On Compromise: Can A New Approach to Pluralism and Persuasion Heal Divided Communities?

Promoting Civil Discourse & Intellectual Dialogue Series

On Compromise: Can A New Approach to Pluralism and Persuasion Heal Divided Communities?

A polarized society like ours forces us to take sides and retreat to camps on a wide set of complicated issues, and in such an environment it is harder and harder to constitute community across difference. In moments like this, we all begin to prioritize the morality of our principles over the morality of common ground. How can we remain passionate about our deeply held convictions and beliefs while sustaining diverse communities? How might we rethink our moral commitments to make possible making room for others – even if we still try to persuade others that they are wrong? Join us as we explore the roots of the current moral moment, and to think aloud about how to reorganize our world in response.

Speaker: Dr. Yehuda Kurtzer
Dr. Yehuda Kurtzer is president of the Shalom Hartman Institute. Yehuda is a leading thinker on the essential questions facing contemporary Jewish life, with a focus on issues of Jewish peoplehood and Zionism, the relationship between history and memory, and questions of leadership and change in the Jewish community. He is the author of Shuva: The Future of the Jewish Past, the co-editor of The New Jewish Canon, the host of the Identity/Crisis podcast, and the author of dozens of articles and essays about contemporary Jewish life.

As president of SHI, and formerly as founding president of SHI North America, Yehuda has helped lead the Institute’s rapid growth as a leading research and educational center for the leadership of the Jewish community, and as a trusted voice for thought leadership on the questions of the day. Yehuda designed and launched several major national initiatives in Jewish and Israel education, and teaches in the Institute’s many platforms: for rabbis, lay and professional leaders, teens and college students, and leaders of other faith communities.

Yehuda is trained as a scholar of ancient Judaism and rabbinics with a doctorate in Jewish Studies from Harvard University and previously served as a member of the faculty at Brandeis University, where he held the inaugural Chair in Jewish Communal Innovation.

He lives in New York with his wife Stephanie Ives and their three children.