Chuqat

Growth through Otherness
Aryeh Bernstein, 5763

The seed for this devar torah, was planted, as they often are, by a derashah of my Rosh Yeshivah, Rav David Bigman, although its particular content and direction are my own.

In an obscure verse in Parashat Huqat, the Torah, describing Israel's journeys in the desert, describes the geography of one of their pit-stops (Bemidbar 21:13):

The Torah then does something peculiar. In order that this geographical description should resonate with the reader, the Torah quotes from another book, called "סֵפֶר מִלְחֲמֹת יְהֹוָה" ("The Book of the Wars of the Lord"), which was apparently familiar to the ancient reader, even though we have no more remnant of it. The Torah quotes the fragmentary and unclear passage as follows (ibid., 14-15):

Much of Rabbinic imagination works associatively and understands each passage in the Torah to be potentially pregnant with meaning that may reflect on any other part of the Torah and even the whole Tanakh. Since we no longer have the actual Sefer Milhemot Hashem, what we are left with is the association of books, wars, and God, an association that then stands available to comment on our own experiences in the world. In the gemara in Qiddushin 30b, Rabbi Hiyya bar Abba, commenting on a verse in Tehillim, says:

He explains this idea by quoting our verse, "...be-sefer Milchemot Hashem: et Vahev ba-Sufah", suggesting a play on words: don't pronounce it "Sufah" (which is the name of a place), rather "sofah"-"in the end". He apparently also re-reads the other long-forgotten place name, Et Vahev-אֶת וָהֵב (pronounced, in ancient times, "Et Wahev"), as "et'ahev", a reflexive form of the word "ahavah"-"love". That is, the verse becomes understood as follows: "In the Sefer/Book (or, maybe "via the Sefer") are wars of Hashem; and mutual love at the end." Talmud Torah begins in hostility and ends in love.

What is Rabbi Hiyya bar Abba trying to tell us? Rashi explains that the people learning Torah together are "enemies" at the beginning because "each one raises difficulties against the other, and neither one accepts what the other one has to say" ("מתוך שמקשים זה לזה ואין זה מקבל דברי זה"). Nevertheless, he continues, "a war that is waged via the Book will end up in love" ("מלחמה שעל ידי ספר אהבה יש בסופה").

Rashi's interpretation is provocative. Two people whose different personalities, ideologies, and attitudes make them hate each other-that is, whose ideas are so foreign to each other that they feel repulsion toward them and reject the potent "otherness" of the other person-these people can reach a place of love through the enterprise of Talmud Torah. Rashi focuses on the word "sefer"-"book": even though their ideas are different and foreign, they find that they have common ground, in that they share the same precious Book, which each one is convinced tells his or her story. It is that common ground, that shared reality, that "sameness", that helps them find a way to move past their differences, and love each other in their new-found commonality.

Rashi's interpretation is an important and insightful charge to all of us who hope to engage in the enterprises of teamwork, group living, partnership, and peacemaking: it is incumbent upon us not to get stuck in the "otherness" of people with whom we have conflicts, but to seek out shared reality and common ground on which we can build. In many respects, this is the basic task of peacemaking.

However, there is, dare I say, a subtly sinister potential lurking in the shadows of such an approach. Does this approach not lead me to neglect understanding important parts of the other person, just because I can't fit them into MY world? Might this approach not lead me to neglect some of my own, legitimate needs, foregoing them in order to fit the other person's pre-existing world? Couldn't this kind of shared reality be just a thin veneer, cloaking the real resentments and hurt stewing beneath the surface, ready to explode at the mildest disturbance? And doesn't such an approach de-flavor the world by suppressing life's variety?

It is perhaps with these hard questions in mind that Rav Yitzchak Hutner lays out a subtly, but radically, different interpretation of the gemara. These two Torah learners do not come to love each other in spite of their original animosity for each other, as Rashi argued; rather, says Rav Hutner, they come to love each other through that original animosity (Pahad Yitzhaq, Hanukah: 3):

Two people enter the marketplace of ideas, each one convinced that he or she is right, and ready to convince and change the other one. If they actually engage each other-not just on the points where they can agree, but especially on the points where they disagree-and they take each other seriously, they can potentially create a discourse that is much richer than that which either of them brought to the table. Ideas that never knew each other-that were foreign and totally "other" to each other-get brought together, generating all sorts of new associations. Your greatest ideas may emerge through the impact your "enemy" has on them, not in spite of the different-ness, but because of it.

This idea has immense generative potential at camp, and if only it were pursued in my corner of the world, in Israel/Palestine, please God, we could imagine new worlds into existence.