I am in Israel this week to perform a wedding and, due to jet lag, I had the opportunity to walk very early this morning to Meah Shearim, a very religious neighborhood in Jerusalem, to pray. Around sunrise I went to the mikvah there and davened Shacharit at one of my favorite places to pray, the enormous beit midrash of the Slonomer chasidim. The davening is slow and intentional. On weekdays the rebbe stands the entire service with his tallit over his head and at the end of the davneing all eyes turn toward him, he glances quickly at the people, and walks out of his private entrance. Though I am not someone who always finds davneing engaging, when I am there at Slonim I find the words flow and that the slow prayer is deeply enjoyable and easy to do, rather than an obligation to finish with.
My experience this morning led me to think about how Jews are so different from one another. I was able to go and connect to an inspiring moment this morning because their community exists and is different from my own. At Kesher Israel, often chasidic Jews from New York come to pray with us, experienceing something different than what they are used to, and often learning from being with more modern Jews who are so different than they are. For instance, I recall the morning when several students from the Lakewood Yeshiva asked me after davening why women say kaddish at Kesher. I discussed with them the great desisors of Jewish law from the past who had permitted women to say kaddish and they thanked me for opening their eyes to seeing an aspect of religious Jewish life that they would not have otherwise experienced. Other guests have marveled at the Kesher members who, while serving in the highest echelons of government, come to daven and live an observant life in our community. For the visitors this is a fresh and expanding way to see being a Jew in the world.
Perhaps the Jewish people are not all supposed to be the same. If all Jews were just like me there would be no Meah Shearim with its mikvah and inspiring davening which I appreciated and needed for spiritual enrichment this morning, and if all Jews lived in Meah Shearim there would be no Kesher Israel in the nation’s capital for chassidic Jews to visit and connect to the influential role the Jewish people play in the larger world.
The Talmud states: “Rabbi Yoḥanan said: Even if the Torah had not been given, we would nonetheless have learned modesty from the cat, which covers its excrement, and that stealing is objectionable from the ant, which does not take grain from another ant, and forbidden relations from the dove, which is faithful to its partner, and proper relations from the rooster, which first appeases the hen and then mates with it (Eruvin 100b).” In a similar vein if all Jews were the same we could not learn from each other, but since we are all so different- different denominations which each have certain strengths and weaknesses, and different subgroups which each have different things they emphasize- thus we can learn so much, and be inspired in different ways, from each other.
This shabbat is Shabbat Hagadol, the great shabbat, because on this shabbat, says the Slonimer rebbe, the spiritual light for Passover flows to the world. Passover, I would suggest, is not only the holiday of our freedom but the moment we became a unified people, a family of Jews who can eternally learn from, and be inspired by, each other.