Few stories I have ever written have so challenged me as the one I wrote last week about the Madison-Rafah sister city controversy. This is not because the specific issues involved are so complicated.

For the members of the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project, among whom are a number of Madison Jews, this is an opportunity to have people-to-people contacts and provide humanitarian aid and a gesture of solidarity to suffering people. To the opponents, particularly the Madison Jewish Community Council, this is less about humanitarianism than a way to bash Israel and provide Israel’s enemies with an opportunity to carry their propaganda war into the Midwest.

But behind such issues lies not just a clash of short-term policies. It is a debate over fundamental attitudes and values. As I thought about the story, and especially about the information and quotations I had to leave out, I sometimes felt as if my brain split into halves — which I will here call Rabbi Optimist and Rabbi Pessimist — and each ferociously baited the other, answering questions with questions, in a way that goes something like this:

Rabbi Optimist: So what’s wrong with trying to reach beyond the politics, the terrorism, the clash of interests and religions and prejudices, and trying to make people-to-people contacts between Americans and Palestinians?

Won’t such things help break down the Arab world’s prejudices against American civilization that fueled the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks? Won’t it even break down the Arab world’s prejudices against Jews for Palestinian Arabs to see that not all Jews are like Ariel Sharon or the radical religious settlers in the territories? Isn’t Judaism at its best a religious tradition that says the best way to overcome enemies is to transform them into friends?

Rabbi Pessimist: What kind of ignorant arrogance is this? Do you think you know everything about brotherhood and how to overcome prejudice? Do you think your opponents are so blinkered so as not to know that the Palestinians are human beings?
Have you forgotten or haven’t you ever learned about the power of history and religion and culture?

After more than 1,000 years of Arab/Muslim disdain for Jews and Judaism, and more than 100 years of Arab/Muslim resentment of the success of non-Muslim civilization, do you think all that can be eradicated or even reduced with a few handshakes?

RO: Well what’s wrong with trying? Doesn’t peace have to begin somewhere? What’s the worst that could happen? Is it not better to have tried and failed than not to have tried? Is it right to allow fear of failure to prevent the attempt?

RP: Doesn’t such a naive attitude lead us to underestimate the difficulty? Isn’t it irresponsible to underestimate hatred of Jews, as did so many in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s? Isn’t it denial of reality to ignore how so many in the Arab/Muslim world have shown that they hate Jews, Judaism and Israel so much that they will exploit any vulnerability and any opportunity to attack and weaken them — and is it not foolish to provide such opportunities even in the name of humanitarianism?

RO: Isn’t all of this overgeneralization tantamount to prejudice? Is it not unjustified demonizing to believe that most Palestinian Arabs are unlike most of us and do not want the same things — prosperity, decent lives for families, a say in how their lives are to be run, and, above all, peace and an end to violence?

RP: Even if this is a good faith effort, are not the Palestinians you will meet likely to be members of the liberal minority, who do not hold much power or authority in the larger Palestinian and Arab/Muslim communities?

Even if you are right about the desires of most Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims, isn’t it still true that the Muslims not willing to have peace with Jews, Judaism and Israel still number tens of millions among the 1.5 billion Muslims alive today and include most of the significant political and religious leaders?

Given that there are so many fewer Jews (14 million at most) than Muslims, aren’t we Jews far the more vulnerable and endangered?

And so on. This is a clash that I don’t know that I will ever resolve to my total satisfaction.
But I do wish the partisans on both sides of this and so many other controversies could be helped to a little humility by contemplating the wise words of the British Jewish philosopher Isaiah Berlin, from his essay, “The Pursuit of the Ideal”:

“Values may easily clash within the breast of a single individual; and it does not follow that, if they do, some must be true and others false…. The notion of the perfect whole, the ultimate solution, in which all good things coexist, seems to me to be not merely unattainable … but conceptually incoherent…. Some among the Great Goods cannot live together…. We are doomed to chose, and every choice may entail an irreparable loss.”