SEPTEMBER 5 • 2024 | 5
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feeling disconnected from their 
religious beliefs. 
There is a reason why Rabbi 
Lord Jonathan Sacks titled his 
book The Dignity of Difference, 
and Sir Isaiah Berlin wrote of a 
connection between respect and 
allowing dissent. As a Jew on 
campus, I found teachers and 
rabbis who seek to enable students 
to find and express their true 
Jewish identity. They enabled 
me to recognize differences that 
already exist in Jewish practice. I 
am free to wear pants, to believe 
that women do not need to cover 
their hair upon getting married, 
to hold that three women are 
obligated to make a zimun (an 
invitation to recite the grace after 
meals together) even if a man is 
present. 
What is more, I can sit at a table 
with a fellow Jew who believes it 
is against Jewish law for women to 
wear pants, not to cover their hair 
upon getting married or to make 
a zimun in his presence. We can 
have contradictory, distinct beliefs 
regarding Jewish law and belong 
to the same community. We can 
maintain contradictory beliefs and 
be flexible in the practices that 
shape our day-to-day lives. 
I can pick up the Tanakh 
(Hebrew Bible) for one week and 
then put it down for four weeks. 
I can reject the high school dress 
code and still love to learn and 
teach the Torah I absorbed there. 
I can skip davening (daily prayer), 
but still have a strong and genuine 
connection to Jewish practice. 
One of the greatest lessons I 
learned in college is to be open 
to these kinds of communal and 
personal Jewish differences. Only 
through the flow of our differences 
can we create the sea of our 
combined Jewish identities. 
In The Dignity of Difference, 
Sacks writes that “the test of faith 
is whether I can make space for 
difference. Can I recognize God’s 

image in someone who is not in 
my image, whose language, faith, 
ideals, are different from mine? If 
I cannot, then I have made God in 
my image instead of allowing Him 
to remake me in His.” 
He speaks powerfully about the 
need to accept people who are, at 
their cores, different from us. I 
came to understand that even if we 
speak the same language, practice 
the same faith and partake in the 
same ideals, we are all different. 
I am learning to accept the 
differences in myself; I must learn 
to anticipate, accept and respect 
the differences among the Jews I 
will meet in the future. 
I think that to have a successful 
community, its members must feel 
accepted. For this, it’s not enough 
for our differences not to be 
repressed. They must be embraced 
with respect, and we must trust 
that difference will not hurt our 
community. 
As Abraham Joshua Heschel 
wrote in Man is Not Alone, “Faith 
is not the clinging to a shrine 
but an endless pilgrimage of the 
heart.” 
An ideal community can 
maintain core values while 
enabling its members to explore 
their individual differences. Only 
by embracing our differences and 
allowing members to embark on 
individual religious journeys can 
our Jewish community thrive, 
whether in middle school, high 
school or beyond. We all should 
have the power to step out of our 
past experiences and journey 
forward in our love of Judaism. 
Our teachers and rabbis guide 
us as students; they can either 
guide us into a box or onto a path 
that follows the faith in our own 
hearts. 

Chana Fisher recently graduated from 

Rutgers University with a BA in History and 

Political Science. This was a winning entry in 

the College Student Writing Challenge from 

Sources, A Journal of Jewish Ideas.

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