Commissioned by the Chambre d'O festival in Ostende, this text was written in the context of the 7th of October attack and the Israeli military reaction in Gaza. The setting of the perfomance was given, during a dinner, around a long table. We perfomed it while standing at the two ends, separated by the table, meausring around 7 meters.

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One may rightly wonder, why are we, coming from a region drenched in a bloody conflict for the past 100 years or so, were invited to speak to you today about conflict. Here, in Ostend, in Belgium, a country that despite many persisting problems continues to be a model for resolving un-resolvable divisions.
One possible answer is that we are here to speak about conflicts, not about their resolution. And the conflict to which we were born, some 50 years ago, in Israel, was for us indeed, a fact of life. Like the 300 days of sun per year or the total collapse of the traffic light system on the first day of rain, the conflict was there.
But it was not unchanged. It changed forms and intensities and more importantly, if at first it was seen as  a temporary thing that will one day give place to peace, as years have passed the conflict became something that is there to stay, something to be managed, to be kept on a low fire. The word peace became unspeakable, forgotten.

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One may wonder, rightly, why is it so complicated to live peacefully in one territory, or to divide a territory between two groups. But territory is only a symptom, the real conflict is between narratives. And when one says narratives one says myths, beliefs, emotions.
These myths, beliefs and emotions can be old or recent, based on facts or completely invented. One may call them creatures of the imagination. Yes, they are a creation of our collective spirit. But this doesn't mean they can be disregarded. Imagination is REAL. It is part of us, part of our lives and of our reality. So reducing the conflict to a dispute over a piece of land or a pile of stones (like the wailing wall or the temple mount), is not only un-useful but also not truthful to the huge role that imagination plays.
The thing is...that we sometimes don't use enough imagination in dealing with this imagination. But we'll get back to that.

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So from our Israeli background we can only speak about the failure of dealing with the conflict. But maybe our Jewish background can come to our rescue. There's an old joke about a jew that survived a drowning boat and found himself on a lonely island. Years later visitors have arrived on the island and were astonished to find that the man has built a hut to live in, and two synagogues. Why do you need two synagogues? they asked. One to pray in, said the man, and one to never put my foot in.
Joke aside, Dispute, disagreement, divided positions are main features in Jewish tradition, they are part of its DNA. It is probably the most common feature of the TALMUD, or GMARA, this set of 20 volumes, 2700 folio pages, that are not only the primary source of jewish laws but also detail the debates and juridical procedures that determined these laws. These are mainly stories of disagreements that can sometimes get quite extreme.

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Let us tell you one of them, in an approximate translation. The juridical question in this story is almost of no importance because what follows is a much more of an essential dispute about the way to settle disagreements. In the story, all the scholars, or the sages, including the head of the assembly, Rabbi Joshua, have the same opinion, while Rabbi Eliezer holds an opposite opinion. He is sure to know the right rule and doesn't let go. When the assembly wants to decide according to the opinion of the majority, Rabbi Eliezer does not accept and says: If I am right, this tree will prove it. And the tree moved 25 meters away.
Rabbi Joshua, the eldest of the sages said: One doesn't bring evidence from a tree!
Rabbi Eliezer insisted: If I am right, this water canal will prove it. And the water started running upstream.
Rabbi Joshua replied: One does not bring evidence from the water canal!
And Rabbi Eliezer went on: If I am right, the walls of this room will prove it. And the walls of the room started leaning inwards and almost fell on the assembly.
Rabbi Joshua scolded them: wise scholars are fighting here over the law, and who are you to intervene?! And the walls stopped their fall and didn't collapse, but they also didn't straighten up, out of respect for both Rabbis.
Rabbi Eliezer didn't stop: If I am right, heaven will prove it. And a voice came from heaven and said: wise men, why are you arguing with Rabbi Eliezer? for he got it right.
Said Rabbi Joshua: this has nothing to do with heaven!

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This is a very challenging story that continues to puzzle some 1500 years later. It is a fertile ground for multiple interpretations. The most common one is that the Hebrew law was given to the people on Mount Sinai and from then on, it's for the people to figure it out, according to their own logic and to the conventional procedures, which include, for example, the rule of the majority, and do not include divine intervention.
Still, how come Rabbi Joshua refuses an explicit revelation of the absolute truth?!
Any person with some healthy sense of justice should find this weird if not outraging.
But what if Rabbi Joshua is trying to tell us something bigger here?
This has nothing to do with heaven!  This isn't a matter of heaven, exactly because we are not here to find the absolute truth – be it a historical, theological, or ideological one. It is not about ideas, narratives, as these will always stay relative and contested in our human society. And this is how it should be. Indeed, the TALMUD never bothers to deal directly with heavenly matters, theoretical, shapeless ideas that belong to the realm of the imaginary. It is never a question of who possesses the correct narrative or whose worldview is more faithful to reality (or to God's will). But it's about practical questions of daily life, questions that need to be solved pragmatically, need to be amended, need to be settled.  And because it is an earthly matter – it is for human beings to decide on a solution, because for these matters a solution IS ALWAYS POSSIBLE.
How to live together. How to assure safety and equal rights to everyone. If we put aside the quest for absolute truth, these questions all of the sudden seem possible to deal with.
So why did we say that we need more imagination?

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BREAKING A PLATE

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In Jewish tradition when an object falls and breaks into pieces, the witnesses to the event immediately comment by joyfully calling MAZEL TOV, MAZEL TOV! (a phrase that means Good luck, or success!)
One may understand this as a rather straightforward coping mechanism:  Something is lost, but it is just an object, luckily nothing worse. But, again, we propose to look at it differently.
What if this sentence was actually saying that in the utter loss there is an opportunity. That in this state of things that cannot be undone, when we have reached a point of no return and everything seems to be, and IS shattered, this is where one should see an opportunity. Not to reconstruct what was there before, as this is not even possible, but to look at the broken pieces and to start building something else.

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And this is where imagination steps in.
IF WE'D LIKE TO THINK PRACTICALLY TOWARDS LIVABLE SOLUTIONS, WE NEED IMAGINATION.
BECAUSE IMAGNATION IS REAL.