From Family to Nation: The Dignity of Difference
Words of Wisdom with Rabbi Efrat Zarren-Zohar
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This week, as we conclude the book of Bereshit (Genesis) and turn the page to begin Shemot (Exodus), we experience a profound shift in the narrative of the Jewish people. There is a natural tinge of sadness in leaving the intimate, personal dramas of our ancestors—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—whose lives, full of both soaring faith and relational mistakes, have shaped our identity.
Yet, this transition is more than just a change of books; it is a fundamental transformation in our collective identity: the move from being a large, extended, complicated family to becoming a small, yet complicated nation.
In Bereshit, the focus is on individuals and their immediate families. When siblings do not fit in they often leave the story, forging their own paths outside the central narrative. The family unit, while vital, has the option of separation. Close to its end, the book shares Jacob’s blessing to his children (Genesis 49:1-28), a scene that beautifully encapsulates the inherent human differences.
Jacob does not bless all with a single, uniform destiny. Instead, he recognizes that they each possess unique strengths and weaknesses, which will lead them to different paths as they fulfill their life’s mission. He sees Judah’s leadership, Issachar’s scholarship, Dan’s justice, and Naphtali’s eloquence, acknowledging that the collective strength of the family lies in the variety of its parts.
The transition to Shemot challenges the Bereshit family model. The descendants of Jacob are now trapped together in Egypt, and the option of separation is gone. If we are to survive the crucible of slavery and emerge as a sovereign people, we must learn how to live with those who are like us and, crucially, those who are not. During slavery years, that might be easier as much is uniform. But as the story continues, the challenge of Shemot is to forge a collective identity—a nation—from a group of stiff-necked people without uniformity.
The Sages of the Talmud and Midrash understood this principle of inherent diversity as a fundamental aspect of creation. They taught:
“Just as their faces are not similar to one another, so their dispositions are not identical to one another, but rather, each has a disposition of his own.” (Bamidbar Rabbah 21:2)
This traditional Jewish commentary grounds the idea of difference not as a flaw to be tolerated, but as a divinely ordained reality. Just as no two people share the exact same face—a physical manifestation of uniqueness—so too, no two people are expected to share the exact same mind or opinion.
To demand uniformity of thought is to deny the very nature of human creation. The nation of Israel, therefore, is not meant to be a monolithic entity, but a complex, multi-faceted body where the tension between differing views is the engine of its vitality.
The late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, of blessed memory, masterfully articulated this ancient wisdom for the modern age. He taught that true unity is not the absence of difference, but the embrace of it:
“Jewish unity is a cause that is not advanced by the advocacy of one point of view over another. It demands the difficult but not impossible exercise of thinking non-adjectivally as a Jew: not as a member of this or that group, but as a member of an indivisible people.” [Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, One People (Maggid, 2024), p. x.]
This insight is the key to our survival as a nation. The common goal—our shared destiny, our covenant, our commitment to Jewish continuity—must be strong enough to contain the vast array of opinions, practices, and political views that exist within our community. The strengths of one tribe, one movement, or one political faction are meant to complement the weaknesses of another, whether here in America or in Israel. Contemporary Israeli thinker Yossi Klein Halevi has warned that the greatest danger to the national project comes not from external threats, but from our own internal fracturing:
“Internally, our great threat and temptation has always been schism, dividing into mutually unintelligible camps that can no longer even speak to each other.” (The State of the Jewish World, 2016)
The Torah’s lesson in Shemot is a direct antidote to this schism. The people are united by the shared experience of slavery and the singular moment of revelation at Sinai, but they remain twelve distinct tribes, each with its own banner, its own territory, and its own character. Their collective strength is realized only when they march together, respecting the space and the unique contribution of every part.
This is also the raison d’etre of Wisdom Without Walls. In a time of heightened global antisemitism, our strength depends on our ability to understand that those who do not see eye-to-eye with us, whether religiously or politically, are also important voices in the global conversation. We must open ourselves to listening to what they have to say. Even if their arguments do not convince us, it is vital to understand how others think.
At this difficult time in our history, we must go back to the Torah and learn that unity does not require uniformity. On the contrary - being part of a nation is respecting those who do not think like us and bringing all together as the combined strengths can make us stronger.
Our task is to move beyond the familial instinct to separate from those who challenge us and embrace the national imperative to build a shared future with all the diverse children of Jacob. Our strength is not in our sameness, but in the sacred dignity of our difference, to use an often-cited Sacks term.
