If I try to step into the shoes of a inner city black kid who grew up without a father and with a mother who was a drug addict and had many other challenges, it is IMPOSSIBLE. I can't be there because I grew up a spoiled Jewish kid with two parents and a completely different racial, social, religious and emotional milieu. My ancestors were Jews from Poland and Hungary. His were slaves in Africa. I was raised with a COMPLETELY different value system. In my world, when I disagree with someone we talk about it. In his world, it often ends up with knives and fisticuffs. [I am not claiming superiority. Nor am I claiming inferiority - or equality. I don't believe that people are equal. I am just describing in brief fundamental differences].
So to attempt to go into his world and analyze him requires infinite humility and recognition of my limitations.
Academics [and others] often analyze and even psychoanalyze great religious figures. The mistake they make is to assume that by reading a text they understand the person. A secular Israeli Jew who grew up on a kibbutz in the 20th and 21st century can't BEGIN to understand Dovid Hamelech or the Rambam. [Nor can anyone else for that matter] All they can do is read our texts and try to learn from them as much as we can with complete recognition of their limitations.
One example:
A secular female professor from Hebrew U. wrote an article about the Ishbitzer Rebbe זצ"ל זי"ע and claimed that he was nothing less than a Reform rabbi who wanted nothing more than to be פורק עול מלכות שמים. This of course says NOTHING about the Ishbitzer and EVERYTHING about her.
Like the old expression - A worm in horseradish thinks that the whole world is horseradish.
והמבין יבין.
