SEPTEMBER 5 • 2024 | 5
J
N
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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