Reflections on Revolutionary Leadership

Since my early teenage years, I have been involved in various activist and social justice movements, from Food Not Bombs, to the Occupy Movement, and various anti-fascist organizations and action committees. In what follows, I will explain how my path in activist circles, and self-described revolutionary movements, introduced me to both the good and bad sides of leadership. Finally, ultimately, I will show how a more balanced approach, that I seek to embody today, emerged as my experience grew.

Amanda Sinclair comments in her Leadership for the Disillusioned: Moving Beyond Myths and Heroes to Leading That Liberates, that “good leadership aims to support people (including leaders themselves) to make thoughtful choices about what to do and how to influence.” Sinclair’s definition envisions an ideal that many organizations have initially embodied, only to in some cases later betray. “Leadership can liberate us,” she explains, “from confining or oppressive conditions-imposed by structures, others and ourselves.” This last oppressor, that of the self, is perhaps the most cunning, and the most difficult to gain emancipation from. Similarly, while many look to leaders to guide them away from such oppressive conditions, the critical focus is often not on a perceived liberator, but on the system, institution or individuals they are being liberated from.[1]

Sinclair explains further that true leadership should be of a sort that empowers the individual to engage in their own process of liberation, rather than to passively receive liberation at the hands of another. True leadership then exposes ways in which liberation could have always been achieved. It highlights the solutions; it does not provide them. “Rather than being used as a means to compel compliance and conformity, to dominate or prescribe, leadership can invite us to imagine, initiate and contest.” This provides the individual with the opportunity to follow by leading, rather than conforming mindlessly as a passive number being carried along by group momentum. For leaders, the good news is that this makes the job of leading a far more realistic one. When “followers” are empowered, individuals naturally, organically step up to fulfill needed roles, to accomplish important tasks, often without the need for rigid, hierarchical delegation, but as an outgrowth of an inner desire to participate in the same change-producing activity which so inspired them in the “leader.” The leader then motivates the followers themselves to lead. This begins with the act of leading themselves out of inactivity, complacency and the expectations of an external savior to act upon their situation for them, to improve, or completely alter it. Sinclair concludes then that “Proceeding with a liberating intent requires leaders to be acutely conscious of power relations, to commit to using power and authority ethically, not in competitive self-interest or to control others.”[2] Unfortunately, we do not need to look very far, nor pull out obscure anecdotes of leadership gone awry. From the world of business and politics, to religion and activism, the stories, and the tendencies towards abuse, self-aggrandizement, and disempowering cult of personality are all too common.

In his review of the Paul Thomas Anderson film The Master, NPR’s David Edelstein said, of this glimpse into a human potential movement where disciples therapeutically undergo a Freudian-like psychoanalysis exploring past traumas, not only of this life, but previous incarnations, that the story, “leaves you spent, brooding, unlikely to join a cult, but on some level sad that this one’s such a crock.” To that end, Anderson devised a glimpse into the process behind such leader-follower dynamics gone awry. The point is not that the ideas and doctrines of the group in the film are utterly bizarre, unrelateable, out-of-touch, untenable, hokey or above consideration for a reasonable person. The point is that the group dynamic is fundamentally disempowering to the followers of “The Master,” played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, and hierarchically oppressive, subjugating followers to an uncritical, passive role. Followers of such a “master” are mere reflections and echoes of the leader, rather than organic, diverse individuals mobilized towards a common, awakened goal within them, by a charismatic individual, who uses his influence to empower rather than to control.

This film struck a chord with me, as did Amanda Sinclair’s similar observations of the dark side of leadership. It did not resonate due to a common experience in the grips of a religious cult, nor as a disciple sitting uncritically, unquestioning, at the feet of a self-proclaimed guru. I have never been an unquestioning follower of anyone or anything. I have always contested group dynamics where a movement leaders, religious figure – shaykh, marja`, rebbe, priest, pastor, or cult-leader, are approached uncritically, unquestioningly, or as the epicenter of a community.

