Pluralism-Because and Pluralism-Despite
Dear fellow members of Harvard’s Jewish community,
I hope my words find you, and those you love, well.
The month of Adar is just a few hours old, and its arrival ushers in a month in which the Jewish calendar directs us to focus on joy. In honor of this period, this week’s message draws its inspiration not from the weekly parsha, but from the Torah that describes and animates the joy we hope to engender with and among Jewish students at Harvard. And since it is Jewish, this discussion begins with and examines how we stand in relation to one another.
In the tradition of Isaiah Berlin’s landmark Two Concepts of Liberty, I want to consider two contrasting conceptions accounts of a single concept: pluralism. How are we to frame the significance of the differences between us – of geographic origin, economic class, political and religious belief, aesthetic preferences, and so on?
Intuitively – and especially on campuses in the wake of the ugliness that erupted after 10/7/23 – we have emphasized what I will call “Pluralism-because.” A counterpoint to echo chambers or insistence on ideological purity, pluralism-because tells us that the value of diverse communities lies precisely in that diversity: by being around, and especially discussing and debating with, people who differ from us – we gain visibility into our own blindspots, gain practice seeing the world from others’ vantage points, learn to articulate ourselves forcefully, and through it all have a better shot at a fuller truth.
This account is true and much-needed – and is deeply sourced in not only the Western tradition of classical liberalism and scientific inquiry, but also the Talmudic (and, though less obvious, Biblical) tradition of wide-ranging, open-ended debate. And yet, I submit, it is insufficient as a formula for building a community, because it is too intellectual, political, and austere.
Debating ideas is one of the things I want and need from those around me – but only one of those things. I also want to sing and dance, to bake challah and study Torah, to travel and to govern a community together. And in each of those activities, the most salient and treasured aspect of my peers is not their beliefs (correct or otherwise) or their skill at formulating or responding to ideas: it may be their ability to make conversation, their memory for facts and stories we have shared with them, their skill at harmonizing or managing a spreadsheet, their sense of humor or ability not to get lost in the woods on a hike.
In each of these activities – which are the kinds that communities are, and ought to be, built upon – we see people engaging in what we could call a “Pluralism-despite”: I love making music with a group of people because of the beauty of what we create together, and this might make me willing and able to stomach some differences of opinion I find objectionable for the sake of our shared artistry. I might cherish a weekly basketball game for its liveliness, camaraderie, and good-natured hustle – happily leaving politics in the locker room. I rely on the fellow parents in my community to keep my children safe when visiting their homes, and to raise their own children to tell the truth and include others, so their children will be good influences on mine (and they rely on me for the same) – not to vote for a certain party.
I am describing a life primarily composed of a set of shared activities, in which we value the presence of others because they make possible, and contribute to, something we value. And it is this thick, shared matrix of purposes and projects, that renders one’s political commitments, if not moot, then secondary. (The declining role of these shared purposes and projects in Americans’ lives is, again, the central theme of Bowling Alone and similar works like Robert Bellah’s Habits of the Heart – which is why this letter may strike you as similar in its ethos to last week’s.)
Put differently, Pluralism-because shares something with its opposite, the insistence on ideological uniformity: the idea that one’s political beliefs are a central and prominent element of who and what a person is. So in a sense, pluralism-despite is an even more radical departure from the pursuit of ideological purity, because it rejects that very premise, insisting that our political commitments are ultimately a relatively small part of who and what we are as human beings.
Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perahya evocatively sketched such a way of relating to one another (Avot de-Rabbi Natan 8:3), commenting on the Mishna’s lesson to “acquire for yourself a friend”:
What is acquiring a friend? It teaches that a person should acquire for herself a friend, with whom she eats and drinks, reads and studies, sleeps and reveals all of her secrets: the secrets of Torah and secrets of the way of the world.
And when they sit and study and one errs in a law or the title of a chapter, or says that something impure is pure or that something pure is impure, or something permitted is forbidden or something forbidden is permitted, her friend corrects her.
And how do we know that when a friend corrects you and reads with you, they (both – JR) have a good reward for their efforts? As it says (Eccliastes 4:9), “Two are better than one, for they have a good reward for their efforts.”
A friendship characterized by, and built on, trust and intimacy, is the idea and ideal here: a relationship that yields the joyous freedom of being able to let down one’s guard, knowing that another can and will work hard with and for you. Note how the description of Torah is not primarily as a contest of ideas (though elsewhere that is how Torah is described), but as a practice in which one can err, and be corrected: the notes of a symphony or the toe-holds of rock climbing could be described in a similar way. Torah, like those other activities, is better and goes better when it is undertaken with caring and committed others. It is no coincidence that I first encountered Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perahya’s wisdom twenty-three years ago on Netivot, Harvard Hillel’s flagship program – in the company of peers who were in the process of becoming life-long friends: more than two decades later our group-chat is alive and well, we text and see one another regularly, our friendships having become older than we were when we met.
The inspiration for this line of thinking comes from something Nathan Gershengorn ‘26 told me that he had learned in his heroic and impossible role of leading Harvard’s undergraduate Jewish community in the year after 10/7. Nathan told me, “I came to realize that the way to make Hillel more inclusive of and inviting to students on either the left or the right who felt marginalized or even betrayed – wasn’t to move Hillel to the left or the right politically (though that’s what many of those students thought they wanted). It was to move politics to the background entirely, and to make this a more fun, chill, attractive place.”
As we enter the joy of Adar together, I hope that each of us, and our community as a whole, will merit to create both types of pluralism: a pluralism-because that keeps our conversations honest, fearless, and truth-seeking; and a pluralism-despite that emerges from the ways our lives are sweetened and deepened by the kindness, creativity, decency, and good humor of those around us.
Shabbat shalom and hodesh tov,
Rabbi Jason Rubenstein
Executive Director
Harvard Hillel