Beyond Dispute: rediscovering the art of constructive disagreement (Taub) – notes on the book

These are my own gleanings from Daniel Taub (2025) Beyond Dispute: rediscovering the art of constructive disagreement. I hope they encourage you to buy the book. I have paraphrased in order to clarify my own understanding, but there are also direct quotations from the book. The notes in square brackets are my own thoughts and responses, rather than ideas gleaned from the book itself.

Introduction: Can we talk?

6 From a ‘no’ we can learn a ‘yes’ – “from a prohibition you can derive a positive value”
7 university administrations have a “prime responsibility of creating spaces which are safe for ideas and not from them”.
7 Salman Rushdie: “The idea that [students] should be protected from ideas that they might not like is the opposite of what a university should be. It’s ideas that should be protected, the discussion of ideas that should be given a safe space. The university should be a safe space for the life of a the mind.”
8 Aim to correct rather than intimidate. Paradox “You must understand me, and you’ll never understand me.”
8 Journalists want controversy and drama, and ‘bad’ actors, not positivity

Fight or flight

9 False dilemma: avoid argument, or ‘win and dazzle’ at all costs
10 Goal of winning excludes the idea of learning

Here all along

10 “trapdoors into hidden depths of perception and loyalty that unleased intense levels of emotion”
12 Behaviour doesn’t discredit ideas [or necessarily give them merit]
12 A J Heschel described Jews as a “messenger who has forgotten his message”
12 the “right kind of argument” is “way of containing the disparate elements of fractured societies” and “an engine of intellectual creativity”, “turning difference into insight”

A third way

13 “if you seek the truth you cannot fail: either you win the argument, or, if you lose, you learn and grow.”
13 Argument is a collaboration in search of truth [or useful answers]
14 some practices are designed to increase compassion [and openness] more than sharpen intellect
15 differences are embedded in identities and loyalties [so maybe find techniques not to ‘attack’ these, but to soften and loosen them. Challenging someone to change requires correspondingly high support.]
[Find out what identity or loyalty the person is defending.]
[Not all differences are relevant or need resolving.]
15 Identify whether the environment will be productive.
15 Some encounters aren’t disputes, but ‘performances’ or protestations of identity
15 If there is no practical outcome, look for other benefits

Arguing in three dimensions

16 our grasp of absolute truth is incomplete [and partisan]
16-17 be “humble about our certainties but confident in our capabilities”
17 recognising parallel ‘truths’ [narratives] and collaborative truth-seeking
17 build relationship that can survive difference, and be strengthened by it

Prologue

From Crisis to Conversation

Ancient Israel, around 70 CE

23 Argument not a bug but a feature of healthy society
23 Truth not the property of a minority, but arrived at together
23 “community born of agreement is fragile”
24 Saducee – from sadek / to be right – didn’t survive

Enter the Talmud

25 Thousand years of debate recorded in the Mishnah 200 CE, and then Gemara 600 CE
26 Bava Metzia 59 Achnai’s oven: carob tree, stream, walls, God [4 worlds: tree physical, water emotional, walls of study hall intellect, God spiritual. Torah ‘not in heaven’ & God laughs.]

A note on missing voices

29 Ilana Kurshan: reframe the Talmudic ‘man; as any self-sufficient adult.

Fast forward

29 World of divisions, factions, hostilities [and no framework for containing these safely, to achive respectful and healthy co-existence.]
30 Broad range of views available but we stay in echo chambers
30 Decline in communal life
32 Deeply divided community has been resolved before.

Principles – Rethinking Truth, Difference and Argument

Rethinking Truth: truth above and truths below

The dangers of truth

37 beware believing anyone, least of all you, can have absolute certainty
37 We’re more often wrong than right.
37 How often to we admit to others we’re wrong?