Nevertheless, in my youth, however, I gravitated towards activist communities that I believed to be the most effective, in spite of their acknowledge flaws, which I often tried to engage in the participatory repair of from the inside. Some of these were well known and accessible, while others typically recruited from those individuals who they saw frustrated with activism of a “slower” pace. To that end, there was a similar pattern, a common modus operandi between the recruiting of cults, and some of the more radical movements I found myself involved with.

Perspective

When you are young, time seems to stretch out. Summer vacation seems like major periods separating the epoch of one grade from another. A single school year, no matter how much you are enjoying it or not, seems like a major period of your life. The relativity of our perception of time seems to be influenced in many ways by our experience of time. The less experience we have, the longer things seem to take, as anyone who has driven a minivan full of children on a road trip can attest. As we get older, years seem to go quicker, until eventually they seems to pass with uncanny rapidity. The impatience of a child in the backseat, wanting to know “are we there yet” is analogous to how I felt as a teenage activist. This did not, however, seem unreasonable, nor “impatient” in the sense one would imagine a short-sighted character flaw (though it indeed was). It seemed, instead – to me – rather like what Martin Luther King referred to as “the fierce urgency of now.” To be sure, movements capitalized on this idea, and promoted their sense of urgency with the pretext that “we simply cannot wait.”

The idea of “waiting,” while a stalwart example of personal patience on the behalf of some, seemed to me – and others in the same boat – to be delaying justice indefinitely into a distant hypothetical future; it seemed more like complacency than patience. The question then was – or perhaps should have been – how do we effect change more immediately. Unfortunately, this was not a question I was asking; it was a question that I assumed I knew the answer to.

By the mid-1990s, I was involved with a variety of activist groups that had grown tired of that awful four-letter word: “wait.” Sometimes this involved using blunt objects to drive Neo-Nazi “Hammerskins” out of Cincinnati’s Clifton area. Other times it involved activities in Ecological activist circles which it does not behoove me to detail, as these activities did not always operate within the boundaries of legality. To that end, and relative to necessary and deliberate ambiguity regarding some of these groups and activities, it is necessary to begin this discussion with a lengthy, but elucidating selection from Valerie Malhotra Bentz, and Jeremy J. Shapiro, in their Mindful Inquiry In Social Research. This passage is particularly important and relevant to this topic, wherein elements discussed encroach naturally into areas where giving specific details would be impossible; allusions and inferences will therefore have to suffice to handle particularly sensitive matters.

Bentz and Shapiro explain a point about openness in research that perhaps deserves some comment on before proceeding any further, as some subjects will necessarily be described with candor, while others veiled in deliberate ambiguity that require the reader to use their own intuition and draw their own conclusions (right or wrong). Bentz and Shapiro state that, “In mindfulness, the researcher is in a state of care and acceptance. This attitude allows the Beings of the participants of the study to shine forward, to reveal themselves to the inquirer… Such openness can only be allowed, not forced. In the absence of this kind of openness, all the inquirer can find out is what he or she already knows.” Furthermore, they note the converse that, “Unmindful (mindless in this sense) inquiry is a form of what Heidegger calls ‘idle curiosity.’ This is a form of finding out based on the preconceptions of the inquirer, who simply mirrors this inner, wished-for-reality by imposing it on the outer world.”[3] As a result of such unmindful inquiries, “If someone is trying to sell you something, neither you nor the other person can experience each other as a full human being. You experience the other as someone with a vested interest and he experiences you as someone to get something out of or ‘close on,’ as some salespeople say.” In such contexts, the interviewer is simply trying to get out of the individual all that they can: like a police interrogation, or a report just trying to get “the big scoop,” perhaps at the cost of the person they are interviewing. The relationship is itself one of “oppression and domination” which precludes the individual from “experiencing each other as a full human being.” Furthermore, “in a relationship of power with a ‘superior,’ it is hard to reveal yourself fully as yourself. There is always the danger that is you do, you will be punished, abused, fired, put down, demoted, or humiliated for some aspect of yourself.”[4] When discussing involvement in activist groups which sometimes are characterized as “radical” in approach – particularly when those corporations which such groups oppose are strongly lobbying forces in how laws are passed, and even how activist groups are legally categorized in the United States – we are dealing with a situation where any discussion of such activism must be somewhat guarded as Bentz and Shapiro explain, “There is always the danger that is you do, you will be punished” or perhaps even prosecuted for such involvement, even in peaceful activism that sometimes steps outside of legal resistance.

