"Arguing Is a Sacred Task"
What a progressive faith leader in the reddest county in the reddest state in the nation can teach us about the art of dialogue.
Maybe my favorite thing about being a reporter was interviewing. I loved connecting with people, hearing the stories they tell about themselves, watching their eyes light up when they landed on a topic they were truly passionate about. It gave me goosebumps, every single time.
Since I hung up my reporter hat, I’ve appeared on many podcasts as a guest, but it’s been ages since I’ve truly interviewed someone, even longer since I interviewed with the intent of that audio being shared with anybody other than myself. Holding a conversation for information is one thing. Holding a conversation worth listening to is an art form—one at which I very much want to improve.
Which is why I recently sat down with my good friend, Rabbi David Gerber. As the senior rabbi of Congregation Gates of Prayer in Metairie (a suburb of New Orleans, Louisiana), David’s a guy who knows a thing or two about having conversations worth listening to.
Congregation Gates of Prayer is “Reform,” a denomination of Judaism known for its commitment to liberalism, social action, and progressive causes. Yet Metairie is also staunch Trump country, represented in U.S. Congress by House Majority Leader Steve Scalise.
“My career, in many ways, is fighting for the beautiful, wonderful center that we have lost in our country,” David told me.
For my first dip back in the interviewing ocean, I reached out to David to pick his brain about the art of dialogue: how and why we need to have tough conversations, and what we lose when we can’t talk to one another. I’ve posted the interview audio and a transcript below (as well as some helpful graphics and notes to help orient you in our conversation). No knowledge of Judaism required!
So please join us below as we get a little nerdy and a lot spiritual—he is a rabbi, after all!—in this conversation about the art of dialogue.
Lara Crigger: So you followed a bit of a nontraditional path towards becoming a rabbi. You started in finance, then became a rabbi. Tell us a little bit about that.
Rabbi David Gerber: So my nontraditional path really began when I was a kid. When I was 13, I had my bar mitzvah, and then I quit Hebrew school because of baseball practice and karate lessons, and I didn't go back into a synagogue for probably seven, eight years.
When I was in college, I was a Jew in a big Catholic fraternity, and things were going on. It was during the Intifada, it was an election, and people kept asking me things about Judaism. And I at some point just got tired of not knowing the answers.
So I Asked Jeeves—if you remember Jeeves—
Crigger: Good, old, trusty Jeeves!
Gerber: Jeeves was the online butler who would Google things for you.
Crigger: He was kind of like the ChatGPT of the early 2000’s.
Gerber: Yeah! So I remember the first thing I asked Jeeves was, “Why do we not eat bacon?” And Jeeves said, “Well, it's in the Tanakh.” And so naturally, I asked Jeeves, “What's a Tanakh?” And Jeeves sent me to Barnes and Noble, and I bought a Tanakh.
As soon as I started reading it, it connected with me. It's like, this is the thing that I understand. I get this. I decided, right then, I want to be a rabbi.
I called the rabbinical school, and they said, “Great! What synagogue do you belong to?” I said, “Well, I don't. I'm in college.” “Are you part of Hillel?” No. “Are you in a Jewish fraternity?” No. “Did you go to Jewish summer camp?” No. “Did you do youth group?” No. “Are you a Jewish Studies major?” No.
And like, thank God he didn't hang up on me! But he said, “If you really want to be a rabbi, you have to show and prove extended dedication—a period of dedication to the Jewish community. If you really want to do this, it's going to take years, and here's how you do it.”
So I took as many Jewish Studies classes as I could. I started teaching Sunday school, which turned into Sunday school and Saturday school, Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday school, and staffing youth groups while taking Jewish studies classes at Wash U and St Louis. Basically, I spent my business hours in finance as kind of a means to an end. I think I worked more hours in the Jewish community than I did in the office. About five years in, I made the switch; I'd been accepted to rabbinical school.
It's not a traditional path, not just because I was in finance, but I went from being as as un-engaged as humanly possible with Judaism to being a Jewish professional.
Crigger: Having that sort of multi-layered background, do you think that gives you maybe a leg up, or an advantage, when you're chatting with all the various diverse people in the Jewish community—certainly, a Jewish community like New Orleans!—versus somebody who might’ve just been coming up through the ‘Jewish conveyor belt’?
