"They" tell:
A student once approached Abraham Joshua Heschel and asked him point blank: "Are you Conservative or Orthodox?"
He answered "I am not a noun in search of an adjective".
Great answer!
People LOVE to place people in neat boxes: Chasidish, Yeshivish, Brisker, Neo--Chossid, Modern Orthodox, Religious Zionist, Close Minded Fanatic, etc. etc.
It turns out that people are much more complex than a trite label. When we get to Shomayim we will be asked six questions [Shabbos 31a]. We will also have to give an accounting of every second of our lives. But this encounter will NOT include a question as to what label one has.
"Hey G-d, I was Modern Orthodox so mixed swimming/ netflix subscription was OK."
"Ahhhh - why was I getting up at 2pm at which time I promptly davened Shachris [after mikva and a delicious brunch]? - I am Chasidish".
"Why did I hate so many other Jews? Well, they followed a different Rebbe/ Didn't serve in the Army/ Didn't wear black hats etc. etc.
None of these answers will fly. So a greater focus on pnimiyus and less on externals is the call of the day.
To make us realize how futile is our need/desire to understand and classify other people, it is worth quoting a passage from the essay of RYB"S ztz"l in his essay Confrontation [p. 15 - studied thoroughly at all the Brisk Yeshivos in Eretz Yisrael 馃榾馃槀]:
[I]n all personal unions such as marriage, friendship, or comradeship, however strong the bonds uniting two individuals, the modi existentiae remain totally unique and hence, incongruous, at both levels, the ontological and the experiential. The hope of finding a personal existential equation of two human beings is rooted in the dangerous and false notion that human existences are abstract magnitudes subject to the simple mathematical processes... In fact, the closer two individuals get to know each other, the more aware they become of the metaphysical distance separating them. Each one exists in a singular manner, completely absorbed in his individual awareness which is egocentric and exclusive. The sun of existence rises with the birth of one’s self-awareness and sets with its termination. It is beyond the experiential power of an individual to visualize an existence preceding or following his.