This must preface further discussion and personal reflections, because in explaining some involvement with leadership and how it can be used both positively, and abused negatively, there will be some matters which will be skimmed over, while others will be omitted entirely. Some things, even names of organizations, will be deliberately vague and undefined. This should not indicate a deficiency in this discussion, but a necessary safeguard that makes this discussion possible at all.

In all cases of my involvement, sometimes in a supporting role, sometimes in a leadership position, within various activist communities both past and present, my actions were intended to be results-driven. Again, the question of “how to effect the most lasting change, in the quickest way possible, was one that I assumed I knew the answer to. I emotionally felt I knew the answer to what would effect change the quickest. As I grew increasingly frustrated, gravitating towards more radical approaches to environmental and human rights activism, I assumed that the more aggressive, and the more potentially dangerous an approach, the more effective it was. This was in fact how dangerous actions were marketed, and are still sold today, whether in ecological direct action movements – designated by the United States government as “terrorist” groups – or in groups that more appropriately fit the definition of “terrorism” like militant wings of Hamas; meanwhile, people in positions of leadership in such organizations do not typically engage in such activities themselves. They justify their demand for action, which they refuse to take, by suggesting that delegation of such duties is necessary for public faces of any such movement.

After years of environmental and human rights activism, being a regular at any and every protest in the Tri-State area, and furthermore, after periodic lashings against the Neo-Nazis who had in those days plagued Clifton, I found myself – only a senior in high school – being rapidly thrust into a position of leadership within a group which many would characterize as “radical.” Throughout the early 90s, dozens of members spent at least a few years in prison because of activities associated with this group, in illegally combating environmentally, and otherwise, exploitative practices of various multinational corporations.

When I was approached at a punk show, which my own high school band was playing at, by an individual with the “manifesto” of this organization, I found a movement that was on the decline, in spite of impressive rhetoric. After a rash of arrests, both the founding leader, and a stand-in who had temporarily taken his place for a very short period of time, had disappeared from any leadership roles. If anything was to get done with this group, which I felt – being inspired by the charismatic words of the group’s manifesto – it must, then this would only happen if someone stepped up to the plate and took a swing at the challenges the movement had been striking out on. Though I was still in high school, I found myself reviving and single-handedly planning the “Gathering” that had previously occurred annually. In years past, the “Gathering” included a lot of self-aggrandizing talk about the goals of the movement, performances by anarchist punk and hardcore bands, and little else. To me, however, having more of an impression of what things “should” look like, based on the group’s rhetoric, rather than how it actually manifested those words, I had an ideal in my head that the Gathering should include lectures, instructional seminars in a variety of things, weight training, self-defense, recruiting, writing, and basic wilderness survival. This became the first seminar actually conducted in the forest, which to me seemed only logical since it was a movement grown out of the soil of Deep Ecology.

In conjunction with this, I started a self-published magazine that promoted the ideas of the movement, and indeed many of the activities of the group that people had been imprisoned for in the years leading up to this. The boldness of the publication and my apparent feelings of invincibility and imperviousness to arrest motivated others who had grown more reclusive after the preceding waves of arrests, to come out of the shadows, organize, and revive the flagship publication of the movement.

On one hand, I could reflect that my actions were indeed purported to motivate others to actions: to empower. I never stepped into a role as “leader” but instead led by example, when no one else was, fulfilling a necessary role, just as I had with more “above ground” groups like Food Not Bombs: organizing when no one else was willing to do so, making things happen by getting the ball rolling, so that others would join in. On the other hand, in hindsight, it seems that there was a strong element of competition and unwillingness of older, more senior activists to see someone as young as me come in, leading with charisma, getting goals accomplished, making them look ineffective, and inactive. While most boasted, “I can’t really talk about the ways that I have been active lately,” the newspaper headlines within 100 mile radius of them, reflected a very different reality. Nothing was happening, because most of them had been doing nothing. When I came along, my very presence seemed to motivate them, as I shined a spotlight on all that they had not being doing.

