While colleagues posted their sermons
about the political dangers we're in, about the re-appearance of
Charlottesville-level racism/anti-semitism, or about kneeling NFL
players and Black Lives Matter, the rabbi where I go gave us a sermon
on civility.
He didn't use that word. He talked about how the fabric of our
political culture has been torn, and how we have to put it together,
not just by sewing it, but by reweaving it, His example was a member
of the congregation who was a Hillary supporter living next door to a
Trump supporter, but even though they disagreed about politics they
had each other's garage-door codes and this one gave a eulogy at the
funeral of the other one. This was held up as a model of how we
should behave, and the rabbi suggested a series of coffees with him
that we should attend with someone with whom we disagree
politically.
Where to start? The example given is of
two middle-aged, middle-class white guys who live next to each other
in privileged Johnson County. This isn't a very wide sample, to say
the least. The framing posits politics as rather a hobby, or an
identity marker, and not really that important in the scheme of
things – or, not as important as neighborliness.
But for some people, politics really
matters. Let's take the examples that I used before: Trump really is
tearing the country apart, and there really are people who either
don't care about that or are okay with it as long as their team is
winning. There really are black people getting killed by police
almost every day. There really is a resurgence of the hard right in
this country. These things will not
be addressed by coffee shop tete a tetes. What they will be addressed
by is people organizing to oppose them. But even the idea that they
should be opposed is not found in this framework.
I personally don't think the problem is
civility. Or maybe it is, but in the other direction – the need for
(white) people to get along with each other has meant that the
political window has been moved farther and farther right with hardly
a fight – lest we be accused of incivility – with all the
problems that this has caused, including the horrible mess we're in
now.
I am not suggesting that we would be
better off if the two Johnson County men were at each other's
throats. Everybody has to decide in each situation how much politics
to inject into each relationship. But I think of many churches or
small towns I've visited where people don't speak up for justice for
fear of rocking the boat. That's how injustice continues – or gets
worse. To suggest that this is a model for the re-weaving of the
social fabric is, I think, both false and ill-advised.
The world is burning – in some cases,
quite literally. I would hope that that, rather than manners, would be
worth discussing on Rosh Hashanah morning.
