avakesh

Tenth of Teves, by Chaim Gershon

 

 

The Tenth of Teves is a fast partly because it is the beginning of the siege that led to the walls of Jerusalem being breached.

 

While this is a negative event, there are positive aspects to this tragedy as well, for it signifies an opening in the walls. Openings to the outside, allow one to draw the outside into himself, purify and uplift it. It also allows one to expel the negative from the inside out.

 

In Chassidus, words of Torah and prayer are compared to bricks/stones.

 

There is a parable told about two people praying. One was asked why he davens so slow?

He replied that he builds a wall with the fence posts close together so that nothing  foreign can penetrate and he can, therefore, concentrate and spend time praying. The other person replied that he davens  fast so the posts are far apart and his own unworthy thoughts can be ejected. Thus, openings and breaches, which at first glance are an unmitigated evil, can also serve as the means to expel that which is unworthy.

 

Thus a person has a wall which, like a wall of a cell in his body, is a semi-permeable membrane.  Man's borders (made famous by the book by Rabbi Manis Friedman) are local at the same time as they are global, for his walls are the walls of a sancified space in his own Temple.

 

Kozak dance.

A custom that is conducted in some chassidic sectors call the "Kozak" dance, where children dressed as Cossacks preform a special dance before the Mitzvah tanz

The emergence of Chareidi-lite

The recent events in Beit Shemesh are noteworthy for several reasons. First of all, they showed emergent faultiness between the religious and nonreligious and the movement of the national religious public into the chiloni community. Secondly, they demonstrate that despite its great power, this Chareidi community in Israel remains vulnerable and besieged. Third, it brings to for the the inevitable coming separation within that Chareidi community itself, between the chareidim "as we used to know them" and  what I call Chareidi-lite.

In America, we know Chareidi-light very well. These are people who dress in black but maintain an ongoing engagement with modernity. They work in secular occupations, their children read English books and they are familiar with and take pride in knowing and being within the mainstream of American society. This is a group that has been growing within the Israeli Chareidi community as well in the recent years. Due to the changing socieconomics, more and more former Kollel men have transitioned into various occupations, have gone through various Chareidi training programs, or simply has wives or children who obtained secular degrees. The not insubstantial Anglo community is also a part of this group as are many chareidi immigrants from other countries. In their own countries, they were Chareidim but here, in Israel, they are Chareidi-lite. They are absorbed and indistinct within the Chareidi communities. Their voices are stifled and their are abilities are not yet known.

What is interesting about the current imbroglio is that for the first time we are hearing the voices of this large and growing contingent. Whereas in the past the community monolithically closed around its members under attack, in the past two weeks we heard many voices that explicitly draw a line of separation between themselves and the so-called extremists. What this heralds is the emergence of a new community, whose name is not yet known. I call it Chareidi-light.

It was as inevitable as it was to be expected. Historical precedent teaches us that all movements divide into four groups:those on the far right, those on the far left and the two near the center, one on the right and one on the left, and they struggle over the center.

So it was from the beginning. When Aguda started, it contained two wings: the wing that shared some of their assumptions and the worldview of MIzrachi and the wing that was more isolationinst, headed by Issac Breuer and Nathan Birnbaum respectively. To its left was the world Mizrachi movement and on its right, were the rejectionists, who rejected any cooperation on engagement with the Zionists or the nonreligious. To its credit, Aguda managed to contain both wings within iself for many decades, although it did lose the Poalei Agudas Yisroel on its left wing. As Aguda had become irrelevant as a political or an ideological movement, the two wings began again to be identified under one banner of Chareidism. This situation could not last and what we are witnessing now is the separation of the two.

This Chareidi world will fracture. One group will be people who reject engagement with modernity, have long beards and long black coats, payos, Yiddish, be poor and who assume geographic and cultural isolation. The other one will consist of people with small beards, fashionable black garments, good Hebrew and English, who value professions and the positive features of the contemporary society and are affluent, and who are much less committed to the authority of Gedolei Torah.

What will this two groups be called? I don't know. Perhaps one will remain known as Chareidim and the other one will adopt a name the denotes both seriousness and flexibility. I do know one thing. It is a wonderful opportunity for the right kind of a Talmid Chacham to emerge as a leader of a popular movement.

 

Avos 2:14: Learh all the Toras

Rabbi Yossi said: Let your fellow's property be as dear to you as your own, prepare yourself to study Torah which is not an inheritance to you, and let all of your deeds be for the sake of heaven.

Rabbi Yose is the Tanna in our Mishnah who said that the good way to which a person should cling to is "a good neighbor" and the bad way which a person should avoid is the "bad neighbor". R. Yose  himself certainly followed this philosophy. He tells us in Shabbos 118  that the reason that he lived a long life is because he would never transgress the words of his colleagues. R. Yose was not a Cohen. Yet, even if his colleagues were to tell him to go up and pronounce the Priestly blessings, he would do so. In the merit of his careful cultivation of the trait of congeniality, Rabbi Yose merited that in any dispute between him and one of his friends, the halacha is according to R. Yose (Eruvin 47a).

However, the second teaching of R. Yose is difficult to understand. Why would one think that Torah should come to him by inheritance? After all, there is no branch of knowledge that does not require careful application and many hours of study to master. Furthermore, what does it mean "prepare"? What is this preparation?

I think that R. Yose is teaching us something very important. Do not read, "prepare yourself to study Torah, because it is not an inheritance for you", but read, "prepare yourself to study that Torah which is not an inheritance for you". This reading had the advantage of preserving the tri-partite division of this mishna.

 [י [יב] רבי יוסי אומר, יהי ממון חברך חביב עליך כשלך

; התקן עצמך ללמוד תורה שאינה ירושה לך;

 וכל מעשיך, יהיו לשם שמיים.

The truth is that someone who grows up in a particular community does, almost by osmosis,  receive a certain perspective, a particular approach, a specific sensibility from his community, which can be called an "inheritance". The Torah of Satmar is not the same as that of the Yeshiva World and the Torah of Lubavitch is very different from that of R. Kook, and neither is like the Sephardic tradition. When one seriously engages with another Torah tradition from inside, he often experiences a sense of disorientation in which things are almost the same but not quite the same. One can compare it to the experience of looking  into a mirror that is made to distort. One kind of sees the same things, but the inter-relationships and the sense of emphasis and depth perception are very, very different. One does need to "prepare" to make a transition from one tradition to another.

Having done this, however, your actions will be for the sake of heaven. One who knows, understands and values multiple approaches, will not act by habit. He or she will not parrot slogans. A scholar who is proficient in many different pathways of Avoda will know what to do, and more importantly will know what to do for the right reasons.

This does not negate being a good member of the community. R. Yose teaches us that, at the minimum, one must care for one's neighbors money as much as one's own. Rising above parochialism leads one to the level of "for the Sake of Heaven" but the goal always is to remain within  a specific community as a way of life as one reaches to Heaven. 

Interestingly, ARIZAL in the SEFER DERUSHEI HA'NESHAMOS V'HA'GILGULIM (Perek 3) explains that a person who completed his learning in a prior lifetime only needs, in his present lifetime, to work on the method of learning that he did not yet master. (The words of the Arizal refer to the rest of a person's learning, when he is certain that he is not neglecting to learn basic Halachah; see SHACH YD 246:5.). The mishna then tells one to study Torah which one had not inherited from a previous gilgul.