What We Can Learn from the Wives of Alcoholics

What We Can Learn from the Wives of Alcoholics

A few days ago I found out that a woman I know from around the neighborhood is a social worker who, among other things, runs a support group for women with alcoholic husbands.  
“Is it a support group especially for religious women?”
She smiled and shook her head. “No, we have all kinds of women there. Charedi women in sheitls, National Religious women wearing headscarves,” she said as she pointed to her own, “along with secular women who have never set foot in a shul, and have no interest in doing so. We have Meretz voters sitting next to Shas voters. Labor next to Likud.”
And in every group I’ve facilitated over the years, the same thing always happens. Over the course of our weeks together, we forget the differences. Because when people communicate, on a deep level, the externals that divide us from one another melt away. Deep down we all feel pain. We all struggle. Deep down, underneath this one’s sheitl and that one’s jeans, we are the same.”    
Yesterday, along with millions of other Israeli citizens, I voted. And by doing so, I and millions of others chose and stood firmly within our corner Israeli society. We said, I am like these people here and not like those people over there. But deep down, as the social worker reminded me, we have infinitely more in common than the things that, election after election, divide us from one another. 

2 comments

  1. Very well said, thank you.

  2. Rav Aviner writes about this idea also. As Jews, we have more that unites us, than what divides us. I try to think about this, when I see people who are “different” than me.

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