There is and has always been infighting among our people. Thus the notorious joke: If a Jew is stranded on an island, how many shuls would he build? The answer is two. One to pray in and the other that he would not step foot into!
It is almost an acceptable pattern that there must be one-upsmanship: one Jew from the next.
“I’m frummer than you!”
“I eat super glatt and chalav Yisrael and I will not eat in anyone’s house who is not chalav Yisrael because to me their pots are treif.”
“I eat only pas Yisrael and I don’t allow my children to associate with any child who has a TV or computer in his home.”
We tend to justify and idealize this division with pride attributing these tendencies as demonstrating a higher level of kedushah.
But is this really the case? Are we supposed to be exclusionary? Don’t we all have have a commonality – a Jewish experience – that we have endured and experienced together? Yet many of us impose chumrahs that only promote disharmony, disunity and dissention among us.
There is no question in my mind that unity and common respect among Jews is more vital than the chumrahs that separate one Jew from the next. If the ultimate end of adopting chumrahs is separating one Jew from the next, then we should dispose of the chumrah in the interest of promoting unity and peace.
That this theory is accurate is proven from the text of a well known Mishnah in Tractate Eduyot. There the Talmud deals with issues of great consequence such as who is considered to be defiled (tamei) and who is not (tahor).
Now these are questions of utmost importance on subjects that we have carried with us for centuries, laws that whoever transgresses them could incur a harsh sentence, issues that are seminal in the living of our lives as Jews. Not the trivial matters of eating gebrokts on Pesach, or how stringent is your shechitah. Yet the Mishna cites a wonderfully refreshing insight into the relationships between the schools of Shammai and Hillel, a relationship of mutual respect and sensitivity despite their apparent disagreements.
The Mishnah states:
Though there are differences between the students of Hillel and the students of Shammai – those who disqualify and those who permit – neither students of one school hesitated to intermarry with the other (though their differences were serious), and neither refrained from preparing tahor foods on utensils that they had borrowed from the other (who claim that they were defiled).
Why is it that these students, who we often look to as examples of how Jews should act towards each other, were able to respect each other and not allow disputes to separate them, and yet we who are so lowly in comparison use ridiculous chumrahs as an excuse to show our frumkeit, ultimately separating one Jew from the next? Often Jews invent stringencies and implement them as a prerequisite to enter their group without understanding the great harm that this inflicts upon our people.
It is this attitude and direction that must be curtailed. Instead of separateness we must try to be inclusive. Instead of putting on airs of holier than thou, we must embrace and include all our brothers and sisters at every opportunity we have.
Surely we are not greater than the students of the schools of Shammai and Hillel. It’s time to use their example to unite and strengthen our people.