Impact Accelerator

Once, on Erev Yom Kippur, someone I did not know called to ask me for mechilah, explaining that, in a letter criticizing an article, he had referred to me as painfully ignorant.

I told him — and I meant it, a Yid doesn’t lie on Erev Yom Kippur — that those kinds of barbs come with the territory. You hope that your writing moves people enough to feel, and while you’d like the feeling to be happiness or pride, sometimes it might be displeasure or frustration.

For that reason, I have never objected to any letter being printed about me, no matter how harsh or critical.

I don’t write about halachah, or, l’havdil, offer recipes or home-renovation advice. In those cases, the writer could be wrong, because the details are absolute, black and white. When it comes to opinion pieces, though, it’s different — it could be a good take or bad take, you can agree or disagree, but it’s hard to say the writer is wrong.