybody liked hearing that. But the truth is, I'm not sure. You know, it's now six years since we stopped doing it.

I'm not sure I could go out and do that because, frankly, Americans and Jews are much more divided than they were even then, and then we thought we were very divided. Of course, the way people reacted to the program was also interesting because sometimes they would tell us, "Well, you guys don't really disagree," and we would say, "What are you talking about? We disagreed about everything."

But what they were reacting to was the tone. They were used to thinking that disagreement involves screaming at each other, calling each other names, or basically trying to kill each other. Civil disagreement wasn't really considered disagreement anymore, which was interesting. But it also... We didn't solve the problem, obviously, but I'm not sure whether...

And I could even get away with trying to do that now in the same places where we spoke a few years ago, just because people are so much more angry at each other. Here in America, and I think in Israel too, both sides of the political spectrum see their opponents as threats to democracy. You know, not just wrong, but really out to get them. And that's very hard to overcome.

Even though what you discuss in your book very eloquently talks about how we can do things to make a less harmful discourse, but do people really want that? So first of all, bless you for doing that when you did it. I think it's an extraordinary model. And I think you and your dialogue partner deserve enormous credit. Let's give credit to him, J.J. Goldberg, former editor of The Forward. Wonderful for having done it.

And I think it's also true, as you note there, that one of the questions that we need to ask ourselves is, are we ready to have this argument at this time? And there can be situations where we... I think it's a very Western notion that having an argument is almost like riding a bicycle. You can just sweep in and do it. And actually, having an argument about something that is really important

close to your heart and close to your identity is a very difficult thing to do. It needs an awful lot of preparation. You need to be ready. The relationship needs to be ready. And I think this assumption that you can just dive into it is something that's misleading and needs to be revisited. But having said that, I think there are a number of things that can make that kind of conversation easier.

And just to give two of the tools, and there are many in the book, but I think that are particularly relevant in that case. So the first is to be open about your sources, to be open about the places that have influenced you. When we go into a conversation, we're not really going in alone. We're going in with an awful lot of data points that have come from different places.

And it's strikingly important the Jewish tradition places on owning up to your influences and your sources. The rabbis actually say that owning up to your sources is one of the ways to bring redemption, which is a sort of very striking statement. But I think that actually going into a conversation and saying, look, here's my views. I believe them, but I want you to know that this is where I'm getting a lot of my data from.

And inviting the other side to do the same is a way of recognizing that each of us is not entirely fully formed. And the second thing, often we have our conversations, our difficult conversations in a single register. And it's almost like trading talking points. And we miss out an awful lot on our humanity when we do that.

And I think a good way to start is to tell the story of what has shaped our thinking about these issues. Before I get into the bottom line policy recommendations, you know, often when I speak abroad, particularly if I speak about Israel, parents will take me aside at the end of a lecture and say, what do I do about my children? I can't speak to them about Israel and so on.

And I have a number of recommendations that I make to them and I make them with some hesitancy because families are complicated and you never know what's going on there and so on. But one of them is to start talking about the stories that have shaped your thinking. And I can imagine a conversation in which a child would get an insight in what it is for a parent to grow up in a house where there is always a packed suitcase under the bed

And a parent might get a little bit of an insight into what it is like to be on a college campus where you have a Lebanese or a Palestinian doormate who is constantly on the phone back home to find out what is happening. And I don't think that would necessarily change your voting pattern or your policy prescriptions, but you might find it enlarge your heart a little bit and pave the way to a different kind of conversation.

Yeah, I think that's very true. And I was struck by the truth of many of your recommendations, particularly those of the importance of telling stories and even humor.

But, you know, so much of humor today, certainly in the United States, is kind of partisan. It's sort of just sort of pointing at the other side and making fun of them. I think that's probably true in Israel to some extent, too, when it's a weapon of partisan disagreement as much as something that unites people. But, of course, the sources are the problems because when you're discussing how people relate to each other about political issues,

We are bifurcated societies. People read, listen, and watch different sets of media. So how can they possibly? We're not all reading the same text of Gomorrah and trying to figure out. We're reading completely different things and then coming at it with the completely different frames of reference, which makes constructive disagreement rather than just

warfare much harder even within societies. So I think it's hard for that reason, but I think it's hard for other reasons too. I think there are certain types of muscle that we haven't exercised in a long time. I mean, it's interesting. If you speak to a young kid who is studying Talmud and ask him to summarize what he has learned, he will do something that will come natural to him, but is very strange to people in the West.

