Divergent Convergence

In a recent piece in these pages, Yisroel Besser wrote of the need for Jews to emerge from our current crisis with a new appreciation for the idea that diverse groups of Jews can rightfully follow divergent piskei halachah as well as different paths in avodas Hashem. As he put it, “If your rav and another rav disagree, great, follow your rav. There are always different opinions, but that doesn’t make you a bar plugta entitled to dismiss the other rav….”

I’d like to amplify that concept and its relevance to what we’ve gone through based on thoughts recently expressed by Rav Yonason David, rosh yeshivah of Yeshiva Pachad Yitzchok in Jerusalem. He noted the stunning contrast between what we are now experiencing and the period of several months leading up to our current predicament.

Beginning in early December and continuing clear through to February, there was a celebratory stretch unlike anything the Torah world has previously experienced. Each successive Siyum HaShas over the years has brought more celebrations in ever more numerous and larger venues, but this year’s Season of the Siyum was a thing apart, different not just in degree, but in kind. More Jews came together in greater numbers and more places around the world than anything we’d ever seen before, linking arms, dancing and singing in unison, and for all for one unitary purpose: to give honor to Torah and those who teach and learn it.

And then, as the last voices raised in songful exultation faded away, and with the memories of too many impassioned speeches to count still vividly in mind, we were blindsided by a phenomenon that was the mirror image of what we had enjoyed during those unusual few months. Intense togetherness was suddenly replaced by bleak, unending isolation. Two straight months of shuls and yeshivos filled with celebration and new and expanded shiurim became nearly three months of those same buildings sitting vacant and forlorn. Such a rapid and radical turnabout begs for some illumination.