“Make holy garments for Aharon, your brother for honor and splendor.” Shemos 28:2

Imagine it is Super Bowl Sunday and the two teams are being announced. As the teams run onto the field, everyone notices something peculiar: no one is wearing a uniform. The two teams are both wearing street clothes and the players are wearing the same colored helmets. What type of game would it be if this really happened? There would probably be many interceptions and tackles made by mistake as the players would not know who their teammates are. For a team to be successful, they need to wear uniforms.

Before I relate this to Judaism, though, one additional point needs to be made. If you look at the entire team that makes up the football team’s organization, there are many people who actually play a part to make the team successful. There’s the head coach and assistant coaches. There’s the owner. There’s the people who take care of the field. There’s the people that sell tickets to the games, souvenirs, and concessions. All of these people are needed to have a successful football team and each of them has a specific uniform they wear. But each uniform is different from the others: the coach wears different clothing than the employee that sells hot dogs. No matter what they are wearing, though, everyone on this extended team needs to work together. If they do not work together, the team will be a disaster.

Now to Judaism. In Judaism, we have many different people on our team and each wears a different uniform. Some wear one color head-covering while others wear a different one. But for us to be successful as a people, we must all work together, even if we are different. This does not mean we need to agree on everything, but there is a way to disagree and still work together.

One of the most famous rivalries of all time is the Halachic battles between Beis Hillel and Beis Shammai. The Gemara lists numerous times they disagreed with each other. But there is something else about these two schools the Gemara also lists. To understand this, one must remember during the times when Beis Hillel and Beis Shammai lived, the laws of purity and impurity were extremely important. A person could not go to the Beis HaMikdash if they were impure, so the Jews of that time were extremely strict in regards to laws of purity.

In Yevamos, we learn there are certain cases where Beis Hillel was more strict regarding laws of purity and impurity with vessels and in other cases Beis Shammai was more strict. In these certain cases where their yeshiva was more strict, the students of Beis Hillel and Beis Shammai held that the other yeshiva’s vessels were impure and could not be used. Therefore, Beis Hillel felt Beis Shammai was using impure vessels sometimes and Beis Shammai felt Beis Hillel was using impure vessels sometimes. The Gemara says, though, that these two schools did not refrain from borrowing each other’s vessels. The commentaries explain the reason was because they would let each other know if their utensils were considered impure according to the other person’s opinion. Listen closely to this Gemara: these yeshivas felt the other one was doing a terrible transgression, yet they still would borrow each other’s vessels. They would kindly tell the other person when the other person’s yeshiva held more strictly than his opinion.

Every Jew knows people more strict and others who are more lenient than him. Every Jew knows other people who wear different “uniforms” than him. This does not mean the other person is totally wrong and therefore is either not religious or a fanatic. This means this other person has a different view than me. He is still on my team, though, and for us to be successful, I need to get along with everyone on my team, even if we disagree.

The month of Adar has begun and following Adar is Nisan. These two months are months of Redemption (this year it is three months because there are 2 Adars). If we take this lesson to heart and work on ourselves to improve in this area, maybe this year during Adar or Nisan we will see the Final Redemption. May it come speedily in our days!

Good Shabbos!
-yes
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