How can we open ourselves up to others perspectives without diluting our own?

How did you find the idea we learned last week? Eye-opening? Enlightening?

What about frightening?

If the Torah is larger than we think, if it has the capacity to include perspectives we might not approve of alongside those we believe in with all our hearts – what does that mean for us?

Many of us have dedicated large chunks of our time, energy and effort protecting and fighting for the ideals we hold sacred – sometimes even at great personal sacrifice. We’ve stayed away from people and environments that could influence us negatively. Now, after all the work we’ve done purifying our hearts and protecting our minds, how can we suddenly start respecting, or even coming into comfortable contact with other perspectives?

Of course, negative influences of overwhelming power must be avoided at all cost. As Chazal ask rhetorically, “If you bring a son to a place of temptation, will he not sin?”

But most of us don’t have the option of fully isolating ourselves from the world. And since we’re going to be interacting with it, and with the many types of Jews filling it, we need to learn to accomplish two things at once – relating to others’ needs and working on their terms while still remaining firmly rooted in our sacred values.

This isn’t a “b’dieved.” Hashem set up the world this way. He filled our world with different people and perspectives. Coming in contact with them and navigating the challenge of respecting them while holding fast to our own opens up the opportunity to develop a powerful, important character trait.

The trait of gadlus.

We typically translate gadlus as “greatness.” Literally, however, it means “largeness.” A gadol, someone with an expansive mind, can acknowledge other perspectives without detracting one iota from his total devotion to his own values.

Typically, phrases like “expanding our minds” or "broadening ourselves to include other perspectives” strike us as negative. We assume opening ourselves wider to others’ values and retzonos (wills) automatically dilutes our own.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. There’s a trait called gadlus, and it enables us to burrow deep into our own personal world of growth while still relating to, appreciating, and even perhaps drawing growth from other perspectives.

When we first defined ahavas Yisrael, we quoted the Gemara (Shabbos 31a) that describes Hillel’s response to the non-Jew who asked to be taught Torah on one foot. As we mentioned, his answer summed up the mitzvah of ahavas Yisrael.

Remember another part of that story? Before this non-Jew visited Hillel, he went to Shammai, the other leading sage of the generation. Shammai refused to answer him and chased him away.

What were Hillel and Shammai arguing about here? We know that typically, Talmudic arguments focus on subtleties. The debaters agree on fundamental premises, disagreeing only on small nuances. Here, both Hillel and Shammai agreed the Torah couldn’t really be encapsulated into one mitzvah. So on what nuance were Hillel and Shammai diverging here?

The non-Jew wasn’t asking to be fed complete knowledge of the Torah on one foot. He really wanted to know, “What’s one positive middah that can drive me to fulfill the entire Torah?”

Since the technical answer was that no single middah could do that, Shammai pushed him away. Hillel, however, offered him an alternative perspective. “No one trait in your personality will allow you to become one with Torah. In fact, your entire personality, if it’s yours alone, isn’t enough. We need to have ahavas Yisrael. We need to incorporate others’ retzonos, others’ perspectives, in our avodas Hashem.”

Rav Wolbe related that when one spoke with Rav Yerucham Levovitz, one could feel he was relating to their specific wants and needs in an intimate way. But – one could also tell that all the while, Rav Yerucham was existing in a different world, a world far above theirs.

Ahavas Yisrael doesn’t want us simply to “broaden our minds.” It wants us to learn to live in two worlds at once – the world we know is right, and the worlds of the people around us, different as they might be to ours.

And when we do that, we foster the middah of gadlus.

Let’s try to experiment with this idea this week. Before moving into the higher-stakes arena of spiritual perspectives, let’s do a few rounds in the practice ring of “things we aren’t interested in.”

We’re busy. We’re involved in something important. Someone else approaches us, clearly seeking our attention.

Without disengaging from what we were previously involved in, let’s give our attention to them, in a respectful, focused way. Let’s lean into the tension, the stretch-sensation, of holding onto our personal focus while showing full respect to our conversation partner.

And as we stretch ourselves, let’s appreciate that we’re building gadlus.