Have you ever painted your home? You get a fan deck of thousands of different colors, with barely-perceptible differences between Williamsburg Blue and Colonial Blue and Federal Blue. Then you find out that not only can you order any one of those thousands of colors, but you can order them in different intensities: Federal Blue 50% or 75% or 85%. It seems silly, excessive, a small example of everything that’s wrong with our excessively consumerist society – until it’s your living room, and then the question of Colonial Blue vs. Federal Blue 85% takes on great import. When we care about things, it turns out, the tiniest details matter a whole lot. Rebbetzin Zehava Braunstein, a’h, who taught thousands of kallahs in the Flatbush community, used to say to her kallahs about their study and observance of the laws of family purity: “When it comes to your wedding gown, no kallah says ‘It’s good enough.’ For something you really care about, ‘good enough’ is not good enough.” If we ever find ourselves dismissively commenting about the detail-orientation of halacha, or of other communities’ halachic observance, perhaps we can remember that when we really care, we can indeed be very invested in the minute differences between Williamsburg Blue and its neighbors in the fan deck.
