Rab­bi Marc Katz and Daniel Taub delved into how Jew­ish tra­di­tion invites argu­ment, explo­ration, and cre­ativ­i­ty in con­flict. Rab­bi Katz’s recent book, Yochanan’s Gam­ble: Judais­m’s Prag­mat­ic Approach to Life, offers an insight­ful look at how Jew­ish text can inform our con­tem­po­rary lives. Daniel Taub’s Beyond Dis­pute: Redis­cov­er­ing the Jew­ish Art of Con­struc­tive Dis­agree­ment encour­ages read­ers to look beyond the obvi­ous ques­tions and to engage deeply across any divide. These two authors invite read­ers to look to Judaism for guid­ance on how to effec­tive­ly communicate.

Marc Katz: Let’s start with why we each wrote our respec­tive books. I began Yochanan’s Gam­ble: Judaism’s Prag­mat­ic Approach to Life with a line that we live in an age of stri­den­cy and that we need a dif­fer­ent way to engage with oth­ers. So, I went min­ing our tra­di­tion — specif­i­cal­ly the ancient rab­bis of the Tal­mud — to try to fig­ure out ways that we can deal with our age of stri­den­cy. I’m curi­ous if that term speaks to you at all?

Daniel Taub: Very much so. I was struck by the same stri­dent tox­i­c­i­ty that you’re talk­ing about in the Israeli con­text. We some­times for­get that on Octo­ber the 6th, before the tragedy of Octo­ber the 7th, Israel was prob­a­bly the most divid­ed that it has been in its short his­to­ry. But dur­ing that peri­od I got a glim­mer of hope from my work as a vol­un­teer medi­a­tor when in the course of a medi­a­tion between two Arab res­i­dents of East Jerusalem my come­di­a­tor, who is a won­der­ful Arab sheikh, actu­al­ly depart­ed from the nego­ti­at­ing pro­to­col and start­ed speak­ing not as a medi­a­tor but as an imam. It made me won­der, what tools do we have in our tra­di­tion? Exact­ly the same ques­tion that you’re ask­ing. What are the tools that we have in our tra­di­tion that might help us?

MK: It’s fun­ny, my book was orig­i­nal­ly sup­posed to be a book on Judaism and integri­ty, but as I start­ed research­ing I found there was a kind of slip­per­i­ness to Jew­ish law, and that slip­per­i­ness was­n’t a bug but was actu­al­ly a fea­ture. It didn’t make for a book on integri­ty but was about some­thing else, just as impor­tant. The ancient rab­bis had an amaz­ing abil­i­ty to com­pro­mise, to let oppos­ing forces meet one anoth­er and to under­stand that they each have some­thing to offer. They wel­comed dis­putes — pro­vid­ed they were done with respect — and they played around with the def­i­n­i­tions of truth and under­stand­ing that many peo­ple have access to it. I know you also talked about the chal­lenge of find­ing truth and the impor­tance of redefin­ing it in this age. That was your start­ing point for why dis­agree­ments didn’t need to feel scary, right?

DT: What we see in rab­binic Judaism is a move from a ver­ti­cal dynam­ic to a hor­i­zon­tal dynam­ic. After the destruc­tion of the tem­ple, and the end of the prophet­ic peri­od, the rab­bis’ mes­sage was: we are not going to be the recip­i­ents of a truth from on high so we have to find a way of get­ting clos­er to it col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly. There’s an extra­or­di­nary rab­binic leg­end that describes God when he cre­ates mankind. As it goes, he throws truth down from the heav­ens and it breaks into a mil­lion shards in the ground. And when every­body in heav­en is dis­mayed ask­ing what will become of truth God says, ​“Truth will rise up from the ground.” And that’s a mod­el of a very dif­fer­ent sort of truth.

And that, by the way, is why I think I think your book is actu­al­ly about integri­ty at the end of the day. When you real­ize that the search for truth is a col­lab­o­ra­tive exer­cise then you real­ize that you need to work on your­self so that you can serve as a chan­nel through which the truth can come.

MK: I com­plete­ly agree. In one sec­tion of my book I explore whether or not a judge is allowed to accept a set­tle­ment in a court case. The rea­son the top­ic is inter­est­ing is because most of us define truth as, ​“If we had an audi­ence with God, what would God tell us the answer would be?” The goal of a judge is basi­cal­ly to get as close to God’s truth as pos­si­ble, to hear the defense and to hear the pros­e­cu­tion and to fig­ure out what God would say the answer should be.