The Next Chapter

After a few years passed, this even seemed influence the founder of the organization himself. Over the years, we had become friends, but not yet very close. I viewed him cautiously, as something of a sell-out, a conformist, and an example of who not to become. When he wrote a lengthy letter – a proposal, really – of around a dozen pages, precisely three years after the beginning of my tenure with the group, his words were again inspiration, as they had been in the manifesto that sold me on the movement. He knew that if he were to regain control of the group, he would need to co-opt me into a joint leadership position. His proposal suggested doing just that, as well as outlining exactly how we would take the group “to the next level.”

In the years that went by, the group took a noticeably more hierarchical turn. Regional chapters did not have the autonomy they once had, but now fell under the jurisdiction of “The Central Committee,” which more or less consisted of the founder, myself and whoever we decided could be, for the time being. Still, again, I found that over the next few years, I was doing a disproportionate amount of the work. The hierarchy was imposed, not meritocratic. To members, the structure was often stifling, constricting rather than liberating. With this rigid structure came the near complete stagnation of activities of world-wide chapter members. This was no coincidence. The leadership the group was under seemed to disempower and stifle participation of the average member. While centralized leadership purported to be more efficient than the previously more-organic self-governing of the group, the results did not seem to follow those claims.

Realizing this, I broke off after the attacks of 9.11. I had been quick to denounce the attacks, but I was discouraged from making this a public statement on behalf of the group, as the attacks were “wrong” but “an understandable reaction to American imperialism.” This was hardly the proverbial straw the broke the camel’s back, it was just another in a series of growing divergent ideas between myself and the founder. It had become clear to me that it was not just our politics, but our ideas about leadership which had diverged sharply.

As the new organizations that I founded and worked with tended towards less rhetoric, more action, less short-sighted, “quick fix” illegal activity, and more, long-term, seed-planting, the extreme polarities between myself and my former co-leader became more obvious. He had tried to get involved with some of the new groups I was building and having great successes on the fronts of Anti-War activism, and other areas. Shortly after the founding of the religiously pluralistic “Hashlamah Project,” –seeking reconciliation, mutual understanding, and even co-worship between religious Jews and Muslims – in late 2004, we parted ways for good. We had grown in two vastly different directions. For example, by this time, he had become a staunch supporter of the increasingly repressive Iranian Vilyat-i-Faqih regime, while I had become a vocal opponent of it.

“Endgame,” or Seeds of a New Beginning?

In a conversation with Derrick Jenson, an author known for endorsing ecological militancy, following a lecture at Mercyhurst University, at a symposium in which I too was a guest teacher in 2007, I commented on the observations of a hypothetical, radical youth who had come to adopt an approach different than that which Jenson describes in his books. As with this reflective piece, I was being somewhat deliberately vague, ambiguous and hypothetical in my phrasing. Jenson had recently released his lengthy work Endgame. This hypothetical youth had in many ways exhausted such approaches as what Jenson endorsed (but made it clear that he had never actually participated in) and yet the youth had seen no lasting difference made. “What he came to realize,” I explained, “was that no matter what he did, the infrastructure that was in place would insure that he didn’t even make a dent in the machine.” In short, there had to be some other way that actually effected change, even if it was part of a slower process, even if it didn’t allow one to vent through their activities.

Radical reactions to oppression were understandable. Change was happening frustratingly slow. But militancy wasn’t changing anything any quicker, it was only making us feel better about our inability to accelerate progress. We told ourselves that it was “really doing something,” and we often decried those who stood shoulder to shoulder with us at protests who we knew would never dare engage in anything that could jeopardize their long term freedom or even lives. But at the end of the day there was very little activity of the sort that changed long term policies, or the plans of corporations to exploit anything which they had determined served the interest of shareholders. Jenson’s dismissive response only confirmed tome that this paradox was one that militant rhetoric was often simply unwilling to engage. Apathy and inaction were not the answers, but activities which alienated us and our ideas from the rest of society, and polarized many to side with the large multi-national polluters we were opposing, was clearly not producing effective results either, regardless of whether or not such activities were justifiable.

