Peace in the Face of War

type of table turning Dr Sacks calls perfect repentance, but to accomplish it,
Judah had momentarily to stand in the place of the one he sold into slavery,
himself becoming a slave. Dr Sacks calls this mental exercise, ‘role reversal’
and a useful tool in all conflicted relationships, but especially useful for those
engaged in modern conflict resolution.
Role reversal then is an intellectual exercise, a kind of empathy, whereby
I imagine myself standing in the ‘place’ of the other person, particularly
when the ‘other’ is facing crisis, experiencing to whatever degree possible
that which they are experiencing emotionally, mentally, spiritually, pretty
much as though I myself was experiencing it first hand. While this narrative
appears in Genesis, it is not something that any of the Abrahamic faiths have
ordinarily encouraged to date, because doing so would weaken the grip of
the group ethic – the idea of ‘them’ and ‘us’.
A humanitarian as opposed to a group ethic requires the most difficult of
all imaginative exercises: role reversal – putting yourself in the place of
those you despise, or pity, or simply do not understand. Not only do most
religions not do this. They make it almost impossible to do so. 1
Role reversal is ‘almost impossible’ because it puts us in the opposite camp,
assuming the modes of thought of the other, standing on a precipice as it
were of even a conversion experience, assuming something of the other’s
reality. It is an educative tool and would most likely find its most creative
application in violence prevention:
To be cured of potential violence towards the Other, I must be able to imagine
myself as the Other. The Hutu in Rwanda has to be able to experience what
it is like to be a Tutsi. The Serb has to imagine himself a Croat or a Muslim.
The anti–Semite has to discover that he is a Jew. 2
It amounts to wrestling with the angel. As Dr Sacks emphasises, it is not an
exercise that comes easily to the Abrahamic faiths.
For a Jew, Christian or Muslim to make space for the Other, he or she
would have to undergo the most profound and disorienting role reversal. A
Christian would have to imagine what it would have been like to be a French
or German Jew at the time of the Crusades. A Muslim would have to imagine
what it would have been like to be a Jew in Baghdad in the eighth century,
forced to wear a yellow badge of shame, walk the street with downcast eyes
and stand and be silent in the presence of a Muslim. A Jew would have to
imagine what it would be like to be…
1
Ibid, 183
2
In reference to Csanad Szegedi, who, at the turn of this century was a leading member of an ultranationalist
Hungarian political party that held strong anti-Semitic views. Then he discovered his
grandparents were survivors of Auschwitz and that he was a Jew.
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