But what is a set­tle­ment? A set­tle­ment is all the oth­er stuff that comes into play. It’s not about get­ting the pure truth. It’s about stop­ping fights. It’s about sav­ing the plain­tiff and the defen­dant mon­ey. It’s about not clog­ging the court with need­less cas­es. What we actu­al­ly find is that for the rab­bis, their con­cep­tion of truth is so much broad­er than ours.

But let’s switch gears. I love the fact that you are so per­son­al in this book, talk­ing about fights that you’ve had, com­pro­mis­es that you’ve made, and dia­logues you’ve engaged in as a diplo­mat through­out time. I’m won­der­ing, can you say a few words about the process of incor­po­rat­ing your own per­son­al life into the book?

DT: One expe­ri­ence that I talk about in the book is a trip that I took to see the results of the peace process in North­ern Ire­land with a Pales­tin­ian coun­ter­part who was active in the peace nego­ti­a­tions. Strange­ly, the thing that was most inspir­ing to us was to see how hard it was to keep the peace alive. It was inspir­ing because it made peace seem real. It was­n’t a utopi­an sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny on the White House lawn; it was basi­cal­ly trad­ing in one set of prob­lems for a dif­fer­ent set of prob­lems. But they’re just a bet­ter set of problems. 

The Jew­ish tra­di­tion is a tra­di­tion that is very much root­ed in the messi­ness of the real world. You know the famous sto­ry of Rav Shi­mon Bar Yochai, who spent twelve years in a cave, basi­cal­ly at the top of an ivory tow­er. But when he emerges, he actu­al­ly has to go back in and study more. Because the high­est lev­el is not being at the top of the ivory tow­er. The high­est lev­el is find­ing a way to con­nect what you found in there with the world at large. I think you in your book do a remark­able job of bring­ing togeth­er all of these rab­binic tools for mod­er­at­ing pris­tine truth with the needs of moral­i­ty. See­ing them togeth­er in one place, they real­ly do look like a worldview

MK: I loved the sto­ry you brought into your book about Yochanan and Resh Lak­ish. The two are study part­ners and after Resh Lak­ish dies the rab­bis bring Eliez­er ben Padat, a young hot­shot to study with Yochanan. Quick­ly Yochanan throws up his arms and says ​“I can’t deal with this guy because he only agrees with me. How can I learn if I don’t have some­one push­ing me?” I thought you did a great job in your book talk­ing about the pow­er of disagreement.

DT: Yes, you don’t want to choose a weak spar­ring part­ner before a big fight. One of the most impor­tant lessons that comes from the Jew­ish tra­di­tion is that we have to get out of our com­fort zones. Accord­ing to the rab­binic tra­di­tion, the places with the beau­ti­ful trees and the whis­per­ing brooks are not the places where the real learn­ing is going to take place. The real learn­ing is going to take place in the rau­cous shout­ing of the study hall or oth­er places where minds clash.

MK: Exact­ly, this brings to mind the flint metaphor: when two flints strike each oth­er, both get sharp­er. But the chal­lenge that I often strug­gle with is when dis­putes are healthy ver­sus when dis­putes are destruc­tive. Most of the time, I think dis­putes are healthy with the right guardrails. But I don’t always know what the right guardrails are.

DT: That’s a very con­tem­po­rary chal­lenge, par­tic­u­lar­ly in an era where there are so many attempts to can­cel cer­tain voic­es. I find the Talmud’s approach very help­ful in this regard. The rab­bis say that there are sev­en­ty faces to the Torah, mean­ing there’s a mul­ti­plic­i­ty of legit­i­mate inter­pre­ta­tions, and that’s clear­ly the default posi­tion. But that does­n’t rule out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of there being a sev­en­ty-first face which falls out­side the realm of legit­i­ma­cy. When I look through the Tal­mud, there are rare instances when peo­ple are ruled out of the debate, or thrown out of the house of study. But it’s almost nev­er because of the posi­tion they held, and almost always because they did­n’t accept the rules of the game. In our day, that might be when some­one says ​“there’s noth­ing you could say that could change my mind.” That’s when it’s prob­a­bly not worth spend­ing time debat­ing with them. 