Yield and Overcome

Around the same time that I got into political activism, human rights and ecological activism, I began training in martial arts. My reason was not to use self-defense for aggressive reasons, though it did serve as an outlet for expressing a lot of rage borne out of political frustration. Looking back, it may in fact be that the aggressive confrontations that I found myself – then a thin teenager – led to my desire to feel secure and able to defend myself against large trophy hunters, loggers, and CEOs – buff from hours of daily personal training – who would often get in the faces of protesters outside of places of business, or other sites that outcry and dissent was visited upon.

Over the years, concurrent study in various systems of Kung Fu led to growing expertise, and eventually certification, lineage and multiple black sash rankings. Today, by trade, I am an Internal Martial Arts teacher, focusing on the systems of Chinese Kung Fu that look at how we can overcome opposition through connecting, feeling and yielding. One of the most popular of these systems is known as Tai Chi. As I would come to discover, the approach and philosophy of Tai Chi is directly applicable to a passive-resistance activism strategy. As my experienced deepened in both activism and martial arts concurrently, the influence of the Internal Martial Arts, or “Nei Jia,” approach on my evolving and deepening understanding of activism became increasingly profound.

We all have the image in our minds of the flowing and soft movements of the Tai Chi practitioner, but these movements are part of a system of self-defense and even philosophy. In Tai Chi, when faced with incoming force, we acknowledge it, connect to it, “listen” (ting) to it, and ultimately yield to it. In yielding, we overcome. This approach extends beyond the martial, to the interpersonal, social and activist levels. As frustration grew out of a realization that militancy was not producing the changes that it advertised to activists, the lessons imparted from Nei Jia study began to dig their roots deep within my psyche.

Famous activists and revolutionaries have often touted the strengths of non-violent resistance and direct action. The idea, as they have expressed it, is explained by Martin Luther King Jr., in his speech on receiving the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize, when he said that “it must be emphasized that nonviolent resistance is not a method for cowards; it doesresist. If one uses these methods because he is afraid or merely because he lacks the instruments of violence, he is not truly nonviolent.” Passive-resistance, King explained, “is ultimately the way of the strong man.” Though this phrase “often gives the false impression that this is a sort of ‘do-nothing method’ in which the resister quietly and passively accepts evil,” in reality, “nothing is further from the truth.” King further explained the matter in saying the following:

While the nonviolent resister is passive in the sense that he is not physically aggressive toward his opponent, his mind and emotions are always active, constantly seeking to persuade his opponent that he is wrong. The method is passive physically, but strongly active spiritually.

In some ways, my involvement in social justice movements drew me towards the approach of the Nei Jia, and in other ways, the attractions of one to the other were intertwined and reciprocal. Tai Chi philosophy gradually changed how I approached activism, social justice and social change. What I came to see as a necessary approach to social change came to influence my gravitation from the external martial arts, and their focus on physical force, towards the internal systems.

Applying “Yielding” to the Israel-Palestine Conflict

Over the years, my activism also merged with my academic pursuits, in the field of religious studies. Coming from a diverse religious background myself, I have always approached each and every tradition with a proverbial “empty cup”, waiting to be filled. There is a famous Jewish teaching about a rabbi who was called upon to settle a dispute between two of his students. The first talmid poured out his complaints to the rabbi, and when he finished, the rabbi said, “You’re right.” But the second one interrupted, defensively stating his case. When he finished, the rabbi nodded and said, “Ah, you’re right.” The two, incensed, explained: “What do you mean, we can’t both be right!” To which the rabbi replied, “You’re right.”

The moral of the story is that there are many ways to see things, whether matters of religious law, or politics. The only perspective that is truly wrong is one which fails to recognize the validity of another way of looking at the matter. In this way, both of the students of the rabbi were right, and yet they were both also right that they could not both be right, because both of them failed to appreciate the other’s perspective, thus limiting their own, and failing to be right. This understanding is essentially what the Nei Jia approach in general, and Tai Chi approach specifically, is all about. We must stop looking at our enemies – even those who would attack us – as adversaries, and instead seek to understand their perspective, through “listening” (ting). By way of the understanding gained through this approach, we can overcome aggressive force through yielding and passive neutralization of force.