Gerber: I've always thought it was an advantage. You know, the statistics show that more Jews out there have a path like mine than the ones who stay all through confirmation, youth group, and all that stuff.
I had this great experience during rabbinical school when we were trying to reschedule a Talmud class, and the professor said, “Oh, let's do February 8,” or whatever it was. Everybody looked at their calendar and said, “That's fine.” And I said, “That's the Super Bowl!” And somebody in my class said, “Who cares?” I said, “Everyone cares.” Literally, everyone cares. And if you want to connect with your congregants, you’d better learn to care.
Crigger: I want to step back to something you said just a minute ago about being a Jewish kid in a Catholic fraternity. I imagine that would be a great “opportunity,” [ed. note: finger quotes not shown] let's put it, to have sorts of conversations with kids of different backgrounds and so on. Did it end up being that way? Or was it more—because you were saying that you didn't have a lot of the answers that they they had been asking you—
Gerber: Well, I got to meet a different type of person. Growing up in suburban St. Louis, our school was closed on Yom Kippur and on Rosh Hashanah, and everybody knew who Jews were. In Bloomington, Indiana, IU has a big Jewish population, but I wasn't part of it. And so I've met people who asked where my horns were. You know, people who just literally had never seen a Jew in real life.
It shocked me that that type of person was out there. It showed me a different side of the world. It's a unique perspective.
I've met people who asked where my horns were. You know, people who just literally had never seen a Jew in real life. It shocked me that that type of person was out there. It showed me a different side of the world.
-Rabbi David Gerber
Crigger: So you are kinda, on paper, a contradiction in terms. You lead a Reform congregation, which is a flavor of Judaism that favors social action and would be considered progressive, yet we're in the reddest parish (or county) in the reddest state in the country, right? So how do you find yourself threading your needles? Or do you even see these as needles to be threaded?
Gerber: It's a great question. The way I see it is, they should not be needles to be threaded.
You know, New Orleans—Jefferson Parish, in particular—is a great example of, in a lot of ways, how society should work. We're sitting across from a Catholic church, and I can tell you that politically, we probably don't agree on much between the two. There are elements that the Catholic Church believes in that we find abhorrent. But when [Hurricane] Katrina damaged their building, we helped them. And when a fire damaged our preschool, they came in and bought out our baked goods supply.
The idea that we are only able to have this bubble of people around us who agree with us on all things…[shakes head].
You know, it's the beauty of of our sanctuary here. When you come to services, you are sitting around a mixture of “red” and “blue” people, and you wouldn't know, because Judaism is what we have in common. And, you know, I may be an advocate of things that they detest across the street, but when it comes to Israel, we have that in common.
So, you know, we can't just cut off every person we disagree with. We'd all be in the Fortress of Solitude for eternity.
Crigger: Nice reference.
Gerber. Thank you. My career, in a lot of ways, is fighting for the beautiful, wonderful center that we have lost in our country.
Crigger: Well put. I want to drill down on that a little bit further. I'm going to ask you something that might sound, on the surface, to be a silly question, but I don't intend it in a silly way: Why is it so important for us to be able to talk to one another?
Gerber: Because if we don't talk to the people we disagree with, they become enemies. And we've seen what happens when the Other is dehumanized to the point of an enemy. You know, that's what January 6th was. That's what a lot of these protests are, where you see Hamas and Hezbollah flags. That's the world we live in.
From my perspective, religiously, the Talmud—which represents centuries of Jewish thought, of rabbis arguing with each other; not just sitting at the table arguing, but arguing with rabbis who've been dead for 200 years—is a prime example of this type of society we could have.
The Talmud tells us we should go into every argument, every discussion, with the hope of being proven wrong. Because if you are proven wrong, you're one step closer to truth. And that's the point of an argument. It’s truth. It's not to win. It's to find truth. That’s such a strange concept for our world, and it shouldn't be.
We should go into every argument with the hope of being proven wrong. Because if you are proven wrong, you are one step closer to truth.
Crigger: Let's linger there for a moment. What else does Torah/Talmud teach us about how to have constructive dialogue?
Gerber: The Talmud doesn't just have the good arguments. It has the bad arguments, too. It has the things that are demonstrably proven wrong.
It's why you show your work when you do math! You know, if you don't show your work, you have no idea if you really know how to do it, or if you guessed right.
