Outlook

Last Shabbos we had over a young baal teshuvah couple for lunch. The wife came to Israel filled with egalitarian zeal and with the intention of studying in an institution in which men and women learn together even as “chavrusos.” Before the new semester opened she somehow found her way to the home of a close friend of ours who teaches at a baal teshuvah seminar for women.

She lived for three weeks in our friend’s home. Over that entire period our friend did not utter one word about the institution where this young woman was planning to study or even about the egalitarian impulse that led her there. At the end of the three weeks the young woman decided that she wanted to learn in the seminary in which her hostess teaches. In my opinion she realized that she wanted to be someone like our friend one day. (A year later our friend was her shadchan.)

Our Shabbos guest was not a fully committed Orthodox Jew at the end of her three weeks living with a religious family. At her first meeting with the head of the seminary she told her “Please don’t try to turn me into an Orthodox Jew.” The seminary head replied “I’ll have to hold you back.” She was right.

What struck me most about this story was our friend’s restraint. Most of us would have felt compelled even obligated to show our guest the truth and to explain how wrongheaded her choice of places to study was. Yet had our friend done so her guest would have felt compelled to defend her decision. Any attack on the institution would have been perceived as an attack on her and as such fiercely resisted. She would have become personally invested in the decision.