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In a previous article, I quoted Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Kook on Devarim 32:15-16: "Jeshurun became fat and rebelled. You grew obese, thick and gross." Rabbi Kook writes that this describes our era of materialism; to paraphrase the rabbi: adipose wrecks.
The message is all the more pertinent as we leave the Yomim Noraim (Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur) and Sukkot. Rabbi Shimshon Rafael Hirsch writes that the Avodah, the Temple Service, of Yom Kippur features the incense burning in the Holy of Holies, and then a gradual outward movement of the service - to the parochet, ulam (hall), mizbeach (altar) and, finally, to the Sa'ir La'Azazel, the Scape-Goat, sent far out of the Temple. This movement reflects the lesson that the ideal, symbolized by the Holy of Holies, is to permeate outwards to the life of the Jewish people, so that it is spirituality, and not materialism, that is thrust foremost to their consciousness, to constantly run the everyday life of Israel.
After the unfettering (Haftorah for Yom Kippur, Yeshayahu 59:6) of the soul on Yom Kippur, that fledgling, newborn ba'al teshuva-soul needs the incubation in the sukkah before being thrust out into this materialistic world of shamanta (you grew obese).
The fitting lesson for the week after Sukkot is that of parshat Breishit, that of the Tree of Knowledge, the Eitz Hada'at Tov Vara. Like Adam HaRishon exiled from Eden into the big, cruel world, we are all beginning a journey into a new year. And if the mistakes of last year are not to be repeated, we need to soberly reflect on what happened. I personally may have been guilty in the pieces I wrote for Arutz Sheva of a "show-offy" pilpul-ism, instead of getting down to basics, which was sorely needed.
Like Adam HaRishon, the Jewish people lack da'at tov vara. We may know every gigabyte that inhabits cyber-space, we may have Nobel laureates every year, but we don't know right from wrong. The mistake made in the battle for Gush Katif was the lack of a moral leadership that should have stood up and clearly declared: "Disengagement is immoral. Don't do it." For every Rabbi Avraham Shapiro, Rabbis Melamed and Lior who spoke thus, there were the voices of other rabbis neutralizing their moral message.
One rabbi said, and wrote, that Disengagement is evil, but so is refusing orders. Still, he clearly called on soldiers to opt out of Disengagement, by saying, "I'm sick, I have a belly ache." Although any thoughtful person heeding this rabbi would therefore have not thrown Jews out of their homes (and not spoken the words this rabbi so feared, "I refuse"), but the moral message was so lost that twice during the week before Disengagement, the Jerusalem Post (mis)quoted the rabbi as being in favor of the blind following of any orders. Another rabbi personally told any student who asked him not to do the act of throwing Jews out of their homes, but was strongly against the word "refusal", fearing that in the future it would tear the army and country apart. The problem, again, was that he allowed the basic immorality of Disengagement to be hidden from view.
The danger is in the here and now, not in the future. Not only are 200,000 more Jews under threat of eviction in Judea and Samaria, but Disengagement was followed, within a week, by the bringing of the Egyptian army right up to our borders. This not only has allowed rampant arms smuggling and terrorist infiltration, but brings the largest Arab army to our doorstep.
One more aspect of the blurring of right and wrong: the hugging and kissing of soldiers by some who were evicted. It is true that the lesson of the arava (willow) is that all Jews, even wicked ones, are part of the Nation of Israel, not unlike the idea that we cannot have a Seder without the ben harasha, the evil son. However, although he has to be invited, the Haggadah says of the rasha: "hakhei et shinav", blunt his teeth. Certainly, while he is engaged in his evil acts, there is no reason to be giving the rasha our blessings. The hugging and kissing of soldiers in Gush Katif not only gave a stamp of approval to the ma'aseh resha (evil act) at a time when 200,000 more settlers are in danger of eviction, but it again blurred the whole moral aspect of the act, making it hard for some to judge it as evil.
The failure to unambiguously differentiate right from wrong was also seen in the thundering silence of the Diaspora's Modern Orthodox rabbinate. Chareidi rabbonim expressed more moral outrage and sympathy than those who are ostensibly Zionist. Perhaps chutznikim (the Jews of the Diaspora) don't know how truly vicious people can be, but we settlers did warn them, and we are dealing with Rabbis, people of intellect. We heard nothing. Or worse. For example, the Winter 2000 edition of Tradition, the Rabbinical Council of America's Journal, published a long essay purporting to prove (the "proofs" are nonsense) that targeted assassinations are immoral, and that Judea, Samaria and Gaza rabbanim were distorting Torah as they pushed for a stronger defense of Israel. Does the RCA really want to leave us totally defenseless? Or take the following, typical story:
One rabbi got up before his large Shabbos congregation and said that he had mixed feelings about the Disengagement. Maybe 5%, maybe 1% good might come from it.