Personal Background and How it Shapes Research

As the reader can see, I did not come to this conclusion, this Tao of Activism, in a void, or purely by quiet reflection. These ideas were borne in large part out of trial and error, out of trying to overcome obstacles to progress and change by taking paths of resistance, and realizing over time that there was a better way, albeit a road rarely traveled.

In their Mindful Inquiry in Social Research, Valerie Malhotra Bentz and Jeremy J. Shapiro elucidate that, “Research is always carried out by an individual with a life and a lifeworld…a personality, a social context, and various personal and practical challenges and conflicts, all of which affect the research, from the choice of a research question or topic, through the method used, to the reporting of the project’s outcome…”[5] My experiences, successes and failures, in activism would intertwine over decades, before finally converging. Bentz and Shapiro explain that “the person is always at the center of the process of inquiry”[6] and that “you will always be at the center of your own research, which in turn will always be part of you.”[7]

This is true, “not only in a psychological sense – for example, in the way that being insecure about your intellectual ability can create ambivalence about your work or that your personality style can shape your choice of a research method – but in a philosophical sense – for example, in seeing research not as disembodied, programmed activity but rather as part of the way in which you engage with the world.[8]

My experiences in various activist circles at times proved an exercise in existentialist “Bad Faith.” I was playing the part that it seemed – as a passionate activist whose empathy demanded that we not sit on our hands and wait – I was supposed to fit. I played this part so well that I easily grew into positions of leadership, even amongst fairly guarded underground elites.

Engaged in projects and organizations, I was a naturally charismatic and an effective communicator. When I got involved with any number of activist communities, organizations or movements, I tended – and tend still – to either gravitate to a leadership role, or I am placed in one. Today, however, I naturally find myself scaling back this natural predilection, so as to make room for the activism of others, as the natural tendency is for people to step in and fill a void when voids occur. If I too-readily fill these voids, it is unlikely that those who come after will step up and fill roles and needs that they see as already being adequately met.

Furthermore, as Sinclair expressed so poignantly the flaws of various leadership approaches which are hierarchical in nature, my approach is not to attract people towards activism, nor movements, any longer, but to awaken in people already predisposed towards certain types of activism, a common vision for how our efforts might be able to be more effective. This is perhaps nowhere more necessary than in Israel and Palestine peace activism, and bridge-building. Many on both sides already agree on ideas and yet have so much difficult in finding the way to reconcile. It is thus not a matter of convincing the vast majority. It is not a matter of “selling an idea;” the market for peace is already huge. It is instead about showing that there is no “peace product” that needs to be sold in the first place; this can be created with our own hands, with no outside help needs, and with no timetable to be discussed. The time to create peace and engage in acts of reconciliation is now and the place where it is to occur is wherever we are standing.

Bentz and Shapiro poignantly summarize a very similar idea about the hierarchical nature of ideologically “salesmanship,” which lends effectively to this point.

The tradition of critical theory asks us to be aware of the ways in which our selves, our lives, our relationships, our society, and the things of the world are distorted and deformed by economic, social, political, cultural, and psychological oppression, domination, exploitation, violence, and repression. An important implication of this approach is the idea that, because of oppression and domination, we do not encounter people and things as they truly are. For people and things are not what they could be if it were not for oppression and domination. We have all experienced this in one form or another. If someone is trying to sell you something, neither you nor the other person can experience each other as a full human being. You experience the other as someone with a vested interest and he experiences you as someone to get something out of or “close on,” as some salespeople say. In a relationship of power with a “superior,” it is hard to reveal yourself fully as yourself. There is always the danger that is you do, you will be punished, abused, fired, put down, demoted, or humiliated for some aspect of yourself.[9]

This is as much the case in broader society, and traditional mediums of hierarchy and oppression as it is in activist communities when leadership goes awry. If engagements and interactions with others is ultimately for the purpose of trying to “sell” them on your movement, your ideology, your agenda, or the like – indeed, when there is an attachment to a social outcome of your engagement with them – then there is a form of oppression, mutually both of the one you are trying to “sell” and of yourself. For in doing this, we hold ourselves back from the most effective forms of leadership, those of setting an example, and allowing those of like mind to attract to that example, then easing the burden from ourselves – as leaders – by bringing out leadership traits in those who follow.

