Everyone wants Jewish unity. Far fewer are willing to do what unity requires.

We do not need to agree on everything to act like one people. But we do need to stop mistaking judgment for wisdom.

photo: David Holifield/Unsplash

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This is a guest essay by Vanessa Berg, who writes about Judaism and Israel.

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

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I recently saw a group of Israelis in the United States.

At first, I did not know they were Israeli. They looked foreign to me, intense, a little aggressive, and if I am being honest, I felt slightly uneasy. There was something in their body language, their volume, their directness, their way of occupying space that made me instinctively keep a little distance.

Then I heard them speak Hebrew and, suddenly, everything changed.

I said something to them in Hebrew, and within seconds, the distance disappeared. The same people who had seemed unfamiliar a moment earlier became familiar. The same energy that had seemed aggressive suddenly felt Israeli. Loud became warm. Blunt became funny. Foreign became family.

That is a strange and beautiful thing.

There are not many peoples in the world for whom a language, a phrase, an accent, or a shared reference can create that kind of instant connection. One moment, you are strangers. The next, you are arguing like cousins.

You do not need to know each other’s names. You do not need to know where the other person went to school, what they do for work, or what their politics are. Something ancient and immediate announces itself: We are connected.

But that moment also reveals something important: Connection is not the same thing as unity.

Jews talk constantly about Jewish unity. We worry about it, mourn its absence, invoke it after tragedies, demand it from others, and accuse each other of destroying it. We speak about unity as though it should arrive automatically because we are Jews, because we share a history, because we have common enemies, because we belong to the same people.

But unity does not magically appear because we are all Jewish.

Jewishness gives us a bond. It gives us memory, language, instinct, responsibility, and sometimes instant recognition. But unity is not the automatic result of identity. Unity is something we have to build. More than that, it is something we have to work on every day.

In that sense, Jewish unity is not so different from love.

For much of my life, I thought the right partner would simply “get me.” I thought someone out there would just be a “natural fit” for me. I thought it would be effortless, automatic, almost intuitive, as if love meant being understood without having to explain myself.

It sounds romantic, but I have come to see how naive that idea really is.

A natural connection matters. Chemistry matters. Shared values matter. But no serious relationship survives on instinct alone. The fantasy of being effortlessly understood can become an excuse not to communicate. It can make us resent someone for failing to read a sentence we never actually spoke.

Real love is not mind reading. It is translation. It is the daily work of saying what we mean, naming what hurts, asking for what we need, listening when the other person does the same, and then trying, imperfectly but sincerely, to meet somewhere in the middle.

To be understood, you have to speak. You have to explain what you want and need. You have to say what bothers you before resentment hardens. You have to ask for more of some things and less of others. You have to admit when you are hurt without turning every wound into an accusation. And the other person has to listen, not defensively, not performatively, but seriously. Then both people have to do the hard part: Meet somewhere in the middle while remaining true to themselves.

Much of the Jewish world badly needs this lesson.

Too often, Jews expect other Jews to “just get it.” Secular Jews expect religious Jews to understand their discomfort with coercion, authority, and exclusion. Religious Jews expect secular Jews to understand their fear of Judaism disappearing. Israeli Jews expect diaspora Jews to understand the pressure of living with genocidal enemies at the border. Diaspora Jews expect Israeli Jews to adopt Western attitudes while living in an inherently un-Western neighborhood.

Liberal Jews expect conservative Jews to understand their moral language. Conservative Jews expect liberal Jews to understand their security fears. Younger Jews expect older Jews to understand their alienation from institutions. Older Jews expect younger Jews to understand the fragility of what was built.

Everyone wants to be understood. Far fewer are willing to communicate in a way that makes understanding possible. So instead of communication, we get slogans. Instead of compromise, we get suspicion. Instead of curiosity, we get judgment.

And judgment is corrosive.

Judgment feels good in the moment because it simplifies the world. It allows us to sort people quickly into categories: serious or unserious, loyal or disloyal, religious or backward, secular or empty, Zionist or naïve, anti-Zionist or self-hating, traditional or closed-minded, progressive or delusional.