He will recite what in Aramaic is called the shakla v'taria, the to and fro of the argument. He will tell you what one side said, then the other side said, and he will capture all of the different points that are made in the argument. You know, we are so focused in our argument on who got the slam dunk or who got the bottom line that so much of that argument gets left by the wayside.

And simply, Daniel Kahneman, who I mentioned earlier, he used to advise business leaders, you should keep a decision journal. Because when you discuss an issue, maybe the points that are made will be relevant for tomorrow or for a different day. So I think that's a kind of muscle that we've lost sight of that we actually need to exercise. The other thing is when we're talking about those difficult conversations, I think that in the first instance,

We shouldn't be focusing on trying to change anybody's opinion, but we should be starting off just to make sure that we actually have a decent understanding of what their opinion is. Because sometimes we're off the mark. Sometimes we're invited onto campuses where there are groups that can't speak to each other, and sometimes the atmosphere is so toxic that you can't do anything. But other times, actually, there is the potential for dialogue, and so a very simple exercise

is to ask both sides of an issue to write down on one side of a piece of paper what they think the other side's position is, and just say, "Correct it for me. I'm not trying to change your mind. I just want to be in a position. I will be a more faithful advocate for my own side if I understand your side a little better." And I think there are many ways in which we do have to realize that often people, as you say, aren't interested.

in a genuine conversation. There are all sorts of political performance art that requires something that looks like a debate, but keeping those small bubbles of oxygen where you actually can have a learning conversation, which by the way is exhilarating. It's like flying without a net. It's like trial lawyers are usually advised, don't ever ask a question that you don't know the answer to.

But my advice in a learning conversation is to do precisely the opposite. Those are the questions that you really want to... I mean, I quote in the book an account of an arms treaty negotiation between the Soviets and the Americans that were going nowhere. And at one point, the American negotiator said to the Soviet negotiator, you know, why aren't you showing any flexibility in relation to the things that I'm asking?

And he said, the answer he got was, because you're asking me questions that I already have answers to. Why don't you ask me questions that I don't have answers to? And that's really where the gold lies. That's the part of the conversation where we can make progress. That's very true. At the heart of the Jewish people is a promise that ensures our traditions, values, and future endure for generations. The Jewish Future Promise is a movement I endorse.

It is a moral commitment to securing that future. By signing the promise, we commit to keeping Jewish life vibrant and thriving for the next generation. Join me in shaping the future. Make your promise today. Sign the promise. JewishFuturePromise.org slash sign the promise.

We have to ask ourselves, can the concept of an argument for the sake of heaven, which would cause us to care less about winning arguments than in, as is the case in the study of sacred texts, you win as you write, even if the other point of view prevails, since then you learn something and are in possession of the truth. But

The question arises in an era where you can comment about anyone and anything from the safety of your home computer or your phone anonymously, or just because you're one of five and a half billion in the world with internet access that people can feel. They could say anything with impunity. That changes the dynamic though, doesn't it? I think social media creates new challenges, but I think it's

It's too easy to lay the blame at the door of social media. And we should remember that social media creates extraordinary opportunities for those of us who really do want to broaden our horizons, who actually do want to enlarge our thinking.

If I want to test my thinking, if I want to find somebody intelligent who disagrees with me and can actually challenge my thinking, it is so much easier today than it would have been in the past. You know, particularly if I'm growing up in a like-minded community. I think, you know, at the better end, social media is an extraordinary potential. I think, however, it does hide a few things. First of all, it hides the fact that having a

a serious conversation is a difficult and time-consuming enterprise.

It can't be done in an instant, which is what social media tends to promise us. Or 280 characters. Or 280 characters. Although I do bring one quote in the book by somebody who interestingly says that he finds Twitter a very good way of arguing because it actually does keep the Chakravartta. You can actually see the to and fro in a way that maybe you would lose sight of it. But yes, I think it doesn't allow us or it doesn't encourage us to approach issues with the

the complexity that they require. One of the things that I give some thought to in the book and I continue to think about is whether we can teach this kind of approach to youngsters, whether we can actually, you know, to what extent these are skills that we should be, you know, trying to develop. And I think many of them are. But one of the things that I think we tend to underestimate youngsters in their ability is their ability to embrace complexity.

