Think global
When building our communities we need to keep our vision for the world in mind, says Laurie Michaelis
Growing up as a Jew, I saw some very different faces of community. The Torah tells us to love the stranger ‘for you were strangers in Egypt’. My mother taught me that Jews were called by experience to live out a deeply moral and inclusive vision of a better world. But I encountered another element in Jewish culture that seemed very different – introspective and defensive, with a conviction that the only potential for security is through self-reliance in a fortress nation-state.
Jennifer Barraclough spoke to the Yearly Meeting Gathering this week about her experiences of community. She said that a community with a strong identity doesn’t exclude its neighbours, but nor should it try to include them; they are neighbours. She also talked about having a story – concrete and abstract ideas about who we are and what we do.
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