How This Applies, Going Forward

Coming from a family background of significant religious diversity, I have been deeply interested in the interaction, intersections and cross-pollination of faith communities from an early age. Over the past two decades I have been intimately connected with, immersed in, and in some cases initiated into esoteric circles spanning the globe from Persian Shi’ite Sufi orders, and numerous interfaith Sufi orders, to Chinese Taoist martial and meditation lineages, to various expressions of Chassidut and Kabbalah in Judaism as well martial and spiritual traditions from around the world.

Over the years, I have walked with both Jewish family and friends, as well as Palestinian Muslim friends who I know to all be caring, sensible, and peace-loving individuals. Issue after issue, these individuals largely see eye to eye. In those instances when they do not, each are capable of, in the words of J. Martin Kohe, “disagree without being disagreeable.” When it comes to the issue of Israel and Palestine, however, things almost always turn very ugly and often impossibly polarized. Concerning almost all other issues, these individuals might disagree on, each will manage a willingness to concede that the other “side” might have some validity to their perspective, even if they have formed different conclusions about such matters.

What is it about this one issue? Is it politics? Religion? Both? Why have so many Muslims and members of other, and non-Jewish, faiths been able to come to a mutual understanding and respect for either other’s religions? Why have political entities like Pakistan not caused the degree of widespread bitterness and dysfunctional dialog that we see whenever the Israel and Palestine issue? This is even more the case among people who do not reside in the respective region, but might happen to be Muslim or Hindu. What has made the issue of Israel and Palestine, more specifically, the notion that one or the other of these entities is more or less wholly in the right or wholly in the wrong, dawn a cloak of religiousity? Why are there today religious and political leaders like Ovadia Yosef, spiritual leader of the Shas party, who brazenly call for the destruction, or at least ethnic cleansing of Arab Muslims from the Land of Israel? Why are there Neo-Salafi Wahhabis, all over the world, who present the destruction of Israel as the Sixth Pillar of Islam? Why, in this one case, do so few on either side seem to have a well-informed understanding of the perspective of the “other”? Is the situation as hopeless as it is often portrayed?

Today, much of my activism in Israeli and Palestinian issues, and broader Jewish-Muslim peace and reconciliation, focuses on how peace movements in Israel have succeeded, and are succeeding, in unifying liberal Jews and Muslims towards a common, progressive goal. In some cases these are groups that I have worked with, in others these are groups with which I am intimately familiar. I consider some of the factors that draw certain individuals from Jewish and Muslim communities to these groups, as well as those factors that seem to keep others away.

Furthermore, I highlight how historical movements of cooperation between Jews and Muslims flourished, particularly in the medieval era, when the gap between these Abrahamic faiths was bridged by commonalities in modalities of pietism amongst mystical orders. Finally, I use scholarship to examine how religion, on both sides, has been taken out of context, and perverted as a pretext for inhumanity and brutality, in ways forbidden by the sacred texts of both faiths. Presenting such research to Jews and Muslims alike has shifted attitudes whose defenses once seemed impermeable, and swayed opinions that shouting at rallies never seemed able to budge.

Perhaps common ground can be reached from a shared religious perspective on human rights, derived from the primary scriptural sources rather than late politically-driven exegeses. With the Hashlamah Project and the emerging Hashlamah Project Study Circles, I ultimately ask how historically successful approaches, which have approached mutual understanding and peace between Jews and Muslims in this pietism-driven manner, might be synthesized with existing, more secular approaches struggling towards peace between Jews and Muslims.

My approach is such that I have a foot firmly planted in both world, and on both sides of this conflict. When I began my first PhD cohort at Antioch University in Yellow Springs, Ohio, I almost immediately connected with a couple of other students doing work with the Israel and Palestine conflicts. In a cursory conversation with one student who said she is “not on either side,” I responded that, while I understood exactly what she meant, I would best characterize my own approach as being on both sides.

