Leader, Volume 14 #3

Visionaries Are the Only Realists

The production schedule of a small bimonthly magazine being what it is, I am writing this summer leader on a day when the temperature is not expected to rise above -17. The visionary mode seems like the only appropriate one.

I am drawn towards that mode by the approach of one of the most improbable and appealing holidays in the Jewish calendar. Tu BiShvat, the new year of the trees, a celebration filled with the mood and imagery of spring in Israel, falls this year on February 5. To celebrate Tu BiShvat in the proper spirit, I have to be able to look out over the crisp white landscape and envision almond trees in bloom.

Our era provides considerable evidence for the proposition that visionaries are the only realists. Who but a visionary would have imagined ten years ago that newscasts would routinely contain reports of the activities of South African President Nelson Mandela? Or predictions of the likely outcome of the next election in Russia or Ukraine? Or analysis of the latest meeting between Yasir Arafat and the prime minister of Israel?

At the same time, the Compass editorial board has been struggling with two painful and apparently intractable issues: the constitutional future of Canada and the strong stand taken by the Vatican against even considering the ordination of women. It is not easy to apply the visionary mode to the Canadian situation. One Canadian's vision is another's nightmare. So instead of a final outcome, perhaps we need to envision a way of proceeding.

Again some of my inspiration comes from the Middle East. In organizing last January's Palestinian elections, the status of the Palestinians of Jerusalem was an especially thorny issue. No arrangement for the election that implied Palestinian sovereignty over Jerusalem would have been acceptable to Israel. No arrangement that failed to allow the Palestinians of Jerusalem to vote would have been acceptable to the Palestinian Authority.

And so the two sides worked out a deal. The canvass of voters in Jerusalem would be conducted not by the Palestinian Central Elections Commission but by the Ibrahimimiya College, a Jerusalem Palestinian educational institute. Voters would vote either at polling stations outside Jerusalem or at Israeli post offices in Jerusalem. "These post offices are not polling stations," the agreement specified; nevertheless, Palestinian voters could vote there.

The arrangements did not work perfectly. Israeli police were criticized for harassing Palestinian voters. But that such delicate arrangments could be agreed on at all seems to me a triumph of political creativity. And so my vision for Canada is that a comparable degree of creativity will be brought to bear on balancing English Canadians' deep sense of the integrity of their country, Quebecers' need for recognition and national equality, and the distinctness of other groups of Canadians, especially aboriginal people.

And my vision for the church? It is far easier to state, and yet as a non-Catholic I hesitate. Perhaps I am unfairly projecting onto very different circumstances the experience of my own religious denomination, Reform Judaism, which has been immeasurably enriched by the contributions of talented women rabbis. But the pain of my Catholic friends is palpable; a vision might help. So here goes: I imagine hearing a news item, as routinely as we now hear that President Mandela has welcomed a visiting head of state, that crowds in St. Peter's Square have been blessed by her holiness the pope.

Robert Chodos is the editor of Compass