I don't think we need to dumb things down. You know, I bring the story in the book of an interesting guy who was in an American prison. He came from a Christian background and he'd grown up in a black community. He was arrested for drug dealing. And the thing that changed his life around was seeing a Jewish cellmate's copy of the Bible because it was different to any copy of the Bible he had grown up in.

His copy of the Bible was the single text of the Bible, and either you believed it or you didn't. And he could not get his mind around the fact that here in the traditional Jewish Bible, you had the Hebrew text or the text of the Hebrew Bible in the middle, and around it were all these generations of commentators who were basically yelling at each other with disagreement, and all of this was the holy text.

And I think, you know, kids, you know, grow up, five-year-old kids go to Hebrew school and they'll read a sentence in the Bible that says, Noah was a righteous man in his generation.

And they will read one commentator saying, oh, that means he was very righteous because it was an evil generation and he was righteous even then. And the other commentator will say, no, in a different generation, he wouldn't have been considered so righteous, but compared to the other. And they will be taught at an early age to embrace those opposites. And I think there's

There's something that broadens the mind and the heart and prepares it for a different kind of argument. And we need to be trying to nurture that. Yeah. Teaching critical thinking.

You know, with critical reading, being able to understand disagreement is elemental to actually a functioning democracy. We just don't teach it very much. You write in the book about the importance of being open to different points of view, something that, as we said, social media allows people to insulate themselves from, although they can also embrace it.

But which in addition to the bifurcated media landscape is why so many people today are so deeply uncomfortable with disagreement. But what limits are there to this idea? Where do you draw the line when it comes to disagreement? There are some things about which we can't agree to disagree about. We could think of a few in terms of ideas about Israel, but where do you see this? Where do you draw your lines?

That's obviously a critical question at the moment, particularly in an era of canceling and so on. What is legitimate canceling? What falls outside the realm of legitimacy? And I actually find the rabbinic insight actually very helpful here. So the thrust of the rabbinic tradition is to be open, to call in rather than to call out.

And the Talmud is full of extraordinary stories. Some of them almost look like they came out of Monty Python, where rabbis are proven that things that they thought were ridiculous actually can be correct. There's one story in which a student comes to a rabbi and said, if somebody has two heads,

which of those two heads he should put is to fill in his phylactery son. And the rabbi is literally just about to excommunicate this person, to throw him out when somebody walks in and says, ah, my wife's just had a baby with two heads. Do I need to do one ceremony for redeeming the firstborn or two? And it's a ridiculous, funny story. But the point is, obviously, there are more things in heaven and earth than I dreamt of in your philosophy.

But the fact that you are broad doesn't mean you need to be, as it was an American academic who said, you don't be so broad-minded that your brains fall out. And, you know, the rabbis used to say that there are 70 faces to the Torah to truth, but that doesn't mean that there isn't a 71st face that falls beyond that realm of legitimacy. And the thing that I find interesting in the Talmudic approach is that there are rare instances in which people are ruled out of the debate.

But almost always, it is not because of what they say. It's not because of the content of their opinion, but it's because they don't buy into the process. It's because they undermine the entire principles through which we can actually have an argument. So if I were to try and translate that into modern terms, it suggests to me that you should probably be open to hearing even things that seem to you outrageous,

in relation to vaccines or in relation to climate change. But if you come across somebody who says there is no kind of evidence that you could bring that would make me change my mind, then that is somebody who is beyond the realm of productive debate and you could use your energies much more effectively elsewhere. Yeah. I think that's the point. I think you made that point in the book. I want to drill down a little deeper on this idea about accepting disagreement.

I think we're living in an era, certainly in the United States, though it's different in every country and certainly in Israel where society is very secular. Politics now, and certainly in the United States, plays the role that religion used to play in most people's lives in the past.

One of my favorite statistics that explains what's going on are the tracking polls about attitudes towards intermarriage that show Americans are far more likely to be accepting of interfaith marriage and even interracial marriage than they were in the past, but far less accepting of the idea that they or their children would marry someone of a different political party, which is almost the exact reverse of prevailing attitudes in the 1950s when they first started taking these polls.

In such a culture, disagreement becomes tribal, resembling more national conflicts, such as those in Ireland, which you reference in your book, and the Middle East, than your political ones. In those circumstances, the habits for constructive disagreement, such as those acquired in studying the Talmud, don't work quite as well, do they?

So first of all, I'm wary about making comments on American politics at the moment. I watch it from afar with concern about these developments, of course. My personal experience is much closer to the Israeli context, where we also have a very, very divided society. And yet I can see some developments actually at the moment that give me a small amount of hope. And

And I don't wish for any other society in the world to go through a period like the period that Israel has been through. But if I was to point to a number of things, first of all, we have an extraordinary, extraordinary younger generation. And you see people who have spent time together in the front coming back to Israeli society, and they simply cannot understand the tribal nature of the differences that divide the society. Because once you've been in a tank together,

It doesn't matter that one of you comes from a hilltop settlement and the other one comes from a left-wing kibbutz. There is something that binds you together far, far more deeply. And even amongst people who haven't come back from the front, I see something else that is present, perhaps not as much as it needs to be, which is that people who engage on these issues, and we have such painful, acute issues that we have to grapple with at the moment,

But with people who they don't know, often pause just for a moment because they're aware that there may well be a story on the other side that they're not aware of. Maybe this person I'm speaking to has a family member who is a hostage in Gaza or who has a family member who is a young soldier who has fallen. And I think in that brief moment of pause, there is something very, very important happening that says that, you know, there is a...

There's a humanity that needs to come into our conversations, even as deeply as we are committed to our political principles. Yeah.

Well, your work centers on the concept of constructive disagreement, and it's not a how-to book or suggestions for compromise on specific issues. But now that I have you here, having read it, I have a couple of specific questions. And the first is about the political conflict in Israel, which is a context sport even in the best of times.

How do we bridge the gap between those who see, for example, the government's judicial reform proposals as anti-democratic and attempt to impose an authoritarian model? Well, supporters say it is democratic, and that it's the opponents that are the ones that were seeking to thwart the will of the electorate. It's all well and good to tell people to listen to each other and to try to understand another point of view, or even pause and ask questions about how they came to it.

in principle, but when both sides think their opponents are gaslighting them. And the same applies to American debates about who is the threat to democracy, which is a constant refrain from both sides right now. The argument is about something else. Where does the path to constructive disagreement come then?

So first of all, I should clarify, and obviously I hope people will be interested in reading the book, but I wouldn't like anybody to buy the book because they think it's going to offer a solution to the political issues that are dividing society. And I have views on those. I think it might be confusing for me to bring them into this conversation because it's a different kind of conversation. But I think what I can say is, I think I can maybe say a couple of things.

So first of all, I almost feel that what we need to do in Israel is not so much build a bridge between the two sides, but almost build a bridge between this extraordinary younger generation and positions of authority. The more I spend time, and I have youngsters who have spent a lot of time in the army and so on, but they and their friends, and they come back and they're committed to social change and social improvement.

And I'm just trying to think, how do we get these people into the driving seat? Actually, the more I spend time with them, I'm very optimistic for the future of Israel, even though the path between where they are and where the positions of authority are at the moment sometimes look a little bit murky. So I think that's one thing. I think we are locked into a number of structures.

that make that kind of dialogue very difficult. I think our coalition politics make it very difficult. I think the specific interests that certain groups have and that need to deliver onto their constituencies make it very difficult. And again, maybe on another occasion, we can have a conversation about that.

But what I would do is I would say that to me that highlights the importance of trying to identify places where we can have a different kind of conversation. And there are a number of things that that different kind of conversation will make it more likely to succeed.

And the first one is to have it offline. You know, to have those conversations publicly when your constituency is watching you and sort of checking off, you know, sort of the tribal to-do list or to-say list is going to make it very difficult. And the difference between conversations that I've had with negotiating partners when it's been for the record and those late night conversations that you've been able to have when you know that

you're not going to be held accountable and you can actually explore areas that maybe you wouldn't have thought about differently. I think we need to cherish those spaces and we need to try and find a way of nurturing more of them. Yeah, that's very well said.

