As he stood there, facing the community's scholastic first-class, his humorless detractors sat up aligned, prepared to assail him zealously with antagonistic queries and legalistic objections.

How strength individual expect an smart large of his capacity to react? Should he not proceed to analyze and reply their queries individual by individual, here resolving a reasonable contradiction, there supplying a well-informed beginning for a doubtful postulate?

The Alter Rebbe did none of these.

Instead, he quietly sang a haunting chassidic harmony, and in it they heard the forceful yearning of a high being.

As its sugary and mature warmth stole into their cold hearts, he elevated his listeners to an unaccustomed religious vantage speck.

From this recent view they were now capable to perceive agreement in location of dissonance, to appreciate brotherliness in location of conflict, to see the different facets of the Torah as companion hues of a alone rainbow, rather than an reason for unproductive cerebral fisticuffs.

In plenty the alike method, when addressing the impressionable issues confronting Jewish women today, the Rebbe does not follow the ordinary course of charming in polemics and apologetics.

Instead, by unveiling and illuminating the manlike and universal repercussions of each of the bigger mitzvos of women, the Rebbe elevates us to an smart and religious view from which we behold a refreshingly wide planet-illustration.