You know, issues come up today that they [the rabbis who wrote the Talmud] would have never thought about. Self driving cars, or a Torah scroll written by a robot. We don't just take that question and start “thinking.” We study. We see what rabbis have said. [You ask yourself, ] “What's the concern about self driving cars?” Well, is it a violation of Shabbat? So then you go back, and you read the laws of Shabbat, and you read how it's changed over the years and why it's changed. Somebody said, “Well, this is how it should be,” and then the next person said, “No, that shouldn’t be this way, because of this.” It saves you the work. So you are engaging these [Talmudic] rabbis in your argument.
The thing about right and wrong is sometimes it varies generationally. Sometimes it varies situationally. You know, it is a sin in Judaism to break Shabbat. But if you're a doctor and somebody is in need of care on Shabbat, it is a sin not to break Shabbat.
So we don't live in a world of absolutes. We live in a world of eternal dialogue between what we should do and what we can do. And once something's true, it doesn't mean it's true forever.
We don’t live in a world of absolutes. We live in a world of eternal dialogue between what we should do and what we can do. And once something’s true, it doesn’t mean it’s true forever.
-Rabbi David Gerber
The words on the page don't change, but how we understand them does. So we have to keep reciting these arguments and looking and seeing what fits with us, and how it works. As we grow up, we have different understandings. So you take these words, look at them, take them into your heart, and see what your heart tells you to do.
Crigger: I want to bring it back closer to home. You are very involved in the interfaith efforts in New Orleans. We have a kind of a melting pot here of all different backgrounds, walks of life, and religions all living together. What has being involved in interfaith relations taught you about how to have a constructive dialogue?
Gerber: You know, interfaith work is some of the best examples of dialogue you can find. When I go to a church, or when a Catholic school comes to visit here, they just want to learn. There's no ego in it. There's no, “Well, my religion says this.” It's just: What does that stained glass mean? Why do you have it? What does the Torah look like? It's just a sense of wanting to understand something entirely new.
I've never been in an interfaith setting that's been combative. It's always just been, “Teach me what your life is like. Teach me what your tradition is like.”
Now, when I sit on a panel of different Jews, it can get combative.
Crigger: It gets a little spicy.
Gerber: Yeah!
Crigger: It seems like to have that constructive conversation in place, there needs to be that kind of framework that this is a Time and a Place where we are going to learn from one another. Do you think that we are missing those frameworks in our society right now? That those frameworks—or institutions, or whatever you want to call them—are eroding?
Gerber: Yeah, I think the education system… You know, Louisiana is not ranked very high in education. Our education is, I think, a reflection of where our society is. I remember being a kid and learning in school about the policies of George Bush and Michael Dukakis. Could you imagine a school doing that today? If you found out that your school looked at the policies of Donald Trump and Joe Biden, what with Instagram and social media, there'd be somebody fired within moments.
We don't have that anymore. I just don't know that we value it anymore. We isolate from it.
There are things that I know because I've been a teacher at Loyola [University] and and I teach sometimes at some local, private schools, and there are topics they just won't touch. There's this fear of discussing anything, politics, religion—
Crigger: So you think that it starts with how we're teaching our kids. We don't teach them how to hold two opposing, or multiple opposing, views, and to understand the different parts of an argument anymore. That's where the failure begins?
Gerber: I think that there's a fear of it. I think, with as litigious as our society is, people don't like to rock boats. They don't like to challenge norms. And now our government is dictating what happens in our classroom. It's very strange.
Crigger: You're referring to the Ten Commandments law that's being posted [in Louisiana], or just generally speaking? [ed. note: For more info about Louisiana’s Ten Commandments law, check out this op-ed I wrote for Forward just after the law took effect.]
Gerber: Yeah. But there are other laws. I mean, I was working with the PFLAG, the Parents, [Families] And Friends of Lesbians and Gays community, and they've had to change the language of their ally clubs in schools because they used to [be called] the Gay-Lesbian-Ally Alliance, and they can't call it that anymore. Because they're not allowed to use words gay and lesbian. [ed. note: Louisiana passed a “don’t say gay” bill in May 2024]
So this is drifting into a weird area, but our freedoms, we're losing them. We're losing freedoms in this country. And, by the way, like, kids should know the Ten Commandments—if they're religious. Like, that's what we do at a synagogue! We make sure our kids know the Ten Commandments. That's where you do it: in the synagogue.
Crigger: How does one converse, I guess, in a healthy, rational, constructive way, with someone whom they just aren't going to agree with. What's the secret?
Gerber: So when we do Torah study (Bible study), or when we do an adult learning class, we say a blessing at the beginning of it. It doesn't matter what the blessing is, for the average person, but it's a blessing that we're sitting here studying Torah. And when that blessing is said, the conversation at the table is different.
You know, we have a News & Schmooze [congregational get-together] on Wednesdays. No blessing, just schmoozing. And sometimes it gets political. And sometimes people argue. It’s different.
Arguing is a sacred task, and it should be recognized and valued as such. It's like saying the blessing before you eat: When you say the blessing before you eat, the meal becomes sacred. It's the same meal—you could be at McDonald's—but if you say the blessing, then you're doing something sacred.
Arguing is a sacred task, and it should be recognized and valued as such.
-Rabbi David Gerber
When we sit down with somebody we disagree with, you have to acknowledge the value of it before the conversation even starts. Both people have to acknowledge the value of it. If both people don't acknowledge the value of conversations with a person of differing opinions, then you're going to get that banging-your-head-into-the-wall situation. And, quite frankly, sometimes that has a value, and sometimes it doesn't. You know, when you're walking down the street and you see somebody with a Hamas flag, that's probably not the place to come sit down and have a discussion!
I think every time I've ever sat down with a group at a synagogue knowing it was going to be a tough conversation, I’ve started with the same Talmudic story—it’s not even a story; it's a directive from the Talmud. It says that when two people sit down to study Torah, they should argue and fight as if they're enemies at war, but they shouldn't get up from that spot until they love each other like a father and son.
If you care about something, you should be passionate about it. But if you're not willing to stand up from the table with love in your heart for the other person, then you're not ready for the conversation.
And I would also submit that the things we generally argue about are not worthy of the rage that we that we think that they are. I mean, it's a lot of times we just want to be right so badly.
I'll go to the Talmud one more time. Back in the day, they would have these schools of learning, and your position in the school was based on where you sit.
Crigger: In the classroom, you sit on this side, or you sit on that side.
Gerber: Right. So the closer you were to the front, the more knowledgeable and skilled you were. Then once you reached a certain point of being knowledgeable, you were no longer in the front row; you were the teacher. The Talmud says that every morning when the school would open, everyone to rush to get to their seat as soon as they could—and they were rushing to get to the back.
For one, you could imagine it's much better to be told to move forward than it is to move back. But the humility they had to say, “I don't know everything I think I know. I may know what I think, but I don't know what I know.” To sit in the back and be prepared to learn is a mentality that not many people have these days.
Some do! This very week, somebody came in. The text that I got that sparked the meeting was, “How could any Jew vote Democrat?” Of course, I said, “Let's come talk.” And it started with a statement of ignorance. I don't really know these things; I just know what I feel. And it led to a good discussion.
It's a good thing to talk. It's good thing to be wrong. I mean, it's okay. It's not something we should be afraid of.
You know, there's a blessing: Baruch atah Adonai, Elohenu melech ha’olam shenatan lanu hizdamu l’tikkein atah olam [ed: I did my best to transliterate that, but he went pretty fast. Any errors are mine and mine alone.] I'll translate. Blessed are you God who has given us the opportunity to fix a broken world. You know, it is an opportunity.
Crigger: Let me close with this question. What is the best lesson you ever received about how to have a constructive dialogue with someone?
Gerber: So I'm going to the Torah for this. Deuteronomy. Man is a tree in the field. And if you've ever seen a plant grow, it grows towards the sun; as the sun moves, the plant moves. But in a forest, the other trees around you prevent that, and you grow straight.
When we isolate ourselves, we completely grow intellectually towards the voice we're hearing. If we're only listening to this news station, or if we're only listening to an echo chamber of people who agree with us, then we're going to grow crooked.
If we can put ourselves in places with a diversity of opinions, it'll make us better people. Division keeps us apart. Diversity brings us together.
If we can put ourselves in places with a diversity of opinions, it’ll make us better people. Division keeps us apart. Diversity brings us together.
-Rabbi David Gerber
Crigger: Thank you so much for sitting down with me and chatting. This was a great, great conversation.
Gerber: A pleasure! Any time.
Really good. Thank you.