Now, imagine the following, alternative sermon:
The rabbi goes to the pulpit and screams, "This Disengagement is at least 95% evil, maybe 99% evil. Go out and join Americans For A Safe Israel, and travel with them to Washington to lobby congressmen against Disengagement. Or join ZOA and Mort Zimmerman and protest."
Perhaps, that rabbi didn't see that the moral message of 5765 was lost as he presented Disengagement as if it were a 50-50, right-wrong tossup. And perhaps he couldn't do otherwise, for he might have been pilloried by the leftists in his shul had he presented the issue as he really saw it.
In any case, rabbis in the Diaspora ought to pick up a copy of Alan Dershowitz' Chutzpa. Prof. Dershowitz may not like "West Bank Rabbis", but maybe then Diaspora rabbis would realize that they not only have moral obligations to teach their flock right from wrong (even if they have to take some flack), but have the civil rights to make their voices heard. Their silence is but another manifestation of the Jewish obesity syndrome.
Finally, as we set off into 5766, there are issues in Israel on which Right and Left, and religious and secular, share enough common ground to at least engage in civil, reasoned interaction. The army is one common link, although it has shown that the uniform can be used for evil. And many on the Left sincerely still believe that the way to ensure the security of this country is to appease the enemy. But events, and our friendly face-to-face persuasion, may still persuade some otherwise. The synagogues of Gush Katif proved to be another uniting issue. There are more, but I'd like to mention one: the Holocaust.
We settlers bungled it. We began to wear orange stars, and the moment the Left protested, we stopped wearing them. "You are misusing the symbols of the Holocaust!" the Left screamed. Nonsense. It is useless to talk to the Left of Zionism, or of the holiness of Eretz Yisrael. They simply have no preparation for hearing us, and we might as well be speaking Swahili. But everyone in this country has studied the Holocaust. And when we wore the star, and said that they are a Judenrat (not Nazis), sacrificing fellow Jews so that the enemy (and so-called friends like the US) would leave them alone - bull's-eye! They got the message. And it was their guilty consciences that cried for us to stop. And, foolishly, stop we did.
For those who say that nobody killed the Jews of Gush Katif, I can only retort that if you demand that every detail of today be the same as history, then you will never learn anything from history. And the lesson of the Holocaust is not to the Goyim, not that we must badger them with dozens of worldwide Holocaust Museums, so that they "never do it again". But there is a lesson in the Shoah for the Jews. And it is not simply "Never Again" as a slogan to motivate us to fight for our own survival. My God, every organism on the face of the earth knows that lesson; it's not a particularly Jewish lesson. But as I outlined in my essay for Vayakhel: Sacrifice, one lesson of the Holocaust is that one Jew is not to make another Jew into his "fall guy"; that's a manifestation of the sinat chinam that causes and prolongs our exile.
This Shabbos, after reading of the first exile, that of Adam from Eden after he failed to tell right from wrong, the Torah starts to relate the evil of the generation of the Flood (Genesis 6:5): "The inclination of the thoughts of man's heart is only evil all the day." The Talmud in Chagiga (16a) says of this: "Should you say: 'If I sin in the privacy of my own home, who will testify against me?' And the answer is: that person's soul, even the very limbs of his body will testify against him," as the Haftorah of parshat Bereishit says: "'You are my witness,' says God." (Yeshayahu 43:10)
One has only to study the "body" of this country - with the 1,400 terror dead, and the threat of the PLO/PA - and its "soul" after the sin of Disengagement to see the right from the wrong of the deadly, nonsensical Leftist policies of the last twelve years. As we celebrate the 90th birthday of the last prime minister (Yitchak Shamir, may he live till 120) who refused to capitulate to wrong, let us pray that the coming year bring us blessing and salvation.
The message is all the more pertinent as we leave the Yomim Noraim (Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur) and Sukkot. Rabbi Shimshon Rafael Hirsch writes that the Avodah, the Temple Service, of Yom Kippur features the incense burning in the Holy of Holies, and then a gradual outward movement of the service - to the parochet, ulam (hall), mizbeach (altar) and, finally, to the Sa'ir La'Azazel, the Scape-Goat, sent far out of the Temple. This movement reflects the lesson that the ideal, symbolized by the Holy of Holies, is to permeate outwards to the life of the Jewish people, so that it is spirituality, and not materialism, that is thrust foremost to their consciousness, to constantly run the everyday life of Israel.
After the unfettering (Haftorah for Yom Kippur, Yeshayahu 59:6) of the soul on Yom Kippur, that fledgling, newborn ba'al teshuva-soul needs the incubation in the sukkah before being thrust out into this materialistic world of shamanta (you grew obese).
