Holding the Line
When Israeli society fractures along its deepest seams -- secular and religious, soldier and yeshiva student, left and right -- what becomes possible when we stop trying to win, and start trying to listen?
Holding the Line brings together unlikely interlocutors from across Israel's most contested divides: an IDF soldier and a Haredi man, a secular skeptic and a religious-Zionist believer, and many more. Drawing on decades of work in mental health and a lifetime of conversation across cultural lines, Stuart Katz shows what emerges when curiosity replaces contempt -- and when listening itself becomes the line we are trying to hold.
This is not a book about resolving disagreement. It is a book about the older, harder art of staying in the room: of true listening, of honest difference held with respect, of the closeness that becomes possible the moment we stop performing our positions and begin to hear each other's lives.
Part intimate portrait, part quiet manifesto, Holding the Line is a book for an Israel learning to live with itself -- and for any reader, anywhere, who knows the loneliness of being misunderstood by the people closest to them.
In a world quick to divide, this book invites us to slow down, listen deeply, and recognize the shared emotional lives beneath our differences.
-- David H. Rosmarin, PhD
Associate Professor, Harvard Medical School * Clinical Psychologist, McLean Hospital * Chief Clinical Officer, Links Network
When a person tries to win, he does not truly listen. To build, and not to win, we must embrace the art of real listening. Holding the Line teaches us how to listen, how to create true dialogue, how to honor one another even when we think differently.
-- Rabbi Yosef Tzvi Rimon
Rosh Yeshiva, Lev Academic Center (JCT) * Rabbi, Gush Etzion Regional Council * President, World Mizrachi * President, Sulamot & La'ofek
Stuart Katz, PsyD, MPH, MBA, is a clinical psychologist, mental health advocate, and longtime leader in the Jewish community. He co-founded Nafshenu Alenu, a Jewish mental health educational initiative, and chairs OGEN -- Advancement of Mental Health Awareness in Israel and Mental Health First Aid Israel. He serves on the Board of Visitors at McLean Hospital, the Harvard Medical School-affiliated psychiatric hospital. Since October 7, Stuart has worked directly with communities in Israel's south on trauma rehabilitation and suicide prevention. He has personally counseled over 7,000 individuals and families in crisis.
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