Melanie Brown: We must embrace difference, not tolerate it

There is an injunction from the Bible, Leviticus 19:18 to be precise, upon which infinite numbers of translations and reinterpretations manage to reach an agreement. It reads: “Love thy neighbour.”

Even for those for whom teachings from the Bible have no meaning, surely this isn’t a bad idea? Love thy neighbour.

Try to overlook the loud music after midnight, the barking dogs, the encroachment into parking spaces and the blotting-out of sunlight in the garden in pursuit of a long and happy life at close quarters with one another. Love thy neighbour.

Put aside the more complicated impedimenta: the resentment, the mistrust, the dislike, the contempt, the baggage that that weighs us down. That’s better. Love thy neighbour.

And what of the processes that might lead to love, especially between neighbours: understanding, respect, trust, friendship? Perhaps, these are already an integral part of your modus operandi for living, or of mine. Love thy neighbour.

However, love is complicated, and the language of love even more so. Difficult to get it right; disastrous when it goes wrong.

The need for intercultural dialogue grows out of an imperative to make fewer mistakes with regard to this particular linguistic application. We no longer have the luxury of time to rehearse our cultural competences until the mistakes of society are ironed out, and we move progressively towards greater unity.

Yet if our journey is not far under way, how shall we accelerate it? Easy: what could be more indicative of good intentions towards the person over there than tolerance? No need to get involved; just tolerate him or her.

Fragile relationship

Tolerance is not enough. A societal framework, or indeed any relationship predicated solely on tolerance, is a fragile one. Intercultural dialogue, at its most prescriptive, expunges “tolerance” from the lexicon.

This leads us away from the passivity suggested by a position of tolerance and towards something more mutually experiential and beneficial; away from conditional acceptance of differences between people (whether of age, wealth, profession, religion, history, culture, nationality, sexuality, race or indeed any part of the warp and weft of human identity) and towards a more whole-hearted embrace.

Towards the recognition that otherness, whether real or perceived, need not impede relationships, deny rights or strip dignity away; that it will not cause our own sense of self to be subsumed or obliterated.

There are others among us now. They are of us. If Irishness is quantifiable, then they are as symbolically Irish as a red-haired child on a John Hinde postcard. We are they; they are us.

Happily, there is a long tradition of dialogue between faiths at an organisational level here in Ireland, and more such partnerships have burgeoned in the last few years. These are agencies of societal change, dedicating time and space to talking and listening; reconciliation and mediation; reflection and action; knowing and belonging.

Tragic events

I give as an example the Dublin City Interfaith Forum (DCIF), not because it is possible or even appropriate to liken or compare it with any other such group, but simply because I am a part of it. The DCIF carries out an impressive schedule of activities each year, promoting co-operation between members of the multitude of faith and cultural traditions in Dublin.

Recently a meeting was held between the DCIF and the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Brendan Carr. The Lord Mayor spoke eloquently about the need to promote integration within Irish society as we continue to witness tragic events unfolding in Europe and beyond.

We know this violence to be rooted in the hatred and enmity that grows out of irreconcilable differences between peoples; the objectifying and denial of the extrinsic; the dehumanisation, first of the other, then of the self.

Interfaith, intercultural, interreligious dialogue, call it what you will; it needs to move away from its theoretical basis, its discussion groups, its university lecture rooms. It must find its way into wider society.

It can and should take place at the breakfast table, the workplace, the bar, the gym, the choir. Wherever we are gathered together, people of different faith and people of no faith, we need to engage; we need to belong.

The alternative is too terrible to contemplate.

Dr Melanie Brown represents the Orthodox Jewish community of Dublin on the Dublin City Interfaith Forum