Talk about issues relating to Judaism

Maybe we should start with the topic of contentiousness. What does Judaism teach us about that?

Well, there’s a Hebrew term for it: the word Machloket. It simply means dispute, but in Judaism, a dispute is a bit more than what we might think of in our culture, especially in Christian culture. In a Jewish dispute, it’s not about being right. It’s not about someone winning at the end because of their arguments; in Jewish disputes, it’s about the dispute itself. It’s about the act of disputing and the joy in it.

The culture of arguing!

And it’s about the debate between two different positions. Through this debate, we come closer to the truth.

At the end of the debate, it’s not about one side walking away feeling like they’ve lost due to insufficient arguments while the other feels victorious. It’s not this black and-white thinking. It’s about the exchange and communication itself.

Exactly. And it should be fun, but it can also get heated without us making enemies afterwards. And through this debate, through this argument itself, through this conversation, the communication, a new perspective on the individual topic, perhaps also on other topics, on oneself, emerges for each of the participants in this argument. And as I said before, this is a way of getting closer to the truth. The truth does not take place on one side or the other, so to speak, but rather in the movement between the two extremes.