For any subscribers who missed it, here’s my recent exchange with Amica Terra on our relationships to the Torah, in chronological order from earliest to latest:
Amica Terra and I have a lot in common. Including, it turns out, finding it stressful to have a friendly disagreement in public, even though we’re both ideologically pro doing so. For me, public disagreement is stressful because what if I’m wrong, or being too provocative or something, and anybody being kind and gracious towards me (in any context) is stressful because what if I don’t properly reciprocate????
Conveniently, I don’t find myself really disagreeing with their latest, and I highly recommend it. I think it describes the difference between our attitudes more precisely than I’ve been able to, and depicts each perspective compellingly. Thank you for that. I’m proud to have provoked your coinage of the phrase I’ve stolen for the title of this post.
(I can also concede defeat in terms of wittiness. I may be able to generate a greater quantity of puns, but on quality I simply cannot compete.)
There’s been a grim current-events subtext to all this, but mostly it’s just felt good to connect with Jewish tradition in a more raw, honest way than I’ve usually been able to manage. And I am definitely part of a long Jewish tradition here, even if it’s the tradition of the heretic, or epikoros, a word which originally meant “Jew who likes Epicurus.” Since before the Mishnah was written, we’ve been there—the weird, annoying, but basically kind people who just will not shut up about Ancient Greece.