MK: It’s rare that I get a chance to talk to some­body who’s done the kind of diplo­mat­ic work that you’ve done. Tell me about open dia­logue in your own diplo­mat­ic work.

DT: With­in diplo­ma­cy, one of the guid­ing prin­ci­ples is that the oth­er side’s prob­lems are your prob­lems. They may even be your solu­tion. That means, lis­ten­ing to the oth­er side’s real dilem­mas, their pain points, is not just good man­ners. Hid­den in those dis­cus­sions are the keys to open­ing up those parts of the oth­er party’s heart. I once read a descrip­tion of the arms talks between Sovi­et and Amer­i­can arms nego­tia­tors. They weren’t going any­where and at one point one of the Amer­i­can nego­tia­tors said to the Russ­ian nego­tia­tor, ​“Why are you always say­ing no to every­thing that I offer?” And the Russ­ian nego­tia­tor replied, ​“Your trou­ble is that you’re always ask­ing me ques­tions that I have answers to. Try ask­ing me ques­tions that I don’t have answers to.” 

MK: I had a pro­fes­sor who said that part of our prob­lem is that we have the same con­ver­sa­tions over and over and they are rit­u­al­ized. Con­ver­sa­tion 17b is, let’s say, ​“Why do bad things hap­pen to good peo­ple” or ​“When does life begin.” Name any hard ques­tion, either social­ly or reli­gious­ly, and I could tell you what a per­son will say who is sit­ting across from me. I’m going to say this. They’re going to say that. I’m going to respond with this. They’re going to respond with that. I could script the con­ver­sa­tion and then we walk away, not hav­ing said any­thing new. And his chal­lenge to us is that you have to fig­ure out a way to ask a ques­tion that isn’t part of a script already, because oth­er­wise, you’ll just stand in your cor­ners and get nowhere new.

DT: Court lawyers are taught that in cross-exam­i­na­tion you should nev­er ask a ques­tion that you don’t know the answer to. But I think that those are pre­cise­ly the ques­tions that you do want to ask. You do need to have a fair amount of courage. It’s almost like argu­ing with­out a safe­ty net. You don’t know where it’s going to take you. But that’s where the real val­ue is going to happen.

MK: I total­ly hear that. One of the things that I’ve observed about rab­binic lit­er­a­ture is that the rab­bis have a degree of play. They take an issue and they look at it from lots of dif­fer­ent angles. Some­times they try to be fun­ny. And that’s where cre­ativ­i­ty lies. If they had to be so seri­ous there would be no chance that they would find new avenues. But the play of rab­binic lit­er­a­ture, I actu­al­ly think, is where a lot of its fer­til­i­ty is found. 

One final ques­tion. When I think about my book, the thing I want peo­ple to take away from it is an under­stand­ing that we can be incred­i­bly cre­ative and, at the same time, incred­i­bly prag­mat­ic. If you look at the Rab­bis you find that they are stu­dents of the world around them. They under­stand pol­i­tics. They under­stand the peo­ple they lead. They under­stand the tra­di­tion they come from. They under­stand the social influ­ences around them. And all of that comes togeth­er into a broad­er con­ver­sa­tion about what to do for them­selves, and for God. My hope is that peo­ple walk away see­ing this and know­ing that they are allowed to dwell in the messy mid­dle. If you had to char­ac­ter­ize what you want peo­ple to walk away from your book feel­ing or think­ing, what would it be?

DT: So first of all, I just want to say, I think you have done an extra­or­di­nary job in achiev­ing your goal there. I think my focus is nar­row­er, specif­i­cal­ly on ways in which we can have bet­ter argu­ments. And as I say in the intro­duc­tion, I think that if you go online and look for books about argu­ing they tend to fall into one of two schools. Either: argu­ments are ter­ri­ble and here’s how you’ll avoid ever hav­ing an argu­ment. Or: an argu­ment is an oppor­tu­ni­ty for you to win hands down and leave your oppo­nent lying in a quiv­er­ing heap on the floor. I think we are heirs to a tra­di­tion that says that there’s a third way, a bet­ter way. That we should aspire to what the rab­bis called an ​“Argu­ment for the sake of heav­en.” What’s beau­ti­ful about the phrase is that it sug­gests that it’s not me or you that is for the sake of heav­en, but rather the thing we build togeth­er. And the hope is that it will not only help us climb a lit­tle clos­er to the truth, but also a lit­tle clos­er to each other.