Visiting with Danny Gordis at the Shalem Center, I learned of how his former friendships with moderate Palestinians had disintegrated time and again. Loss had displaced hope. “When we made Aliyah 9 years ago, we were going to be different. We were going to forge bonds and build friendships with our Arab neighbors. We were going to truly commit to listening, to learning of their plight, to sharing in their dreams. Yet, in the past couple of years, we have witnessed one friendship after another end. How does a friendship fail? When I would ask a question like: My family moved to Israel because we deeply believe in existence of a national homeland for our people, can you appreciate that this matters to us? Implicit in my question is a commitment to Israel’s continued existence. Yet, simply posing such a question to a friend in whose home we had share so much over the years was greeted with cold silence, no reply whatsoever, making her a former friend.”
Our Pesah seder, the telling of our people’s founding story, champions questions. Four children are characterized entirely by their questions. In the very word “question” we find the word “quest”, suggesting a journey to unchartered vistas of meaning and learning. Where questions yield dead ends is the “homeland of tragedy, exile, and estrangement.”
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