Misunderstandings

I just had an interesting experience and since it was in the blog world I thought I would share it on my blog. (Especially since I am overdue for a post.)

Let me start by saying that I have been trying to avoid blogging about "the issues" as there are plety of excellent blogs on these topics which I read regularly. I also tend not to comment on these blogs because most of what I would say, usually gets said by others and I don't feel I have anything to add. Today I decided to comment on a post regarding seperate seating at weddings. As some of you know, DH and I had an "interesting" experience in this department when we got married. Basically, I was informed that certain people had to have seperate seating, including the boys and rabbis from my husband's yeshiva and my husband's family. (My SIL actually said, "If I have to sit with my husband I won't come.") We actually did a great job of getting everyone seated in a way that made them comfortable, even though it involved asking some couples who did not request it to sit seperately in order to fill the tables.

Then I found out afterwards that some of the boys who I went to the trouble of seating in this way had spent the morning before the wedding hitting on my single friends. Now, I would love to have introduced them to each other and had them socialize - but they and their yeshiva don't agree that this is appropriate. Great, I respect their view. But there was no reason for the seating to be the main issue - if you beleive that men and women shouldn't socialize in that setting, then don't. The external things like seating aren't going to help you if you don't behave the way that you believe you should behave.

Now, that said, Rabbi Harry Maryles is one of the blogs that most often says exactly what I beleive on these issues. He has a following of both people who strongly agree and those who strongly disagree, and unfortunately his comments section often turns into a personal battle between the same five posters from these two camps. Rabbi Maryles is great and has even been corresponding with my husband off-blog, but some of these disagree-ers can be pretty harsh. He posted today about the seating issue. So I basically wrote what I just said above, but I wrote in a way that I hoped would keep me from being bashed by the disagree-ers. Apparently I did too good a job of watching what I said. One of the people with whom I pretty much agree compeletly bashed my comment. Apparently I came off as Charedi ("ultra" Orthodox)! The fact is I agreed with a lot of what he said in his comment that was criticizing my comment - I just didn't agree that it applied to me! (For those of you who know me, I think you will find it interesting to see what he perceived my entire hashkafa to be from my two paragraph comment.)

But of course the reason he responded so harshly is because that is the tone of so many of the commenters and I think it is unfortunate. Mixed in with the bashing (from both sides) are always some amazingly insightful comments. Sometimes they are from a perspective which I do not share, but I am able to better understand how this other side sees things and that maybe they also have rational reasons for their views. Or, as in this case, we may even be in agreement if we can calm down long enough to hear what the other person is saying.