Questioning Authority: The Early Years
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The years passed and I grew to be a young man. I had a very close group of friends in the youth movement (Hashomer Hatzair) and was close to my older sister. I loved sports, hiking, backpacking, swimming, and basketball, but was also a keen reader of many subjects. In the course of absorbing so much new information and so many new ideas, I soon found I had a passion for critical thinking and its natural consequence: a desire to improve the society I lived in and to question existing 'truths' and unquestioned/given assumptions. Alongside my family and friends, I was politically active in promoting peaceful co-existence between Israelis and Palestinians and in opposing religious oppression and manipulation by the extremist religious Jews....and it all began at our dinner table where Martin Buber, Rollo May, and other existentialists were part of the menu.
A thirst for knowledge blossomed in me
Like a bud growing in springtime,
poking through the newly thawed soil
An examination of life, a proclivity
to challenge rigid dogmas and assumptions
Like an ember that slowly simmered
My quest to question the unquestioned began