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CAN WE LEARN

FROM EACH OTHER?

,
Rabbi Moshe Tales from Lakewood, Young Israel
Tales from Lakewood
Young Israel

Taub
and Beyond
and Beyond

Rules of engagement parents, and so long as they are follow- Gaon, Rambam, Maharal, to name a
ing in their path of mesorah, our job is few. It is only in modern times when
lthough, b’chasdei Hashem, I only to support them and not to seek to everyone feels they can weigh into this
have been writing a weekly
column for the past twelve change them (Iggrot Moshe, Or HaChaim mighty and turbulent sea without the
Ayears, this article has been 1:186 s.v. v’af). life jacket that is the entire corpus of
the most painstaking one to complete. Humility is critical to this discussion. the written and oral Torah.
With fits and starts I have, over the There was a time when articles or Lastly, I do not intend to write a
course of two months, repeatedly books of Jewish thought were writ- polemic, but rather to share my per-
rewritten and overhauled this essay.
ten only by the greatest poskim and sonal experiences and attempt to live
It is axiomatic that every frum Jew gedolim of a generation, and even in in both the Charedi and Religious Zion-
believes that his or her hashkafah is those cases it was rare – Rav Sa’adia ist communities.
the most authentic form of yiddish-
keit. No serious Torah Jews believe
that they or their communities are
but a footnote in the eternal story of
Judaism, playing only a secondary
role in bringing the Mashiach. When
discussing different communities and
their ways of life, we must be mindful
that challenging someone’s hashkafah,
if done insultingly and without tact,
could be an act of emotional murder.
We must be careful.
At the same time, we mustn’t put our
heads in the sand and ignore the fact
that our differences are very real, and
often in weighty ways. Only when we
can openly admit this and let some
steam out of the proverbial pressure
cooker can we get on to the critically
important work of learning from each
other. Otherwise, cries of “why can’t
we all just get along?!” become polly-
annaish and incantational.

Wrong mindsets
When considering what each commu-
nity can learn from the other, the first
step is to avoid the ‘changing of minds’
trap. If that is your goal, you’re likely to
be disappointed. We must accept that
other Jews have their own rebbeim and

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