This week's Peace Essay comes from Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, formerly of AFSC's San Fransisco office, who recently helped found the Community of Living Traditions at Stony Point. AFSC will miss Lynn, but we wish her success with her new project.
Peace Talk
Language helps creates peace. The concept shomer lashon/guarding one's tongue against hurtful communication is central to Jewish nonviolent communication and peacemaking. Our sages consider the following questions: What can we say about each other? What is considered hurtful language? When talking through contested issues, how do we engage each other in ways that leads to cooperation and concrete action? How do we use language to bless and heal wounded relationships? We are also obligated, as peacemakers, to purify community narratives by removing the strands of racism, sexism, triumphalism and other forms of violence woven within the human story.
Educational methodology associated with Torah study values multiple points of view and the dialogic process as 'words of the living God.' Creative tension in multiplicity is divine. As a rabbi committed to nonviolence, I pray that work for a peaceful and just holy land using language that humanizes the faces of all involved while struggling to end the Israeli occupation of Palestinian life with clarity, courage and direct action. We are obligated to speak the truth about violence while working for restorative justice. It is not an easy road.
L'Shalom,
Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb
Co-founder of the Community of Living Traditions at Stony Point
All peace essays on this blog are the work and opinion of their authors, even those written by AFSC staff. The authors (including staff) are free to disagree with AFSC's positions; these essays should not be seen as statements by AFSC. We share them in the hope of sparking conversation about the true meanings of peace.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment