Keep Talking

The interview was barely underway when the shouting started.

Ehud Olmert kept talking.

I listened to the program on the radio, so maybe there were even more than the three or four people I could hear shouting from the house. Since their remarks were so similar and occurred at regular intervals, it seems clear the disruption was orchestrated.

Olmert didn't miss a beat.

He didn't argue with the hecklers. He didn't even discuss them, really. At one point, he told the moderator that most of the audience probably wanted to listen and that eventually the noise would dissipate and "we can have a conversation," adding that he was available until midnight.

Ironically, the moderator had begun with a departure from the customary,"I have the pleasure of introducing _____," which was replaced by "I have the opportunity . . . "

And what an opportunity anyone listening to the program that night has had.

It was the opportunity to see grace under fire.

Because it is a war, these days. A war between those who want to express and hear ideas and those who value only their own perspective and think it fine to try to silence those who disagree with them.

"'Everyone else is just like me,'" commented Ira Glass on This American Life. "Isn't that the mistake that makes the world go around?"

So whatever you think of a given speaker (and Olmert is hardly a saint), just one simple request: Let the person speak.

Which reminds me: Here I am telling you it's important not to yell something out in a public place--yet I found myself doing just that at the local showing of Simone Bitton's movie, Rachel.

When the crowd booed, hissed, and tried to shout down a man I'd never seen before* who was onstage trying to address the audience, at last I couldn't help myself and called out, "Let him speak!"

It didn't work.

People were so sure they were right and he was wrong that they didn't trouble themselves to consider what the logical extension of their actions might be.

So let's consider it here. What happens, in many corners of the world, when people say unpopular things?

They are silenced, by any means necessary.

No one physically attacked the man that night at the Castro Theatre, thank goodness, and no one attacked Olmert, either. But make no mistake: Shouting someone down is a violent act.

So todah rabah, Prime Minister Olmert, and yasher koach. I don't have to agree with everything you say or do, or everything the Israeli government does. (Heck, half the Israelis don't agree with the government, just as we don't always agree with ours. I like what Robert Pinsky said: "I think being patriotic ought to mean caring enough about your country to be critical of it.")

The only way to end the war against free speech is to do precisely what Olmert did. Refuse to be intimidated. Refuse to be silenced. Keep talking.

*I later found out who he was. But it really doesn't matter. He had been invited by the Jewish Film Festival to address the audience. Several audience members decided (in advance, some say) not to let him do so. During the Q&A, a man raised his hand and was called on. Some in the crowd didn't like what he had to say, either, and tried to shout him down. I was several rows behind him and didn't recognize him until the director of the festival said, "It's okay," adding that he knew So-and-So. But this was beside the point. The man in the audience deserved to be heard out not because he was So-and-So and someone could vouch for him, but because he was a member of the audience who was trying to ask a question.

©2009 Laynie Tzena.

Grace notes, 5/12/10: Silly me. I had thought we were all there to see the movie. It had been a busy time, and so I had missed a couple of issues of our local Jewish newspaper. After the incident I read a few of the letters, and after I wrote "Keep Talking" I went back and read more of them, trying to start at the beginning (though of course there is no beginning or end to this, trust me) and reading everything people had had to say on the matter in the weeks leading up to the showing of Rachel.

At first I just thought some of us had wandered that night into a meeting of the Hatfields and the McCoys or, if you prefer, the Sharks and the Jets--i.e., much of the audience apparently didn't go to the Castro that night to see Rachel. They went to attack each other, to score points.

Much of the ensuing battle seems to have been driven by footage of the brouhaha posted on YouTube (later expanded well beyond the events that night). And isn't it odd that in all the talk about the matter, none of us stepped back to say, "Wait a minute. Things don't show up on YouTube by magic."

So was it a simple matter of outrage over the showing of the film and presence of Cindy Corrie and the good fortune to be in the perfect position to get it all on tape? Or was a bit more planning involved, with the film festival audience turned into actors in an unannounced movie or two being made that very night?

Even the gentleman in the audience--when I thought about it again recently, I remembered that his question was something to the effect of, "Will the Jewish Film Festival admit that it made a mistake by showing the movie?" In other words, he was asking a rhetorical question, not a real one. This doesn't justify booing, hissing, and trying to shout him down, of course, but it does suggest that neither side was really interested in dialogue.

And speaking of dialogue going bye-bye: Sad to see Rabbi Peretz Wolf-Prusan, a man with a wealth of knowledge, extensive firsthand experience, and deep love of Israel combined with a demonstrated interest in and respect for different points of view about it, is leaving Congregation Emanu-El. I have been privileged to study Talmud with the rabbi for a few years now. If only Talmud study could be prescribed like medicine. There you have it, in the voices recorded on the page and those coming to you live from every corner of the room (try it sometime), proof positive that there is more than one way of looking at things. Todah rabah, Rabbi Peretz, for your devotion to the community and all your good work. May you go from strength to strength.