If there is one takeaway message from Daniel Taub’s new book, Beyond Dispute, it is that we should all listen more.
Taub, arguably one of Israel’s more successful exports, is the London-born diplomat who served as Israel’s ambassador to the UK between 2011 and 2015, and has a long track record as an international lawyer and negotiator. He also has a lesser-known sideline as a playwright and, separately, as the creator of a successful TV soap opera in Israel, In the Rabbi’s Court.
His book is subtitled “Rediscovering the Jewish Art of Constructive Disagreement” — and though he says it is avowedly not a “how-to” guidebook to resolving conflicts, what it is, is a charming deep dive into the world of Jewish studies, specifically the Talmud, and what it can teach us.
Through personal anecdote drawn from his own career, and a hugely entertaining number of Jewish jokes, Taub takes the reader by the hand, to survey the endless pitfalls awaiting the unwary negotiator or disputant.
Perhaps surprisingly, one of the triggers to write the book came from a mediation process he was involved in, alongside a sheikh, at a community mediation centre in east Jerusalem. At one point in the dispute, Taub says, “he started speaking not as a mediator, but as a an imam. There was something about the way he was channelling that Islamic tradition that changed the dynamic of the conversation entirely — it was extraordinary to see”.
After that Taub was mediating between two Jewish organisations. He thought: “You both claim to be heirs to Jewish values. Isn’t there something in our tradition that could help us to have this conversation more effectively?” The more he looked into it, he says, the more struck he was “by how many of the insights, in the Jewish, rabbinic approach to argument, are now being echoed in modern social science.” He believes that the way the rabbis hammered out arguments might have a useful and practical application to present-day disputes. He says: “My hope is, that particularly in hot-button areas like campuses, that these tools might help people have more effective conversations”.
We have conversations and dialogue all the time, says Taub — “but very rarely do we step back and ask ourselves if we could have done them better”. He also observes that his book has another useful approach: not simply how to improve discussions, but also to identify “which conversations are likely to be effective, and where you probably shouldn’t waste your energy”.
By nature an optimist, Taub notes that while “the rabbis liked to say there were 70 faces of the Torah, that didn’t mean that there is not a 71st face [which perhaps had not been considered]. In Jewish tradition, it’s very rare that somebody is ruled illegitimate because of the position that they hold. The tradition was to hear what people have to say. But they are ruled out if they don’t buy into the process, if they are not interested in having the argument.”
One can easily think of numerous protagonists who might fall into this category.
Taub describes the time-honoured way of Torah study, still carried out in present-day yeshivot, of two people engaged in the Havruta, or partnership process, described as “adversarial collaboration”. They argue, discuss, parse texts, analyse. This approach, says Taub, has evolved from the principle of the concept “argument for the sake of heaven”, which he says is “a recognition that our path towards truth is integrally entwined in our engagement with others”.
• Don’t Argue Less, Argue Better! Daniel Taub in conversation with Rob Rinder – BOOK HERE
We need to be strong and secure in our own identity, and “be resilient enough to withstand difference and be strengthened by it”.
Throughout the book there are striking examples of surprising recognition of these principles. One such is Taub’s revealing account of discussions with Syria in America in 2000. The Syrians, he reports, were all in formal suits, the Israelis in more casual dress. “The Syrians were under firm instructions that there be no… small talk, no handshakes…the Syrians point-blank refused to enter any of the common spaces if any Israelis were present.” Taub says he was “taken aback” and that in previous “no less charged” negotiations with Egyptians and Jordanians, the Israelis had been able to discuss, over late-night coffee, not just conflict, but families, literature, sport and philosophy. “We were negotiators, but we were people too.”
From which we learn several things: that it is important to recognise the humanity of the other side, that food and music — often vital ice-breakers — are reminders of such humanity, and that listening, sometimes instead of declaiming the instructed opinion, can be even more constructive. All these years later, incidentally, Taub says he thinks the Syrians were right: “they realised the importance of the human dynamic.”
Taub also now acknowledges that he has changed over time. Given the opportunity, he says, to go back to diplomatic encounters, he would be more inclined to listen. He adds: “Over time, I tried to move conversations from areas of well-charted territory, where everybody knows what the other side is going to say because I find those [conversations] generally unproductive.
“In the book, there’s a story about the arms negotiations between the Russians and the Americans, that were making no progress. At one point, the American negotiator says to the Russian negotiator, you’re not giving way on anything, how are we going to move forward?
“And the Russian says, don’t you understand? You keep asking me questions to which I have the answers. Why don’t you ask me questions to which I don’t have the answers?”
Daniel Taub may not have all the answers. But he makes readers ask questions, which can only be to the good.
Beyond Dispute, by Daniel Taub, is published by Hodder and Stoughton at £25 and is currently available on Amazon UK for pre-order.
• Don’t Argue Less, Argue Better! Daniel Taub in conversation with Rob Rinder – BOOK HERE
