What is your favorite soup? Take a moment to think — we’ll come back to it.

My name is Charlie and I’m a McCormick senior. I will be serving our undergraduate Jewish community this year as the Hillel representative on Associated Student Government. As our campus gears up for another year of lively and passionate discourse, I wish to outline my approach to constructive dialogue, specifically as it pertains to campus discussion surrounding Israel-Palestine, and also to share some personal goals for the year as member of and spokesperson for one of Northwestern’s many organized communities. But first, I’ll ask you to think back to your favorite soup.

What are the three primary ingredients simmering in the pot before you? Perhaps vegetables, a bouillon cube, some meat or noodles. Now think critically about the mixture itself: which ingredient is most crucial to the recipe? Is it the broth in which the carrots float? Or is it the carrots steeping in that broth? And on which ingredient would you be first to compromise if the pantry runs low, or empty?

Grappling with the delicate interplay between ingredients in a bowl of soup can help one better comprehend the complex relationships between what makes up one’s values framework.

Each of us sees through a lens of competing values that allows us to perceive and judge the world. Some typical values include commitment to community, compassion, justice, equality, self-preservation, faith and tolerance. It is the recipe of these values — the values soup — that ultimately informs our own political, social and religious ideologies. Different measurements mean different priorities.

In order to foster more productive conversations with those we disagree with, we must recognize the universality of non-universal values. When I encounter somebody whose beliefs differ from mine, I strive to understand their conclusions intellectually but also as a product of a wholly unique values framework. I can maintain the legitimacy of my own truth while also acknowledging the validity of another.

NU students, we must engage with each other in this pluralistic spirit or risk settling into a fundamentalist stalemate.

If we take a step back from traditional Israel-Palestine campus dialogue, we see that outspoken students and organizations which appear to be diametrically opposed are in fact arguing on behalf of the same values! This surprising realization makes a great deal of sense in the context of values soup: same values, different recipe.

Longing for justice, innate drive for self-preservation, cherishing community in the face of diaspora — these values are important to both American Jews and Palestinian-Americans. However, the distinct collective memories of each community inform different manifestations of the same values. Each has unique traumas and experiences that dictate which values must take precedent when others are threatened, as has occurred to both groups throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

The “Israeli or Jewish narratives” and “Palestinian narrative” are more than simply selective readings of the same historical facts. Both lenses are delicately shaped by a complex broth of underlying values. Without attempting to understand the basis of another’s values framework, or even acknowledging its existence, one cannot help but outright reject the other’s conclusions. In other words, genuine empathy begets pluralistic dialogue.

And yet it is my own privilege of being physically removed from the conflict that permits me to call for pluralism and dialogue while others suffer real consequences every day. To emphasize dialogue does not minimize the need for student participation beyond just discussion. That said, dialogue and action are not mutually exclusive. Healing begins when both occur simultaneously.

As I look toward this academic year and the ensuing late-night discussions, ASG debates and heated confrontations at the Rock, I promise that as your senator I will above all else fight for a campus of pluralism. I urge you to pick up your spoon and join me.

Charlie Tokowitz
Hillel ASG Senator