The courage to change

Truth above, truths below

40 How to avoid both absolutism and meaningless relativism?
40 Midrash: truth will grow [in multiple practical ways] from the ground (from human interpretations)
[Language shapes and expressed thought and perspective.]
41 In German, the word for key means ‘close’, and in Hebrew it means ‘open’
41 Leviticus Rabbah 1:14 We see murkily
42 Truth is clearest when we bring everything together

The fragment we hold

42 We each hold a fragment of truth – to get closer to the truth, we need others.
42 Telushkin: Adam and Eve ate fruit / part of truth, not the whole Tree of Knowledge. “We fill in the blanks with our private agenda.”
43 Our ability to change our opinion is as impressive as our efforts to form it.

Confident humility

44 We need the ability to rethink or unlearn.
44 Arrogance denies the possibility of vulnerability or flaws in our strategies.
44 Confident we can pursue truth, humble that our findings are provisional.
45 James O’Brien: it’s hard to retreat from a position arrived at 5 minutes ago.
45 None of us wants to live [or die] in armour.
[Terrified to be seen to be wrong, or lack clarity or conviction.]
[The desire and attempt to influence are based on the premise that minds should be able to change, and it can be a virtue to do so. We can lead the way by showing our own mind can change.]
46 O’Brien: “There’s no point have a mind if you never change it.”
46 Are we predictable or do we enter situations without preconceptions?

The sterility of certainty

46 Voltaire: “Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.”
46 Certainty is unproductive.

Rethinking difference: your truth and mine

48 Eilu v’eilu – “These and those are the words of the living God.” Eruvin 13b
49 God can be found on both sides of an argument, but pragmatic decisions must be taken.
49 Commandments on both sides of the tablets Ex. 32:15-16. Tradition interprets this as meaning we cannot avoid being aware of the Commandments, because there isn’t a blank side.
49 Taub: there’s more than one way to read the Commandments
50 Gittin 5b: fly and hair in soup – humans see their story about this, God sees from all angles, insisting all stories must be included.

The unity of opposites

51 Rav Kook: spaces between us provide room for us both to thrive, sharing a common soil
51 Jonathan Haidt: shared values across divides, but give them different weight
51 Two sides are complementary, with shifting balance.
52 Not tolerance, but partnership.

The myth of the lone genius

52 Joshua Wolf Shenk ‘Power of Two: finding the essence of innovation in creative pairs’: creative pairs (chevrutah, Lennon and MacCartney, Picasso and Matisse)

Rethinking argument: the truth between us

56 Don’t give question away for a mere answer.
56 Distributive issues à win-lose situation.
56 Integrative issues à find the unique agendas and meet both. Probably don’t want the same thing – so there’s no real dispute.

Truth and fiction

The search for truth – a moral journey

60 The truth must be found through relationships
60 Search for truth is moral as well as intellectual endeavour
60 Truth-seeking requires us to work on our character

The truth between us

61 Truth found in chevrutah between two cherubs on the ark
61 Martin Buber: ‘in-between’ of human relations brings into relation with God.

Arguments built to last

63 Argument for heaven – Hillel and Shammai were truth-seeking, Korach was seeking to win.
63 well-known saying in diplomatic relations “You can change my opinion, but you can’t change my instructions”
64 Jonathan Sacks: “If I argue for the sake of truth, then if I win, I win. But if I lose, I also win, because being defeated by the truth is the only defeat that is also a victory. I am enlarged. I learn something I did not know before.
64 “an argument is not a problem to be solved but an engine of creative thought, a means to generate new ideas and sparks of truth”

The limits of legitimacy – the seventy-first face of wisdom

65 “Is there a danger … of being so openminded that your brains fall out?”
65 Call in, not call out.
65 Give ridiculous ideas a respectful hearing
66 Excommunicate for unfair excommunication
66 Record all views
66 Sacks: chronological imagination says minority view might fit at another time and place.
67 Can argue with a ruling, but not disobey it.
67 Can’t reject discussion.
68 “for an agreed social system to hold, at some point the hair-splitting has to end”
68 Ina Leslie ‘Conflicted’: some people are hard to engage with because of how they disagree [What then? Can’t just let them have their way.]
68 To check for open mind, ask person to summarise opposition’s argument.
69 mediaeval practice: allowed to disagree once you can summarise the opposition’s argument.
69 Offer opponent ideas on what would change your mind. [If both do this, sign of goodwill, and basis for conversation.]
70 Can’t reason someone out of something they weren’t reasoned into.
70 Peace can only be made between people who want to be at peace with each other.
70 Are both parties willing to change their view?
[Find out the reason the person has their particular position. They might not know or have questioned this. Don’t necessarily ask them. Perhaps observe, or ask others.]

