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Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

M

y barber is a sweet
Lebanese Muslim man
with a warm smile, a wife
and three small kids. I love the guy.
Recently, while cutting my hair, he
started telling me about his latest
trip to Lebanon to visit his family.
He spoke lovingly
about his old neigh-
borhood, his buddies,
his large extended
family, and the laughs
and food they had all
just shared. He then
Mark Jacobs
matter-of-factly said
that things are getting
better in Lebanon
because “Hezbollah is really helping
people out.”
I immediately froze. Hezbollah?!
The same despicable terrorist group
that has vowed to destroy Israel and
has killed numerous Americans and
Israeli’s, including civilians?
My mind raced. What do I do? Get
up and storm out of there? Calmly
tell him that I think Hezbollah is
the very embodiment of evil and an
imminent threat to a land I love? Or
just sit there, change the subject and
let him finish cutting my hair? I was
experiencing, it occurred to me, a

true Larry David moment — on one
hand this man had just endorsed
Hezbollah and offended me to my
core, but on the other hand, he’s a
nice guy and was in the middle of
giving me a really good haircut. I
chose the latter option.
But the experience stayed with me.
It raised a question that has become
an issue in these divided times: At
what point, if ever, do we allow polit-
ical differences to break up relation-
ships with people we care about?
We all have our stories. Perhaps
it’s a friend, a co-worker or a family
member who holds views you find so
wrong and offensive that you begin
to question whether you can even
maintain a relationship with the per-
son.
An old friend of mine, an opinion-
ated guy who lives out of state and
I rarely see, has become quite vocal
on Facebook lately about his support
for the BDS movement and his harsh
anti-Israel sentiments. I don’t believe
he’s an anti-Semite — we’ve been
buddies for over 40 years — but yet
I am horrified at his brutal attacks
against Israel and I find myself con-
fused, saddened and wondering how
I can stay friends with him. I’m a

passionate pro-Israel advocate; it’s a
core value of who I am, so how can I
possibly put this aside and carry on
the friendship as if this doesn’t exist?
Rabbi Paul Yedwab of Temple
Israel always tells me to never
underestimate the power of pleasant
exchanges with people. We don’t
always have to engage in heated
debates with people, he says. There’s
beauty in just getting along and
enjoying each other’s company. I love
that advice. It’s simple, true, powerful
and particularly important in these
testy times.
Yet still, I question if there is
some point where one should draw
a line, whether out of principle or
self-preservation, and just walk away
from somebody. If one were a racist
or something hateful like that, then
the line becomes clear to me, but
if the differences are based strictly
on political or ideological views,
then isn’t that very different? Can
one’s political views ever become
so repugnant to our core beliefs, so
unacceptably character-revealing,
that the decision to cease a relation-
ship becomes easier?
I recall that shortly after the 2016
presidential election, I went to din-

ner with some Republican friends.
One of them, after a few drinks and
knowing that I was upset with the
result, angrily snarled at me that she
was “gloating, double gloating” that
Trump had won. It was a deliberate,
malicious taunt intended to disturb
me, and it did. I was seething with
anger, but I kept my composure
as best I could. It could’ve been a
terribly ugly moment — and surely
would’ve resulted in an end to a few
friendships — had I fully unleashed
the anger I was keeping inside.
I recently attended a lecture from
a Kabballah scholar on the topic of
“healing anger and angry people,”
a topic I saw as especially relevant
during these contentious times.
Rabbi Laibl Wolf calmly told us that
anger has no redeeming qualities; it’s
a bad, destructive emotion, and we
must train ourselves to not be angry,
even when it might be justified. The
trick, he said, was to work to trans-
form anger into listening and empa-
thy and compassion.
It was an interesting perspective,
and one that I’m trying — really try-
ing — to master. I accept that we’d
be better off if we could adopt Rabbi
Wolf ’s words, but it’s sure easier said

continued on page 10

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