It's no joke: A student of Hegel and a student rabbi are on a train...

On an overcrowded train to London on the weekend, I got up a few minutes before we arrived at St Pancras, to ensure I was near the door when it stopped so I could exit quickly and get on the Northern Line as quickly as possible.

As I stood there, another chap had the same idea, and was gathering his things together, including the book he was reading,. The title intrigued me although it's precise name eludes me right now, but it was authored by the philosopher Hegel, and judging by the thickness of the volume, it was not light reading.

I commented that he'd chosen a nice easy book to entertain him on the journey and we started chatting. He asked me how I knew about Hegel and I shared that I'd enjoyed studying philosophy of religion at school (Religious Studies A Level) and university (as part of my undergraduate degree in Comparative Religion), and now my sons were also studying the same A Level subject, its nice to be reminded of something I once knew, and I'm sure has informed my thinking, but I can't for the life of me remember any details, especially when there were others we also studied, such as Aristotle.

His eyes lit up - "Aristotle? That's actually what my PhD proposal is going to be about!" he exclaimed. And he explained that he was reading Hegel because he's preparing for a PhD where he wants to contrast both their thinking around something or other (damn my terrible memory!).

As the suburbs of outer London sped by, he asked me what I did. And I told him I'm actually a rabbinical student, his eyes lit up again, telling me that at a conference about Hegel he was at recently (who knew?!), someone had actually given a talk about the connections between Hegel and Kabbalah and he thought that was pretty cool, and did I know much about Kabbalah and where did it fit in to Judaism today,

The train slowed as it approached the glass dome of St Pancras. I wished him luck, and told him I truly believed in the work he was doing as we need deep thinkers in our world right now. He looked shocked. I imagine he doesn't get this type of response most of the time...

But I thought of my journey with Talmud; how my starting point was so dismissive and arrogant ("who needs to know what rabbis from hundreds of years ago thought about the minutiae details of their Jewish life?!?!") and now I truly, deeply appreciate their discussions, about the minutiae details of their Jewish lives, because I see now, thanks to the illumination from my wonderful teachers, the art of the discourse of arguing, of disagreeing and sharpening each other's minds with the back and forth over the tiniest of details. And I lament the absence of that in our public discourse today. The polarisation of views, the cancelling of people who dare to say something others disagree with, the violent repercussions of the increasing distance between the humans at the ends of the views.

So yes, the world needs more PhD students thinking about the nuanced difference between philosophers who lived centuries ago, and the world needs more of us engaging in detailed conversations of disagreement, where we can sharpen our brains, and seek to understand more than we did before through the benefit of listening to, studying and learning from those who hold a different view.

photo of St Pancras station, taken by Samuel Dyson