Practices – Tested Tools for Divisive Times

Identity: Start out by looking in

73 Examine our own convictions, certainties, loyalties and identities
73 Separate the arguer from the argument

Developing a robust identity

75 We see with our interpretations.
75 needs, insecurities, personal history, influences, identity
75 We are a complex factor in communication.
75 Negotiation ‘across the table’.
76 ‘along the table’ – competing interests within a negotiation team
76 ‘behind the table’ – leaders not present who have sent the negotiation team
76 ‘under the table’ – shady dealings.
76 within each negotiator is a dynamic between loyalty of past attachments and the courage to explore new possibility to serve our children
77 Harvard book ‘Difficult Conversations’: three layers of facts, feelings and identity

The genesis of sibling rivalry

78 Jacob and Esau could interpret either way the prophecy “the older shall the younger serve”
79 We see with our biographies.
Strengthening our identity
79 Be yourself – it enables you to reach out openly and honestly.
81 Jacob defines himself in terms of Esau, until wrestling with himself at Jabok – then he is able to meet Esau on fresh terms.
81 Rest in your own identity, and be prepared to change your mind.

Owning up to our influences

82 Quote your sources – it reveals gaps and biases
83 People believe in people who believe in ideas.
[Let your ideas spread – don’t worry egotistically about attribution.]
84 In Jewish tradition, we may not win the argument, but the argument always wins.
85 Citing sources keeps us humble, and the keeps the focus on ideas.
85 Kiddushin 1:7 Imagine the person you’re quoting is present.
[And yet … Talmudists and Hasidic sages knowingly subverted meanings of texts.]

Separating the argument from the arguer

88 Joke: Jew with multiple identities – Talmudic scholar, ardent atheist, own large business, ardent communist!
89 In Jewish study, learn to rehearse all the arguments – opens the mind, and deepens empathy
89 Separate values from ideas. [How clearly can these be differentiated?] Separate your own identity and values from your ideas, which could change. [Actually, all of these could change.]

Separating their argument from their identity

90 R. Yohanan’s ad hominem attack on Reish Lakish’s former banditry led to tragedy.
[A person’s core identity is a pure soul – to which we can always be well-disposed.]
91 Goal is not to win, but to create a joint argument that serves heaven.
91 Personal attacks demonstrate that substantive point is absent, unless the criticised behaviour shows bad faith.
92 Ex. 22:28 Don’t curse the ruler of your people.

Arguing through avatars

93 Distance argument and arguer, position and identity.
[Insecurity makes us defend a position more than it deserves, because our ego-identity is at stake, and we don’t want to lose face.]

Collaboration: finding value in our differences

95 opponents are partners, not adversaries; strengthen opponents’ positions; make room for quiet voices and dissenting voices

Adversarial collaboration

98 Goal of chevrutah is to have someone pushing back.
99 Chevrutah leads to active learning, personal responsibility, mastery and retention of material, deeper understanding, better decision-making.
Clashing tools, sparking logs
99 We hone each other “iron sharpens iron”. Fire is started by two sticks – make room for others. Ta’anit 7a
100 There is value in difference.
100 Daniel Kahnemann: intuitive expertise (which is flawed and unrelatible) arises from a failure to disagree.

From straw-manning to steel-manning

103 Strengthen your opponent’s case, then argue against that.
103 Sanhedrin 105b If rival prostitutes help each other with makeup, then scholars should help each other too!

