City As Playground
How do interactions on a playground represent the way people relate to each other? A More Perfect Union’s Executive Director Aaron Dorfman recently spoke to Dr. Dave Hillis for his book, City As Playground, which included perspectives from a diverse set of individuals about how communities come together. The wide-ranging conversation touched on everything from the playground as a metaphor for society to the Jewish experience in America. A few excerpts from Aaron’s answers are below.
On historical Jewish guidance for governance:
“We have extensive texts that offer guidance about how to structure a city and the kind of mutual obligations and responsibilities that urban neighbors have to one another... Much of it was very pragmatic. They talked about the need for a just city. You know, these are the kinds of things that you need an order to have a community that would be holy, and that will enable its members to fulfill their responsibilities to one another.”
On the challenges and miracles of the Jewish experience in America:
“We’re torn between emphasizing the Jewish historical experience of persecution, the battleground story, and invoking a kind of miracle of what we as a Jewish community have built here in America. When else in human history have a whole bunch of people…from dozens or hundreds of different religious traditions, scores of different countries, different languages, some to escape persecution, some to seek opportunity, some against their will, all shown up in a place and tried to create a coherent society? And we – the Jewish community – have been able to be at the table. Given our history, that’s not an opportunity we can take for granted. But we also need to be attentive to the battleground memory.”
On the need for transpartisanship:
“We are going to have to be in partnership with and collaborating with and supporting and being supported by others who are not like us. One of our strategic advisors at A More Perfect Union is Dr. Hahrie Han, who runs the Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. She says that a healthy democracy is one in which people are willing to sacrifice certainty about outcomes for certainty about process. So, if I’m going to play Capture the Flag with you on the playground, I have to be willing to lose, but I also have to know that you’re not going to cheat. The rules need to be clear and fair. So, invoking those principles is important, but equally important is how we share and concern and demonstrate real attention to each other’s community by way of practice. We need to strengthen that muscle.”
