Before my Jewish partner passed away, I spent many an evening with him and his friends listening to passionate debate about the Palestinian situation and the Israeli government.

Most of our friends were New York Jews, but occasionally we would entertain a Jewish person visiting from Israel. (Or from elsewhere, like South Africa or Argentina.)

What struck me is that opinions were pretty much as varied among my partner’s Jewish friends and family as among our non-Jewish friends.

Of course, being liberal New Yorkers, those opinions did tend to drift toward a leftist center. But one thing I learned fast is that my partner, descended from a family virtually wiped out by genocide, had a lot more right than I ever will to talk about genocide, and particularly to misuse the word.

He and his friends could criticize the Israeli government, even harshly, for Palestinian policy. But they never crossed certain lines, and listening to them helped me understand those lines.