Making the effort to meet people where they are doesn’t mean you aren’t being true to yourself
I must have been six years old when I got my first lesson on learning how to fit in.
It was springtime, and we had just finished our daytime Shabbos seudah and were all bentshing together aloud. I had a mini temper tantrum over the fact that bentshing was different at home, where we used an Ashkenazi havarah, than it was at the Modern Orthodox school I went to, where Hebrew was spoken with the Sephardi pronunciation. Unwilling to indulge the dramatic outburst of a first grader, my father told me in no uncertain terms that differences like this were part of life, and it was something I was going to have to get used to.
Fast forward three years, when my older sister and I were headed to Camp Bais Yaakov, a place where I vaguely knew only one other girl (who didn’t end up in my bunk). Before packing us up, my mother had called the camp director, Rabbi Shimon Newhouse a”h, to find out if we had to wear skirts or if we could wear shorts in camp.
“They can wear shorts if they want to,” said Rabbi Newhouse. “But I’m not sure how comfortable they will feel here in shorts.”
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