JTA – Jeff Nitz, a social worker and lay leader in his church, views himself as a trained listener.
But in early 2020, his congregation — Mosaic Church at the Evangelical Christian Center of Lynchburg, Virginia — began to grapple with fierce COVID-era squabbles over masking, distancing and vaccinations.
Accustomed to bridging the divide between his fellow parishioners, Nitze was at a loss. “I’m used to active listening, but there have been times when I’ve felt like I’d rather be away from this person than engage in a deeper conversation,” he said.
For help, Nitz turned to Resetting the Table, a Jewish nonprofit that has spent nearly a decade teaching Jewish groups to have more productive and meaningful conversations about Israel. The group offers a modified version of its program to churches and other groups grappling with polarization, so last year, the Nitz church held two sessions featuring Resetting the Table staffers, which focused on how COVID How to talk about
Circles on opposite ends of each issue presented their cases – and then the other side would repeat the arguments they had heard. By the end, Nitz said, he had come to understand his circles better – and, he believed, they had come to understand him better as well. “They absolutely listened to my heart,” she recalled of an anti-vaxxer group who expressed their views to her.
It’s been such a success that Resetting the Table believes it could help it happen more often in churches. Founded in 2014 out of concern that American Jews’ arguments on Israel were fracturing their communities, the group expanded its work beyond Jewish communities several years ago, broadening its reach even further during the pandemic era took.
Rabbi Melissa Weintraub, co-founder of the Table, said, “We have seen America descend into its own difficult struggle.”
A supporter of former US President Donald Trump tries to push protesters outside a Moms for Liberty meeting in Philadelphia on June 30, 2023. (AP Photo/Nathan Howard)
Last year, Resetting the Table worked with more than a dozen Christian umbrella groups representing thousands of churches and several million church members affiliated with mainline Protestant, Catholic, Evangelical, African-American, Pentecostal and Orthodox traditions. And in the coming year, only half of the organization’s work will be with Jewish groups. The other half is owned by non-Jewish houses of worship, entertainment industry companies and other organizations – the work of Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw’s Heartland Foundation. Started funding last year,
As per the surveys, the expansion is responding to an important concern: a Last year the study found that 28% of American adults Describing political polarization or extremism as the biggest issue facing the country.
“At this stage there is probably more panic and concern in Christian communities about this work,” Weintraub said. “But when people do this successfully and see that it makes their communities feel closer to each other, there is a comparable sense of relief and satisfaction.”
Topics that are more likely to come up in non-Jewish settings include the status of LGBTQ people and women in the church, COVID restrictions, and the 2020 election. Last spring a series of sessions geared toward evangelical leaders, including professors at Liberty University in Lynchburg, covered an extensive list of hot-button political topics, including the role of government, guns, free speech, voting, the death penalty, police, and the death penalty. , race and abortion.
In real life and virtually, group sessions begin in large groups. Leading facilitators point out that the purpose of the exercise is not to change minds, but to allow conversation to happen, whether it changes people’s opinions or not.
“Some people would want to have this conversation for the sake of the relationship, right?” Michelle Freed, a facilitator, told a session last year at the Atlanta-area congregation, Or Hadash. “You really care about one person and now you can’t talk about the elephant in the room.”
Screen capture of a Zoom session of a multi-faith convening group for faith leaders in the South. Michelle Freed is top left, Rabbi Melissa Weintraub is second from top left. November 5, 2021. (resetting the table via JTA)
Participants split into small groups and go through the kind of exchange Nietzsche experienced: listening to someone with a different or opposing opinion, summarizing it, then hearing feedback about that summary. Once the speaker feels that the listener has fully summarized their point of view, Freed said, it is “hitting the bullseye”.
Another short session activity proposed by the group is called a “life map”: participants compile a list of moments in their lives that shaped their attitudes, and then take questions from others. A workshop packet asks participants to “reflect on some experiences, conversations, conversations, moments of realization—things you saw or heard that had an impact on your ethics or your politics.”
Weintraub states that the Jewish world, “polarized as it is,” is more willing to have those difficult conversations—she attributes this readiness to a “deep tradition of argument … built into every page of the Jewish text.”
While recruiting for one of the group’s multi-faith groups last year, she said, “rabbis were lining up outside the door,” while “Southern Baptist and evangelical leaders were saying, ‘How do you know this is my community? isn’t going to break” apart?’ I think at this point there is a recognition in the Jewish world that this work is possible and desirable and yields good results in a different way.
Some evangelical leaders say they are understanding the importance of having tough conversations. Chelsea Andrews, who attended the spring session for evangelical leaders, said it was the first setting in years where she felt she could engage in conversation outside her entourage of evangelical Christians without being judged for her conservative values.
“I think finding a sense of belonging is very difficult for evangelical Republicans like me, who are also deeply committed to peace-building and reconciliation work,” Andrews said in the testimonial Weintraub shared with JTA. The “Resetting the Table Session” was the first time in many years that I felt that what I had to bring to the table was welcome, she said. I don’t feel like I’m being judged and I don’t feel there’s any error that needs to be corrected.
Illustrative: An anti-vaccine mandate activist holds a sign during a rally outside the Phoenix City Council Chambers on December 7, 2021. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File)
Christian groups also view dialogue differently after entering the session, said Weintraub’s husband and co-founder Eyal Rabinovich, who was the lead facilitator for the 2022 session at Mosaic Church, which took place via Zoom. He cited the proverb “two Jews, three opinions” and said that Jews came to the session with their views.
In contrast, they have found that “don’t rock the boat” is the cultural ideal of goodness among evangelical Christians. But he feels that culture is preventing the divisions from spreading, and that “the churches are crumbling like a mosaic” as a result.
“We are conscious of the norms of the game. So many times, for example, in mosaics, people gradually move towards differences,” he said. “They don’t want to bother each other. They don’t want to move, people don’t really want to get into increased mobility and they don’t want to feel like they’re intruding on other people’s spaces.
The eagerness of Jews to engage and debate was evident in a series of video sessions, Reset the Table allowed the JTA to attend Jewish institutions last summer, on the condition that the names of the participants would not be disclosed until unless they give their permission.
A typical Jewish participant was Howard Lalli, a marketing specialist who wondered aloud in a session with Or Haddash last May whether being Jewish made him too enthusiastic to speak.
He told the moderator, Freed, “I know you gave us the option of not focusing too much on one question, but I admit that I found myself mentally in a position to ask questions about Israel.” Found struggling to come.” “And I wonder if this is a problem/challenge in our culture: that to appear engaged you must have an opinion – versus asking questions, being inquisitive.”
The group’s work with Jewish institutions extends well beyond Israel. In addition to that topic, Or Hadash members also discussed funding the police and privatizing social services.
Working with churches has also bridged religious divides. Nitz said that resetting the tables made him feel safe enough to ask questions that might otherwise have been awkward. At one of the group’s training sessions, he asked a rabbi he found a question that had long bothered him: why do Jews vote for Democrats, given, in his opinion, “Republican religious rights”. are strong on the protection of, and very pro-Israel.”
The rabbi said he should arrange a one-on-one so he could explain in detail, but offered as a first insight that as immigrants or the descendants of immigrants, Jews have traditionally served as poor and disadvantaged people. sympathized with, an attitude that has historically been associated with Democrats.
Nitz said the exchange was “delightful”.
He said, “I thought it was very instructive and open, transparent.” “I used to have a two-pronged approach when it comes to understanding the Jewish voting bloc, and he added a lot of nuance as a result of that conversation.”