Mussar HaSePurim
14 Adar, 5762 – Harry Potter
Where did Harry go wrong? All the evidence seemed clearly to point to Snape. All the pieces seemed to fit. Yet, when the truth was discovered, Snape was totally innocent.
We must always be careful to maintain our intellectual integrity and openness. We must always analyze every new piece of information in a vacuum, ignoring previous knowledge and assumptions. By closing our mind to other possibilities, we lose our ability to arrive at the truth. This is true judging our fellow man, getting pshat in a sugya, or solving the Harry Potter books.