Daat Torah; The Mind (or Opinion) of Torah part 4

A corollary to this idea of making one Judaism, with common, codified beliefs, is, in my opinion, a "dumbing down" of Judaism. Orthodox Judaism has always included a spectrum of approaches and understandings, albeit united by certain basic principles. While unity can be a beautiful thing, putting minds into a straight jacket is not. I would like to share several personal experiences I have had.
The first was when I was seventeen. I am not from an observant background. I was greatly helped by Chabad, a group that pioneered outreach. However, one of the doctrines of this group was to insist on a literal understanding of Talmudic legends. Some were VERY hard to accept at face value. I was experiencing a crisis of faith. I began college that year. As this was shortly before the "teshuvah movement", a baal teshuvah was seen as fairly unique. The campus rabbi asked me how I was relating to traditional Judaism. I told him that I loved it, but was having a hard time accepting the legends. He said "what are you talking about? They were never meant to be understood as anything other than allegories. RAMBAM writes this explicitly". I was puzzled. I asked the rabbi who had been teaching me. He said "NO!!! Rambam said that they had allegoric meanings besides the literal." I saw the campus rabbi the next day. With the arrogance of youth, I said "You lied to me on this point". He said "let's look into the writings of RAMBAM." This idea had never occurred to me! Sure enough, RAMBAM called those who understand them literally "fools". I confronted the rabbi who was teaching me. he said "Oy! Why did he show you that? I didn't want to confuse you." My problem was not with the stance, but with his branding it as the ONLY stance.
Fast forward fifteen years. My wife and I, with our one and a half kids, moved to a lovely New England community. We were delighted to find that there were several groups of Orthodox Jews there. Our delight didn't last long, as we discovered that the different factions were at odds, even to the extent of lawsuits. We decided to try and be on good terms with all the groups. My wife befriended a woman in one of the groups (they are still in touch forty years later). The woman asked my wife to deliver a Dvar Torah to a women's group. My wife agreed happily. A few hours later, the phone rang. It was the Rebbetzin who was in charge of the group. She told my wife "I'm afraid that you will present teachings from Rabbi Nachman. We don't want to confuse the women. I will tell you what to say". My wife declined the "help" and withdrew her offer to speak. We were on shaky terms with that faction throughout our three years in the community.
My last story is much more recent. A friend (who is also a member of this group) posted a quote from an ArtScroll publication. She found the quote troubling. I replied that I understood the subject differently from the author, and proceeded to give my interpretation of the passage under discussion. I got a PM from a colleague, taking me to task for "showing that Orthodox Rabbis disagreed with each other", as it would confuse the people. Rabbis have been disagreeing for thousands of years! (Let me stress again that I am not speaking of heretical views, but different understandings within the confines of Torah Judaism). Somehow, a new approach had emerged, accepted by the community, which shut the door on any ideas that were not in conformity with the Lithuanian Gedolim.
I love Torah. I delight in finding out how different rabbis and groups have understood it throughout the ages. Let us not mistake an artificial unity where diversity has always held sway. Torah is Truth. Truth speaks in different forms. Let us make the effort to understand what is said while respecting other understandings.