In the course of writing these letters, I have met a number of people who initially heard about me from others, and asked to be put on my list. One of the friends I have never met face to face has responded to me several times. Her notes have been right on the mark, and have added a twist that led me to ask, "Who are you?" She was born to a Philippine mother and adopted by American missionaries. Part of her story deals directly with what academics call "political socialization."

. . . one of the first events my mom and I went to upon our return (to the US) was the march on Washington in 1968.  And in 1971, my dad lost his pastorate because of his very vocal condemnation of the Vietnam War. My parents taught us not only to speak out against injustice, but to actively work for justice.  When they became missionaries, they saw their role not to save souls, but to help build lives – through education and medicine.  . . . (My siblings and I)  find we are more inclined to ideas and actions rather than doctrine and dogma.

This letter, like others received from this friend, got me to thinking. Not, this time about what I had written, but how my life has differed from hers.

The occasions when I have taken part in protests or demonstrations have been few in comparison to the events that I have observed from up close, but passively. Usually I have been more concerned to understand than to influence. Indeed, I have found myself probing the side being widely described as the "bad guys." On some occasions, I came to feel that they were short changed by their reputation.

I made an effort to find a teaching job in the South during the last years of segregation. I spent two years in the mid-1960's at the University of Georgia. A New York aunt said that I was crazy to take a job in the land of anti-Semites.

When I arrived at the university, the only Blacks on campus were cleaning personnel. During my time there, the federal courts got tougher, and coaches discovered the advantages of African Americans in football and basketball. I learned from colleagues, students, and state government personnel interviewed during several research projects. Some were staunch opponents of any change. One of the senior professors thought that there was nothing better than hosting a group of colleagues and students for an evening around the piano singing Protestant hymns.  Others expressed the tensions in being torn between friends and relatives adhered to older perspectives, and their own discovery of new issues. During the Six-Day War I was the only Jew in a living room filled with Baptist physicians, lawyers, professors, and merchants who were pledging their money to Israel. When I left Georgia for Wisconsin, my car carried a bumper sticker indicating that I was an honorary member of the Georgia Sheriff's Association. Someone marred the sticker when the car was parked in a University of Wisconsin lot. Not marred was my feeling that southern whites from poor and uneducated families deserve the benefits of affirmative action no less than African Americans.

Some years later I traveled to Manila as a UN advisor to the state auditor. My visit spanned the last three weeks of the election campaign that resulted in unseating Ferdinand Marcos. Marcos had a bad press as a repressive and corrupt dictator. (This was before the revelations of his wife's collection of shoes. ) My first event in Manila was a protest meeting. Senior staff personnel from the state audit organization insisted that I attend, despite having spent the most recent 36 hours in airports or the air. I fell asleep several times, but otherwise perceived a level of protest in a crowded central city theater that was anything but repressed. Some time later I learned that the state auditor was financing and publishing research by university political scientists that focused on corruption in a Philippine regime several decades earlier. According to what local scholars told me, "everyone knew" that the real topic was the Marcos regime, whose corruption was similar to that being described. It may not have been the kind of state audit conventional in western democracies. But it also did not square with the image of a dictatorship. By the time I left the country, Marcos had lost the election. A short time later the winner (Corazon Aquino) became the new president.

I have spent almost all of the past 30 years in a country that is roundly condemned for the way it defends itself. I have learned a great deal from the variety of people I have come to know and respect. They include Israeli Arabs and Palestinians, Jews who are critical of most of what has occurred here since 1880, religious settlers who describe the government of Ariel Sharon as abominable, intensely Orthodox and intensely Reformed in their religiosity, plus super patriots, and outsiders who have come to study or work, and find the place fascinating and/or puzzling.

During this time I have spent two academic year sabbaticals at universities in Utah. Along with several conversations about angels with Mormons who were enthusiastic about their faith, I came to know Mormons who were moderate, those bothered by doubt, and some who felt it was all myth, but worth accepting as the price of living in a decent society. I wrote an article arguing that neither Utah nor Israel were the theocracies that others portrayed them to be.

I have come to view coping as a typical political response to serious problems, and often a wiser course than insisting on ideal reform. This reflects my view that no side is likely to have a monopoly on truth or justice.  Being more an observer than a theorist, I would limit this declaration to contemporary situations in Israel and other well-ordered democracies. People fated to live in some regimes suffer from miseries that do not tolerate the delays and fumbling that come along with coping.

Observation is not clearly better than participation. Without active participants in politics, there would be nothing for the observers to ponder. Without some who observe and comment, however, participation is likely to rest on myth more than reality. Whose reality? That can be a problem.