We all have heard that famous joke about Yakov: "How do we know Yakov wore a hat?"
Because the pasuk says, "And Yakov went out." Now I ask you: Would Yakov have gone out without his hat on?
(We already knew Yakov was very frum. He told us in last week's sedra: "Anochi ish chalak...." - I eat only glatt.... (Glatt in Hebrew is chalak.)
But seriously, folks, this little joke has a deeper message behind it.
There was a time when certain principles were intuitively known to all of us, when we instinctively, automatically, understood in our kishkes what was right and what was wrong, what was yashar and what was pas-nit, what was kosher and what was treif.
Did you have to tell a Jew not to order pastrami on white bread? With mayonnaise, yet? Would you find a Jew out hunting deer? Or buying Sweet & Low? Did we have to look up the Halacha to know how to act in public, to help the needy among us, or how to treat the opposite sex?
There was always a fifth, unwritten volume of the Shulchan Aruch inside our heads, a bell that would go off when we needed to know how to react in any given situation. As the U.S. Supreme Court said in its landmark ruling on pornography: "We may not be able to exactly define it, but we know it when we see it."
We knew Yiddishkeit when we saw it.
I fear the inner compass of Am Yisrael may be going haywire; that our mental clock may have lost a few ticks somewhere along the way. When Jews in Geneva (pronounced g-NAY-va) say Israel is the "aggressor" and has itself to blame for the wave of terror; when rabbis - with solid credentials - question whether it's a mitzva to live in Israel; when a shul in the Diaspora spends $13 million on a new edifice, while so many of our people here are living below the poverty line; when yeshiva boys tell shidduch dates not to wear across-the-body seat belts because they're not tznius (modest), then we have to stop and do a serious "sechel-check."
How do you teach sechel? It's not quite like teaching a Tosfos. It starts at home, as kids watch and copy their parents' midot (personality traits and values). It continues with teachers, who distill nuggets of proper behavior from every story in the Torah or Talmud. And it comes from thinking for yourself about what is right and wrong, regardless of peer pressure or precedent.
So, whether you wear a hat or not, put on your thinking cap and use your G-d given sechel!
Because the pasuk says, "And Yakov went out." Now I ask you: Would Yakov have gone out without his hat on?
(We already knew Yakov was very frum. He told us in last week's sedra: "Anochi ish chalak...." - I eat only glatt.... (Glatt in Hebrew is chalak.)
But seriously, folks, this little joke has a deeper message behind it.
There was a time when certain principles were intuitively known to all of us, when we instinctively, automatically, understood in our kishkes what was right and what was wrong, what was yashar and what was pas-nit, what was kosher and what was treif.
Did you have to tell a Jew not to order pastrami on white bread? With mayonnaise, yet? Would you find a Jew out hunting deer? Or buying Sweet & Low? Did we have to look up the Halacha to know how to act in public, to help the needy among us, or how to treat the opposite sex?
There was always a fifth, unwritten volume of the Shulchan Aruch inside our heads, a bell that would go off when we needed to know how to react in any given situation. As the U.S. Supreme Court said in its landmark ruling on pornography: "We may not be able to exactly define it, but we know it when we see it."
We knew Yiddishkeit when we saw it.
I fear the inner compass of Am Yisrael may be going haywire; that our mental clock may have lost a few ticks somewhere along the way. When Jews in Geneva (pronounced g-NAY-va) say Israel is the "aggressor" and has itself to blame for the wave of terror; when rabbis - with solid credentials - question whether it's a mitzva to live in Israel; when a shul in the Diaspora spends $13 million on a new edifice, while so many of our people here are living below the poverty line; when yeshiva boys tell shidduch dates not to wear across-the-body seat belts because they're not tznius (modest), then we have to stop and do a serious "sechel-check."
How do you teach sechel? It's not quite like teaching a Tosfos. It starts at home, as kids watch and copy their parents' midot (personality traits and values). It continues with teachers, who distill nuggets of proper behavior from every story in the Torah or Talmud. And it comes from thinking for yourself about what is right and wrong, regardless of peer pressure or precedent.
So, whether you wear a hat or not, put on your thinking cap and use your G-d given sechel!