A professional disprover

104 Ezer is a helper-opposer.

Nurturing dissent

106 Blessing for God knowing our secret differences.
107 World on one side, Abraham on the other. Genesis Rabba 42
107 Heschel: Prophets challenged their own people.
107 Abraham challenges God, who encourages it.
[Conflict is inevitable. Don’t avoid it. Accept it and be creative with it.]

Encouraging dissent

108 Listen to the most junior people first (so they’re not intimidated by seniors).
110 Dissent helps increase quality and safety.
110 Hillel and Shammai appointed heads of schools because they disagreed.
111 Unanimous capital conviction ensured release – because there might be a legitimate defensive argument that has been missed.

The power of a single voice

112 An authentic dissent can help encourage others to stand up for their own views.
[Polarity is not the enemy. Lack of collegial disagreement is.]
112 ‘No bad ideas’ leads to less creativity, rather than encouraging debate.

Capturing dissent

113 We record and study opinions never followed, as well as dissents.
113 Minority opinion might be right for another time and place.
114 Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Supreme Court Justice: Dissenters are writing not for today, but for tomorrow.
115 Reconstruct the argument itself, stating all sides.
116 Studying other points of view encourages empathy.
116 Giving blood to opposing side in an armed conflict – result of Saatchi and Saatchi competition looking for ‘The Impossible Brief’.

Alternative thinking

119 ipcha mistraba – literally “Maybe it’s the other way round.”

Challenging our assumptions

120 confirmation bias concept from Peter Watson in 1960
120 Longer education leads to greater confirmation bias
[When faced with an assertion, tie a ‘not’ in it (i.e. reverse the assertion) to open up thinking.]

At the point of greatest certainty

[In Native American medicine wheel teachings, clarity and the know-it-all are the enemy, because they close down thinking and enquiry.]
121 Midrash: Hebrew word can be re-interpreted to mean that Hannah was not ‘drunk’, but ‘like Sarah’ and righteous.
121 Greatest certainty is greatest danger.

Embracing alternative thinking

122 Warren Buffet, investor: Hire an adviser to argue against groupthink.
122 Gary Klein, social scientist: pre-imagine a decision that proves disastrous, and work out why. Encourages challenges to groupthink or unexamined positions or decisions.
123 Ask ‘what’s your percentage of certainty?’. [And what accounts for the gap below 100%?]
123 If we’re less sure we’re 100% right, can we be open to the possibility opponents are less wrong?

Communication: words are all I have

The seeing ear

127 People project onto Israeli diplomats that they must be representative of the State, but also of aspirations for the Holy Land.
128 State your opponent’s case, and let them come at you.

The ear and the eye

[If you want to know what’s on someone’s mind, listen to them!]

Listeners rule

129 Arguments are won by those who listen.
130 Hillel’s view usually taken because he reported and gave first places to others’ views. Hillel was a listener.
131 Roland Barthes: we are always hearing, but listening is a choice.
132 Knowing others’ arguments helps you improve yours.
132 Read sources you don’t agree with.

Cultivating curiosity

134 Moses’ curiosity (at the burning bush) led to him meeting God.
134 Isaac Asimov: “Great discoveries often begin not with ‘Eureka’ but with ‘That’s funny!’.”

Approach with awe

135 Ben Zoma (Avot): “Who is wise? One who learns from everyone.”
135 A great conversationalist shows interest in you.
136 W.A.I.T. = Why Am I Talking?

Communicating our listening

136 A good listener amplifies your points and encourages you to speak.
137 Aneurin Bevan presented his opponents’ arguments in Parliament.
[In the case of Solomon arbitrating the claims of two women over a baby, the real mother describes the other women’s story first.]

