So why group anyone at all? The more labels we give, the more we segregate people into groups, the more separated we become as a Jewish nation. And, when it comes down to it, isn't it really all about being shomer Torah u'mitzvot? If we have to call people names, it only spurns more names, more labels. "Well, within Modern Orthodoxy there are different spectrums, of course, so let's separate it out into...hmmm...Left Wing Modern Orthodox and Right Wing Modern Orthodox." Okay, hooray, more labels! And you know what? People aren't going to be happy with that either because guess what? There's still lots of gray in there! Quick, quick - more labels! We must get rid of the gray! We must define everyone! Right Right Wing MO? Left Right Wing MO? Right Left Wing MO? Left Left Wing MO? Just keep adding Rights and Lefts to everything!
You know what? The gray still won't go away. It won't. Because we're individuals, we're not clones. As similar as we can be to one another, we don't all fall neatly into little packages. People will divide and divide and divide until, you know something? Each person will just have to be their own label. Sure, when it comes down to it, there will always be groups of people who have extremely similar hashkafas and ways of practicing halacha, but we'll all still be individuals. There will always be tiny things that make each of us our own unique person.
Holy Hyrax and I were having fun with an online quiz that attempts to tell you in which branch of Orthodox Judaism you fall (of course, it can't really tell you that, but it was fun to see what it would say). I took the quiz twice. My results the first time around are not important but when I took it again (because I wanted to see what would happen if I changed around a few of the answers I had been debating between the first time around), this is what I got:
The Orthodoxy Test
says that I'm Huh?
What does it mean?
I give up. What are you?
I'll tell you what I am. I'm Erachet. And I just officially stepped out of the box and broke it. Ha!
