I still can't forget what I experienced about a month ago in what I now clearly see as a small "pond". Last August, I was invited to join this "pond" after several months of acquaintance, and almost immediately afterward I was invited to take part in a three-month "challenge" program within it, without knowing much about it. I agreed to join both mainly in order to take myself out of my comfort zone.
This "challenge" program was meant to have participants obtain five "candles" within three months. These "candles" were said to grant a "special status" within the "pond", which in turn was said to provide certain "privileges".
This "special status" had already begun to seem worthless outside this "pond" to someone like me, who had even stopped seeing any intrinsic value in a PhD outside another "pond" called academia. So I did not regret ending the program without a single "candle".
Nevertheless, I was curious to ask someone who already had this "special status" to explain to me, at the end of the program, what she considered its most important "privilege". She replied, "This gives me access to exclusive content."
I could only giggle when I heard this, wondering what "exclusive content" could possibly mean in such a "pond". Then I replied to her, "Really? I have free access to a three-thousand-year-old library of Jewish life wisdom."
I noticed from her expression that this reply made her instinctively sense a fundamental difference between her "exclusive content" and the vast "ocean" in which I have been navigating freely.
Ironically, it was precisely through this contrast that I was able to reappreciate what I had long taken for granted: the depth and breath of Jewish life wisdom.