Judgment gives us the cheap satisfaction of certainty. It lets us believe we have understood someone when all we have really done is reduce them.

That is why judgment is so dangerous. It does not merely criticize a person’s view. It often turns the person into the view. Once that happens, conversation becomes almost impossible.

If someone is not a Jew with a concern, they are “a leftist.” If someone is not a Jew with a fear, they are “a fanatic.” If someone is not a Jew with a different experience, they are “an embarrassment.” If someone is not a Jew trying to preserve something, they are “the problem.”

Then why listen?

Judgment closes the door and congratulates itself for being superficially discerning. Curiosity does the opposite.

Curiosity asks: What are they afraid of? What life experiences shaped them? What are they trying to protect? What pain are they carrying? What do they think I do not understand? What might they be right about, even if I think they are wrong about much else?

Curiosity is not weakness. It is not moral relativism. It does not require abandoning standards, convictions, truth, history, or reality. Curiosity simply recognizes that people are rarely as simple as our irritation makes them seem. It allows us to challenge without contempt. It allows us to disagree without exile. It allows us to remain in relationship long enough for something better than shouting to happen.

And Jews, of all people, should understand this.

We are a people built on argument. The Talmud is not a record of everyone agreeing politely. Jewish history is not a straight line of uniformity. We have always been a people of debate, interpretation, tension, disagreement, and competing visions of what faithfulness requires. Argument is not foreign to Jewish life. It is one of our love languages.

But there is a difference between argument that sharpens and argument that destroys.

Argument becomes holy when it is rooted in care for the same people, the same future, the same covenant, the same destiny. Argument becomes destructive when winning matters more than belonging, when purity matters more than responsibility, when being right matters more than staying connected.

That is where compromise enters.

Compromise has a bad reputation because people confuse it with surrender. But compromise does not mean pretending that nothing matters. It does not mean flattening Judaism into a vague sentimental identity where nobody stands for anything. It does not mean sacrificing core principles just to avoid discomfort. Real compromise means knowing the difference between what is sacred and what is negotiable.

It means asking: Is this a hill to die on, or a preference I have mistaken for a principle? Is this disagreement truly existential, or have I made it existential because I dislike being challenged? Can I give a little here so that we can preserve something larger there? Can I remain committed to my values without demanding that every Jewish space look exactly like me?

Jewish communities need more of that. Families need it. Synagogues need it. Schools need it. Federations need it. Israeli politics needs it. Diaspora politics needs it. The relationship between Israelis themselves needs it. The relationship between Israel and world Jewry needs it. Because the truth is that we are not as different as we sometimes think.

Most Jews, across denominations and politics and continents, want some version of the same things. They want Jews to survive. They want Jewish children to know who they are. They want Israel to be safe. They want antisemitism fought seriously. They want Jewish life to feel meaningful rather than obligatory. They want belonging. They want dignity. They want a future.

Those shared desires do not erase real differences, but they do give us a place to begin. The mistake is thinking that shared identity is enough. It is not.

The Israelis I saw in America did not become my best friends because I heard Hebrew. We did not suddenly agree on politics, religion, culture, or life. But the Hebrew created an opening. It reminded me that beneath the first impression was a connection I could have missed if I had stayed inside my initial judgment.

That is the work in miniature: to notice the bond, to resist the judgment, to begin the conversation, to communicate honestly, to compromise where we can, to keep showing up (including and especially when it is hard).

Jewish unity will not be saved by speeches about Jewish unity. It will not be saved by guilt, panic, nostalgia, or pretending that our differences are small. It will be built the same way all serious relationships are built: through attention, honesty, curiosity, humility, patience, repair, repeated effort, and compromise.

We do not need to agree on everything to act like one people, but we do need to stop expecting unity to happen by instinct alone. The instinct is there. The connection is real. Sometimes all it takes is one Hebrew sentence in a strange country to remember it.

But after recognition comes responsibility. We have to speak. We have to listen.
We have to bend. We have to ask better questions. We have to judge less and wonder more. We have to choose the relationship again and again.

That is not sentimental. It is survival.

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