How do you say pluralism in Hebrew?

Some fifteen years ago I was a serving as rabbi in the wonderful Leo Baeck Education Center in Haifa. The relationship between the City of Haifa and the Jewish community of Boston was just beginning to develop, and a delegation was sent out from the Middle East to the North East to discuss terms and details.

I was in my office one day when I received a call from an acquaintance who was part of the Haifa group. I was surprised, since I knew he was in the States and it was the middle of the night over there. When I inquired as to the purpose of his apparently urgent call, he explained: "I have spent the day with representatives of the Boston CJP [the Federation equivalent]. All day long they have talked to me about their commitment to pluralism, and I have nodded furiously and agreed vociferously.

"But tomorrow they want me to say something about our commitment to pluralism, and I realize I know nothing at all about the subject. Rabbi, you're both Reform and born in Britain, but you have been in Israel a while and seem OK. So tell me, what are they talking about when they say pluralism?"

My nocturnal caller was not alone. Fifteen years ago the term "pluralism" was hardly used in Israeli discourse, and more often than not it emerged when an Anglophone philanthropist mentioned it as an interest or a priority. In Hebrew, our Movement's Israel Religious Action Center is called the Center for Pluralism, and I am informed that to this day they receive calls from would-be clients convinced they are talking to the Center for Floralism (in Hebrew it looks the same without the vowels). They still have to turn away orders for wreaths and bouquets.

In the years following my call from Boston, however, there has been a distinct increase in the use of the term 'pluralism' in a variety of contexts. This week a major conference on the theme of Pluralistic Jewish Education was sponsored jointly by the Melton Center for Jewish Education at the Hebrew University and my own institution, the Hebrew Union College. It attracted presenters and participants from around Israel, the United States, the United Kingdom and even Finland, and it marks a distinct upgrade in intellectual discourse about this important yet elusive concept.

In one session, a panel comprising principals from four Israeli schools discussed dilemmas of pluralism as they encounter them every day in the field. It is interesting to note that this discussion included important figures from the Modern Orthodox community, as well as the "usual suspects." Increasingly, it is becoming clear that the divisions in Israeli society are not between those who belong to one team and those who belong to another - the Sharks against the Jets, Middle East Side Story. Rather, the conflict is between those who insist on imposing their will exclusively on the rest of us, and those of us who prefer to live in the midst of difference and diversity.

It is such an apt message for this period, the month of Av. In my remarks at the opening of the conference, I cited a Midrash on the first verse of the Book of Lamentations. That verse includes twice the word rabati, indicating greatness, abundance. The Midrash expresses that while one term relates to the great number of inhabitants in the city of Jerusalem before destruction, the second term indicates rabati be-de'ot. While this is usually interpreted as meaning that there was great knowledge among the people Israel, I suggested that the term bore a further meaning - namely that there was a multitude of opinions.

Some see this multiplicity as a weakness or a sin, as the very cause for the destruction of Jerusalem. Others, I among them, would argue that it is not plurality which caused our downfall - it is simply a fact of life: there is more in heaven and earth than my philosophy or yours can adequately contain in banal generalities. Rather, the challenge our people has always faced is to create conditions which allow for a broad range of beliefs and opinions. Our people at its best fulfills the Biblical description which Jews around the world recite on the Ninth of Av - rabati am, which I choose to translate as: a people of pluralism.

Together with my colleague, an Orthodox woman dedicated to "thick" pluralism in Israeli society, I presented a paper which used another Biblical phrase, emet ve-anava, truth and humility. It is quite true that Jerusalem has never stood for amoral passivity, for complicity with evil. But at the heart of Jerusalem there should also be an essential humility, an understanding that infallibility is a Divine attribute, not a virtue monopolized by some self-appointed arbiter of rectitude. I am always aware that my bitterest adversary across the denominational and theological divide carries within them a spark which I wish to protect, not extinguish.

We often describe our Jewish story as the stubborn fight to protect Truth against all lies. As we mark Ninth of Av this year against the backdrop of rancor and anger and impatience and indignation, we might tell another story - one in which the Great Truth beyond any of us emerges when we find a way of relating to each other in respect, in decency, in causeless love.

One Orthodox rabbi present at our conference noted that there can hardly be a more pressing question on Israel's social agenda than that of pluralism. After all, the essence of the question is whether we will be able to live together in this country - Jews of different stripes and strictures, customs and costumes, modernists and traditionalists, Rightists and Leftists - and also Muslim, Christian, Druze and more. We need to find a language of pluralism within the Jewish community and beyond it, if we are to have a chance of surviving our threats and challenges.

Fifteen years ago there was hardly a way of talking about pluralism in this country. There are still many pockets of society in which this word is either dirty or invisible. But slowly, inexorably, under the radar and far from the headlines, a new voice is emerging. If we are not to be doomed to recite new Lamentations, we need to rediscover the rabati am, the people of diversity, the people of pluralism. As you mark the ninth of Av this year in Jerusalem or Jersey, in Netanya or Nepal, chew on that.