This effort is of ever-growing importance, when in many ways, the flames of conflict on both sides are stoked by those purporting to be the most religiously exemplar of each respective faith. In this way, war and uncompromised take on a religious air of orthodoxy, while peace and coexistence are deemed attributes of the secular.

To those who do not hear the numerous success stories of mutual understanding and reconciliation or “hashlamah,” such an endeavor, as what I have proposed, might sound naively optimistic and ambitious. Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai said, however, “If you are planting a tree and you hear that Messiah has come, finish planting the tree, then go and inquire.”[10] Muhammad echoed him, quoting the Talmud as he often did, phrased it this way: “If the Day of Judgment comes while you are planting a tree, finish planting it.”[11] Whether promises of hope, or the seeming inevitability of failure and despair, we must continue on, cultivating a positive future as if nothing could possibly stop us. For it is those who believe they can change the world, who are usually the ones who do.

This does not, however, mean that to change the world, we must know exactly how the change will occur, on what schedule major landmarks of change will be observed, and at what point we can step back, take a deep sigh of relief and state unequivocally that the desired objective has been finally, and forever achieved. Such an approach, however, while not taboo, does not hold the same power to sway in religious circles of both Jews and Muslims alike, as does the charismatic individual who declares with the utmost certainty that “the time has come…” for the movement under the particular banner of which they are calling on others to march.

Amanda Sinclair, in her Leadership for the Disillusioned, questions “the contemporary assumption that all great leaders must have a great ‘vision’ – that is, a view of the goal that is so clear, prescient and inspiring as to compel its following.” While this model is the construct of common assumptions about leadership, particularly within a religious sphere, Sinclair notes that “many undisputed leaders, such as Gandhi, built their leadership rather on some principles of living, and knew that the precise shape of transformation would emerge through collective effort.” Furthermore, she notes that Martin Luther King “did not over-specify his vision for equality for black Americans, nor the route that needed to be taken to get to it.”

These, we see, are two clear examples of leadership, which did not focus their efforts at popular motivation on outlining a “roadmap to peace,” but instead on action in what phenomenologist Edmund Husserl called die lebendige Gegenwart, the “the living present”[12]

Moving forward, I often consider the maxim: “There is no way to peace, peace is the Way.” By living peace, by building daily, weekly, monthly and then yearly towards reconciliation, reconciliation will have thereby come. Peace exists in the act of peace-making, not after the final item on a list of contentions to be resolved has been checked off. By finishing planting the tree when we hear of the “Day of Judgment,” of unavoidable catastrophe, in the Hadith attributed to Muhammad, we thereby avert what most severe of events. By finishing planting the tree when we hear of the Messiah’s arrival, in the version of this saying from Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, we not only keep a healthy distance from those who would abuse power and take advantage of our expectations to be led, and our desire to see true and lasting change – at last – we do the very work of the Messiah, of the would-be “leader”… we lead.

Works Cited

Amanda Sinclair, Leadership for the Disillusioned: Moving Beyond Myths and Heroes to Leading That Liberates (Allen & Unwin: 2008), xix

Valerie Malhotra Bentz, Jeremy J. Shapiro, Mindful Inquiry in Social Research, (Sage Publications, 1998),

[1] Amanda Sinclair, Leadership for the Disillusioned: Moving Beyond Myths and Heroes to Leading That Liberates (Allen & Unwin: 2008), xix

[2] ibid. xix

[3] Valerie Malhotra Bentz, Jeremy J. Shapiro, Mindful Inquiry in Social Research, (Sage Publications, 1998), 54.

[4] Bentz and Shapiro,166

[5] Bentz and Shapiro, 4

[6] ibid. 4

[7] ibid.

[8] ibid. 4-5

[9] Bentz and Shapiro, 166

[10] Avot D’Rabbi Natan, 31b

[11] Numerous sources in Hadith literature.

[12] Husserl, E. 1928. The Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness [Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologiedes inneren Zeitbewusstseins 1893-1917] Translated by J. S. Churchill. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1964.