The past couple weeks have a lot to teach us about piece. Or was it peas? Or maybe peace? Man, this is why I failed 3rd grade spelling.
Today, we’re going to talk about how to make piece.
See, there are two types of people in the world who never get into interpersonal conflict: 1. People who happen to be in quarantine alone by themselves and 2. Me, because I’m above flaws. At least, that’s what the guy in the mirror tells me. But everyone else out there will at some point be in conflict with other human beings. It’s not always someone’s fault. It’s just the natural result of living in a world with many people who have different wants and needs. Those wants will sometimes come into conflict.
Violence… like my toddler hitting me with his toy.
OK, but how do we stop the violence? And I don’t just mean my toddler crawling on top of me yesterday and hitting me with his toy. Sometimes there is real violence in the streets. Or, even more frequently, there is verbal violence on social media. How can we deescalate such situations?
The bad news is, I don’t have some magical panacea that will solve conflict of every form, because every situation is unique and requires subtle differences of approach and application. The good news is, the Torah portion this week happens to deal with solving one of the most common and damaging of conflicts. A conflict between husband and wife.
Today, we’re going to talk about how to make peas.
The Torah deals with a case that gets particularly bad and the wife is suspected of cheating on her husband. Without getting into all the technical details, the solution involves God having His own Name destroyed in order to bring clarity to the situation and hopefully bring the husband and wife back together.
It’s novel because there is generally a prohibition of destroying Torah, and we are extra stringent about anything with God’s name on it. What’s more holy than the Name of the Creator of the Universe after all? Yet, God gives up His own honor, and lets His Name be denigrated, for one purpose: to bring peace into a home.
Today, we’re going to talk about how to make peace.
One of the reasons that conflicts continue and get more heated is that we assume that we are holier than thou, while the other guy is evil incarnate. We spot every mistake he makes and every flaw in his argument, but can’t imagine that anything we do is less than perfect.
If God Himself (who actually is perfect) is willing to humble Himself and let His Name be defaced for the sake of peace, maybe we too should be humble enough to hear the other side out. Maybe we should admit the possibility that the other side also makes some valid points. Maybe we should be willing to concede some ground so that we can actually resolve issues instead of escalating back and forth until everyone gets hurt.
Making peace often means letting go of your ego.
I would love to witness Rabbi A humble himself and admit he may be wrong to his beautiful wife Danielle.
The hardest part in every argument is the ability to really listen to the other person, acknowledge you really hear them and then actually take action on what you heard. ?