Peace Throughout the Land

There's an amazing thing about Jerusalem, specifically the Old City, and even more specifically, the Western Wall itself. If you don't have at least one spiritual experience while at the Kotel and at least three realizations as a whole while you're in Jerusalem, you're doing something wrong. I myself had three, but I'm going to talk about one right now. While in the United States, we only really see one type of Orthodox Jew. They all wear the same hat, they wear suits and look like Orthodox Jews from Crown Heights, New York. If you go to Israel however, you see all sorts of Orthodox Jews. The facial hair, the payot, the hat, the clothes, everything. There are variations and I always wondered what these meant. At first, I thought that the different view on how your supposed to look had something to do with different interpretations of Judaism. But then I asked an orthodox Jew who lives in Jerusalem and it actually has nothing to do with that. It's simply about where they're from. Each of these Jews who live in Jerusalem dress differently to show pride and show their individuality of their origins and their own heritage. But here's the greatest part. As I was praying at the Kotel I looked around at the different minyans and you just have to take one look and notice that any group of men praying do not consist of one type of Jew. Any minyan consists of multiple types of Jews with big furry hats, with long payot, no payot, black hats, beards, no beards, suits, long black coats, long white coats, long white cloaks, modern orthodox, and even Jews like me. But the amazing thing is that no matter where we are from, what our beliefs are, how strictly we follow Jewish law, Kosher laws, Shomer Shabbas, or anything else, in the end, we are all Jews and when the time came to dance and sing, no one cared where I was from or asked me how much I follow Judaism, they welcomed me into their circle. Think about this for a moment: Here are a group of people that live in a single place and share something that is important to all of them. They all come from different parts of the world with different customs and who all look differently. These people are different in so many ways, but because they are all JEWS, they not only tolerate each other, they not only accept one another, but they welcome and embrace one another without question. 

     Seeing and thinking about this, I realized that is what we all need; communities, states, countries, and the world itself. It's not just about tolerance anymore. Before this, I believed that in order to have peace, we all needed to simply tolerate each other. I didn't believe that we needed to get along, we just needed to tolerate one another. As long as beliefs are tolerated, then we will all be equal. After seeing this, I don't believe that anymore. I don't believe that it's about tolerance, but acceptance. When someone asks you, "Do you like that person?" and you respond with, "Well… I tolerate him." That seems different than simply answering with a yes. The idea of tolerance implies that you allow them to exist around you, but you don't truly embrace them as equal. This is what we must push in our communities, in our country, and in our world. We can no longer just "tolerate" one another, but embrace each other as equals using our similarities to bind us together rather than using our differences to separate us. There are so many things that differentiate the Jews in Jerusalem and yet, they emphasize the commonality of Judaism to not just tolerate or accept one another, but welcome everyone with open arms. We must do the same. If we want peace between us, we can no longer emphasize the differences between us as Jews and Christians and Atheists and Muslims and Republicans and Democrats, but as Americans and move forward as such. And in this world, we cannot emphasize our differences as Jews, Christians, and Muslims or as Americans, Israelis, Saudis, Iranians, but as HUMAN BEINGS. And if we move forward as such, peace will reign throughout our planet and we can make this a better world for our children and our children's children.