Now, the other question that kept popping into my mind as I read your book concerned your own diplomatic record and your history of working on diplomacy for Israel. You write of times when establishing some connection with your counterpart, whether it was Palestinian or Syrian and

Some when that wasn't possible, though you usually avoid details about the exchanges as this isn't a diplomatic memoir. You do cite Lee Blessing's play A Walk in the Woods as an example of establishing such connections. J.T. Rogers' play Oslo, which you don't cite, is another example. As you look back on your own diplomatic efforts in which you participated,

Do you believe that the other side genuinely wanted peace, or at least a version of peace that wasn't mutually exclusive to an Israeli idea of peace? Or was it, in retrospect, an impossible task? Was your son, whom you cite in the book, and you say that you've told this story before, when you said you were off to try to make peace, and he reacted by saying, you know, seriously? I mean, you know, was he right? You know, I think, you know, as much as

efforts for peace are always laudable, was in the end, you know, was it as futile as he seemed to think it was? So first of all, I think we need to recognize that in the same way that genuine conversations are rare, genuine negotiations are also rare.

A lot more time is spent in the negotiating room than is actually spent in real negotiations. Sometimes what people are interested in, what leaders are interested in, is more of the process than of the peace. To say that they did it. Or to say that they're doing it or to enable other things to be happening at the same time. There's a wonderful saying amongst diplomats, which is, you can change my opinion, but you can't change my instructions. And so the room for maneuver.

But, and, you know, we so insist that we are not monolithic. It would be a mistake for us to try and assume that the other side of the table is monolithic. Clearly, clearly they're not. But I have had moments, and I do talk about them in the book, where I realized that the gaps were maybe not as large as we like to think. I mean, one of the points I make less in terms of the negotiations was when I used to be a spokesperson for the government,

If I had a moment before the interview, I would think of two people, you know, have them in my mind as I was being interviewed. One of whom was a friend who had lost a daughter in a terrorist attack, and the other was a Palestinian counterpart in the negotiations. And the question I would ask myself is, can I conduct this interview in a way that is not a betrayal of either of those people? And the thing that surprised me, it was less difficult than you would imagine.

And I draw some hope from that, that actually, you know, the notion, again, the notion of where the peace is possible, you know, is a very hard one. But if you ask yourself the question, is there a way in which we can improve the lives of people on both sides, the security of people on both sides, the prosperity of people on both sides, then I think there's probably much more grounds for agreement there.

Well, that's definitely true. I want to close by asking you, both as an author and as a mediator, as you say, to give our audience some practical advice about the difficult conversations they might have, especially nowadays about Israel and the war in Gaza, which is on everybody's mind. So I'll give maybe two pieces of advice. The first one I quote in the book, a wonderful Israeli conflict resolution expert called Adar Cohen.

and he talks about the difficult conversations you have with people who are close to you. He suggests starting with what he calls the GEM statement, which is a reminder of the importance of the relationship, a reminder of the things that bind you. If you are having a conversation with somebody who's close to you, begin by actually explicitly recognizing the importance of that relationship and putting it front and center. Then the second thing which I have to say is not easy,

but it would be thinking about what a learning conversation would look like. If we were to try and map out sources of information, sources of insight that could actually serve both of us, who would be the five people that we would most like to hear from, that could actually broaden and deepen our understanding? If it's a discussion about the Middle East, if we were to be planning a joint trip,

you know, who would we want to visit?

The honest truth is with everything that we're saying about social media and all of the challenges is it makes those kinds of learning conversations to people who are minded to do them much more accessible. To try and say, our goal is not to win at the moment. Our goal is each of us is on a journey. If we can go on part of that journey together and broaden our minds together and broaden our hearts together, then that has to be a step in the right direction.

Well, I think that's true. Thanks, Daniel Taub, for joining us today and for your insights. I want to recommend Beyond Dispute to our audience. It's a very eloquent and insightful book, and I think an important contribution to public discourse, especially in these times.

We also want to thank our audience. Please remember to tune in every day for Jonathan Tobin Daily Edition. Whether you are listening to us on any of the various podcast platforms or watching us live on Facebook or X or on the JNS YouTube channel, please like and or subscribe to JNS. Click on the bell for notifications and give us good reviews. Please write to us at thinktwice at jns.org and let us know where you listen or watch the show and what you think about it.

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