Entering their world

139 Shammai ‘measured’ by his own standards, while Hillel empathised – ‘what is hateful to you’.

E is for empathy

Better than an answer

142 Asking questions is a sign of engagement.
142 Mah, mayim, water; was and Wasser; what and water; quoi and acqua.

A question of quality

143 Four question types: simple, mirror (return the question), full switch (changing the topic), follow-up (which shows particular engagement).
144 Talmudic question is usually a kushya – a ‘difficulty’.
144 Desire to create a learning conversation.
144 ‘Quest’ is at the heart of the word ‘question’.
145 Ladder of inference: at what point in the ladder do two participants differ? Reality and Facts, Selected Reality, Interpreted Reality, Assumptions, Conclusions, Beliefs, Actions.
146 Be-mai peligei – ‘On what do they actually disagree?’ Results agree, but methods don’t.
146 Mai nafka minnah – given differences of opinion or premise, “What follows from it?”.

From theory to practice

147 Discover where there is agreement, as well as where there isn’t.

Bridging troubled waters

151 “leaving space for the victory speech of the other side” [Edgar Schein, ‘Process Consultation’: helping all parties save face.]
Grading questions, not answers
152 Ask questions the other side doesn’t have (prepared and positional) answers to.
152 Instead of questions designed to attack, use questions to unlock understanding [and build relationship]

The power of storytelling

153 Ketubot 62b Story of husband who died when wife grieved his absence due to Torah study. [Don’t let your Torah study pull you from connection to the world. Don’t let your work do that either.]
[To say we can’t judge someone until we’ve walked in their shoes (Avot 2:4) is to say that we can never understand them. It means we must take the time and trouble to walk a mile in their shoes and do our best to see the world their way.]

Halakhah and Aggadah, law and narrative

155 Jewish stories challenge law.
155 Israel’s leaders were not its eldest sons.

Talmudic tales

158 Halakhah – detailed and legal. Aggadah – intuitive and imaginative. [Apollo and Dionysus. Or Robert Pirsig’s Static and Dynamic Quality.]
159 Aggadah and halakhah balance each other.

Stories: solid, subversive, sustainable

160 Human mind is a story processor, not a logic processor.
162 Stories have subversive power to change minds.
164 Three elements of Greek rhetoric. Logos – reason. Ethos – personal credibility. Pathos – emotional persuasion.
165 [Story of journalist-activist Mark Lynas reversing his position publicly is not a story of just Ethos, but the interaction of Ethos and Pathos, and he himself changed his mind on the basis of Logos.]
167 It’s not that some other god is more powerful, but that we have let God down.

Taking stories on the road

[Use objects as visual aids for an emotional story.]
171 Media tendency to frame stories as binary.
[Don’t betray the human pain on any side of a story.]

We are the story

172 Stories are layered and pull us out of simplistic binaries.
174 Telling or hearing a story can open the heart [and also the mind].

Connecting ideas to reality

[Lazy thought is not lying, but it is a betrayal of truth in its apathy, and failure to seek truth.]
176 Tether abstract thinking to real world examples, as in Talmud. Helping the real world is the goal.
177 Thinking tied to the real world is high level,
177 Yevamot 82b Don’t destroy the world with intensity of scrutiny. [God had to create the world with chesed, not just emet or gevurah.]
178 Test ideas by talking about real people and real situations.

Black fire on white fire – words and silence

179 Rashi on Deut. 33:2 and Midrash Tanhuma on Gen. 1:1

Black fire: the power of words

180 Words can be honey or sting. Deut. Rabba 1:7
180 Words can
180 Verbal blessings make things holy; confession brings atonement.
The scroll and the scribe
183 Precision in words, punctuation, and translation is critical.

White fire: the power of silence

185 Elie Wiesel: Judaism has silence; we just don’t like to talk about it.
185 Israel National Library has ‘loud rooms’ for traditional study.
186 Negotiator’s Dilemma: is the environment competitive or collaborative?
188 Listen – and learn.
[Notice what is not being said.]
189 Quieten ‘popcorn style’ discussion where comments and reactions happen in quick succession.
189 In a group, ask questions that are on your mind, and leave them unanswered.
190 Unplug from devices for a day: phones, TV, media, email.
190 Elijah [i.e. me!] must learn to hear the ‘slender voice of silence’ [the gaps, hints, inarticulate attempts]
191 Have ‘speech fasts’.

