I’ve written here before about how strange it is to write a weekly column like this one. This magazine is read by tens of thousands of good Jews each week and yet as I sit in my study tapping out the words of my weekly offering I can easily delude myself into thinking I’m simply making yet another entry into a private diary never to be seen by another pair of human eyes.
Recently the metaphor that formed in my mind to capture this reality gap was that of someone who’s on a building ledge dozens of stories off the ground — but he’s asleep. His situation is beyond precarious the stakes of his every slight move and thus his responsibility to be super cautious immense. But deep in slumber he’s blissfully unaware of all this until he begins to stir and awaken to the rather overwhelming reality in which he finds himself.
Writing about serious topics of great relevance to lots of fellow Jews opining not infrequently about individuals and institutions events and trends in our community and beyond places a really heavy burden on a writer’s shoulders. He’s got to make sure he has the facts straight his reasoning is impeccable (easily defensible that is albeit not necessarily unassailable) and above all that his words are aligned with the teachings of our Torah as refracted through the minds of the chachmei hamesorah of past and present. A tall order this.
Although I profess to try as best I can to fill that order I must also confess that much of the time I’m asleep here on my little ledge. Perhaps not out cold but certainly dozing oblivious to the full implications of what I’m engaged in. I don’t think I could do this if I were fully aware of those implications each time I sat down at the computer to write.
