{"id":331179,"date":"2026-07-07T09:45:33","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T06:45:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vanleer.org.il\/?p=331179"},"modified":"2026-07-07T09:45:33","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T06:45:33","slug":"worthy-curiosity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vanleer.org.il\/en\/articles-en\/worthy-curiosity\/","title":{"rendered":"Worthy Curiosity"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was young, I was invited to a rather important interview. Naturally, I was quite nervous, so when asked, \u201cWhat is the activity you most enjoy doing?\u201d I found my verbal faculties have abandoned me and blurted out, \u201cKnowledge.\u201d The interviewer looked at me with an expression of impatient pity and said, not entirely gently, that knowledge is not<\/em> an activity. I took a deep breath, glanced at the branches of the tree in the window behind her, its branches swaying in the wind (a wind that did not<\/em> reach my sweaty forehead) and before I answered, I thought about it for a moment.<\/p>\n

Knowledge is<\/em> an activity, I told her \u2014 because the best way, or at least the most enjoyable way to learn is through conversation. The greatest pleasure, I continued, is to be able to sit with smart people and learn from them, or with them, through disagreement, debate, attempts at precision, and the search for common ground. This was before I was even familiar with the expression from Midrash Rabba, \"a knife is sharpened only on the side of its counterpart, so, a Torah scholar is sharpened only by his counterpart,\" [or \"A knife will only become sharpened only at the side of another. So too, a Torah scholar can only become sharpened by a friend<\/a>.\"] but as it turns out, it was a concept that already deeply resonated with me.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Many years have passed since then. Today, there are a myriad of activities I enjoy very much that weren\u2019t on my radar back then; spending time with my children, traveling abroad with my wife, teaching students, baking, working in a team. I have also since learned that I don\u2019t like ranking things as \u201cmost.\u201d How am I supposed to choose between C.S. Lewis and Faulkner, between tacos and ice cream, or between orange and purple? And yet, if I were once again placed in an intimidatingly stressful interview situation, there is a reasonable chance I would give the same answer \u2014 learning with others, alongside them and against them; the pursuit of knowledge that helps you understand existing concepts in a new light or reveals new concepts you didn\u2019t even know existed. What could be better than that?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s my kind of fun. I respond to new knowledge with a little chuckle of happiness and a desire to share it with the world. Just ask my family how much I bombard them on the group chat every time I discover a new conspiracy theory about Tartaria, or what Nietzsche\u2019s sister did in Paraguay. But beyond that, I believe that the best way to understand (always, but especially today) the complicated and unpredictable world we live in is through someone who has studied a certain field in depth, and, if possible, while that person is having a debate another person who has studied the same field but sees it differently. The knife does indeed become sharper, but more than that, the object being studied is better illuminated when it is examined from multiple angles.<\/p>\n

We are lucky, then, to have Worthy Opponent<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

For starters, it\u2019s lucky because in Israel at any given time you can expect a fair share of arguments and discussions. Television and radio studios are full of them \u2014 it makes for good drama; it draws an audience and keeps production costs low\u2026 but most of them don\u2019t teach you anything. More often than not, they feature a panel of people who essentially agree with one another and are simply arguing over the specific shade of their agreement, or, on the other hand, people whose disagreement is so deep that there is effectively no communication between them, and what viewers receive is only red-faced shouting. In both cases, the same speakers are often invited back regardless of the subject, leading to shallow and uninformed discussions. The only thing to be learned from these kinds of arguments (or agreements) is newfound anger, confirmation of things you already knew to be true, or verification that what you thought to be wrong, is in fact, wrong. New understandings that go beyond the echo chambers and confirmation biases from which we all suffer are few and far between.<\/p>\n

In Worthy Opponent<\/em>, an initiative conceived by Lilach Karsenty, which I am proud to produce together with Tamar Winograd Amsalem, Daniel Jonas, and the team at 103FM, led by Michal Kadosh, we are trying to encourage a culture of disagreement, in both senses of the phrase \u2014 \u00a0both disagreement, without hiding or blurring the differences, but also culture, one that allows for deeper engagement with the subject (as deep as one can go in half an hour) all conducted within a conversation based on mutual respect. After all, Israel is a country with a diversity of peoples and opinions. If we are to try and understand our opponents, but are unable to listen to one another without being obligated to agree, how are we supposed to live together?<\/p>\n