A place for jesters in heaven

193 Jesters make sad people laugh, so that those quarrelling make peace.

Heavenly laughter

199 We won’t last till eternity to find out if an argument endures
199 Did the argument bring us [both] joy?

Community: no argument is an island

[Learning needs a community, not solitude.]

Creating the right environment

204 Rupture in Jacob and Rachel’s relationship at childlessness
206 Is the relationship ready for this argument?
206 A strong relationship can bear difficult conversations.
[Maybe strengthen relationship by learning how to have difficult conversations.]

The values that bind

207 ‘Gem’ statement: tell someone what you would say if you had just had the best healing conversation with them, and this was your foremost thought.
208 Can we bring a Shabbat dinner spirit into our most difficult conversations?
210 Negotiate side by side [con-front – be with each other in front of the problem]
210 Three political leaders washed up together after dinner: Lord Victor Mishcon, King Hussein of Jordan, and Shimon Peres.

Restructuring the framework

211 The media don’t always allow for nuanced exploration of issues.
212 Van Jones ‘Messy Truth’ – avoid polarising in argument.
212 Create panel discussions between people in the same
213 Explore discussions away from media exposure.
213 Separate the role of negotiator or peace-builder from public spokesperson for your side.
214 Discuss ways of communicating well, whilst staying off substantive topics of contention.
[People want points of genuine contact, and are pleased, even relieved, when it happens. Find ways to make this possible.]
215 Frame the exchange in an environment that foregrounds what connects us.

Sharpening the skills – in others and ourselves

[What we believe, know or think is provisional.]
216 Although much of our lives and relationships require negotiation, we spend almost no time studying how to do it.
217 shakla ve’tarya – give and take of debate
217 Talmud – decisions are rarely recorded.
217 In important decisions, record the points made.
218 ‘Playing cards’ debate (making statements using the names of cards as the main points) shows how much detail we fail to register.
[Ask “Is there anything I missed?” Like Rachel Maddow.]
Embracing complexity
220 Noah described as righteous a) because others were tempted and he resisted, b) but it was no big deal because others were so unrighteous in comparison.
220 Havdalah – light in the fingernails has three explanations [there are multiple meanings to any one point].

A scientific addendum

Never too young

[The dishonest path: the deeper meaning is that custom doesn’t make something right.]
224 Children can reason, and teach us.
224 Hagigah 3a: Teacher: “What did you innovate in the study hall today?” Students: “We are your students, we drink from your waters.” Teacher: “Even so, there can be no true study without fresh ideas and innovation.”
224 B’nei mitzvah – drash to give new insight.

Living with difference

227 Teyju ‘Let is stand!’ – Let the two sides remain unresolved until Elijah returns.
227 Elijah is outside time – different answers suit different eras.
228 William Ury (Harvard Negotiation Project): “leave room for the victory speech of the other side”
229 ‘Single text’ negotiation – parallel texts, initialled, worked on until initials can be removed.
230 Living in uncomfortable differences is between than no relationship.

Conclusion

Beyond dispute

233 Dalai Lama: “Don’t just argue with reason, argue with love.”
233 Enter argument as if entering prayer.
233 Be open to having your mind changed.
The mark of success
235 Has the whole argument been preserved?
235 Do all the parties feel heard, and accept the resolution as co-owned, even though it overrules their wishes? Will the resolution endure?
236 Has the relationship survived, or even got stronger?
237 Argument is not a zero sum game – love – recognising the humanity of the other [i.e. commonality]
237 Kiddushin 30b “A father and son become enemies when they study, but do not leave the study hall until they come to love each other.”
238 “Community born of agreement is fragile. Community united in the same raucous conversation is real and lasting. Our highest aspiration is not to resolve our arguments but to have meaningful ones, which bring us closer not only to the truth but to each other.”
David Wolpe: “To err is human: to disagree, Jewish.”
Book: Howard Kaminsky ‘Fundamentals of Jewish Conflict Resolution’ (2017)