The fitting lesson for the week after Sukkot is that of parshat Breishit, that of the Tree of Knowledge, the Eitz Hada'at Tov Vara. Like Adam HaRishon exiled from Eden into the big, cruel world, we are all beginning a journey into a new year. And if the mistakes of last year are not to be repeated, we need to soberly reflect on what happened. I personally may have been guilty in the pieces I wrote for Arutz Sheva of a "show-offy" pilpul-ism, instead of getting down to basics, which was sorely needed.
Like Adam HaRishon, the Jewish people lack da'at tov vara. We may know every gigabyte that inhabits cyber-space, we may have Nobel laureates every year, but we don't know right from wrong. The mistake made in the battle for Gush Katif was the lack of a moral leadership that should have stood up and clearly declared: "Disengagement is immoral. Don't do it." For every Rabbi Avraham Shapiro, Rabbis Melamed and Lior who spoke thus, there were the voices of other rabbis neutralizing their moral message.
One rabbi said, and wrote, that Disengagement is evil, but so is refusing orders. Still, he clearly called on soldiers to opt out of Disengagement, by saying, "I'm sick, I have a belly ache." Although any thoughtful person heeding this rabbi would therefore have not thrown Jews out of their homes (and not spoken the words this rabbi so feared, "I refuse"), but the moral message was so lost that twice during the week before Disengagement, the Jerusalem Post (mis)quoted the rabbi as being in favor of the blind following of any orders. Another rabbi personally told any student who asked him not to do the act of throwing Jews out of their homes, but was strongly against the word "refusal", fearing that in the future it would tear the army and country apart. The problem, again, was that he allowed the basic immorality of Disengagement to be hidden from view.
The danger is in the here and now, not in the future. Not only are 200,000 more Jews under threat of eviction in Judea and Samaria, but Disengagement was followed, within a week, by the bringing of the Egyptian army right up to our borders. This not only has allowed rampant arms smuggling and terrorist infiltration, but brings the largest Arab army to our doorstep.
One more aspect of the blurring of right and wrong: the hugging and kissing of soldiers by some who were evicted. It is true that the lesson of the arava (willow) is that all Jews, even wicked ones, are part of the Nation of Israel, not unlike the idea that we cannot have a Seder without the ben harasha, the evil son. However, although he has to be invited, the Haggadah says of the rasha: "hakhei et shinav", blunt his teeth. Certainly, while he is engaged in his evil acts, there is no reason to be giving the rasha our blessings. The hugging and kissing of soldiers in Gush Katif not only gave a stamp of approval to the ma'aseh resha (evil act) at a time when 200,000 more settlers are in danger of eviction, but it again blurred the whole moral aspect of the act, making it hard for some to judge it as evil.
The failure to unambiguously differentiate right from wrong was also seen in the thundering silence of the Diaspora's Modern Orthodox rabbinate. Chareidi rabbonim expressed more moral outrage and sympathy than those who are ostensibly Zionist. Perhaps chutznikim (the Jews of the Diaspora) don't know how truly vicious people can be, but we settlers did warn them, and we are dealing with Rabbis, people of intellect. We heard nothing. Or worse. For example, the Winter 2000 edition of Tradition, the Rabbinical Council of America's Journal, published a long essay purporting to prove (the "proofs" are nonsense) that targeted assassinations are immoral, and that Judea, Samaria and Gaza rabbanim were distorting Torah as they pushed for a stronger defense of Israel. Does the RCA really want to leave us totally defenseless? Or take the following, typical story:
One rabbi got up before his large Shabbos congregation and said that he had mixed feelings about the Disengagement. Maybe 5%, maybe 1% good might come from it.
Now, imagine the following, alternative sermon:
The rabbi goes to the pulpit and screams, "This Disengagement is at least 95% evil, maybe 99% evil. Go out and join Americans For A Safe Israel, and travel with them to Washington to lobby congressmen against Disengagement. Or join ZOA and Mort Zimmerman and protest."
Perhaps, that rabbi didn't see that the moral message of 5765 was lost as he presented Disengagement as if it were a 50-50, right-wrong tossup. And perhaps he couldn't do otherwise, for he might have been pilloried by the leftists in his shul had he presented the issue as he really saw it.
In any case, rabbis in the Diaspora ought to pick up a copy of Alan Dershowitz' Chutzpa. Prof. Dershowitz may not like "West Bank Rabbis", but maybe then Diaspora rabbis would realize that they not only have moral obligations to teach their flock right from wrong (even if they have to take some flack), but have the civil rights to make their voices heard. Their silence is but another manifestation of the Jewish obesity syndrome.
Finally, as we set off into 5766, there are issues in Israel on which Right and Left, and religious and secular, share enough common ground to at least engage in civil, reasoned interaction. The army is one common link, although it has shown that the uniform can be used for evil. And many on the Left sincerely still believe that the way to ensure the security of this country is to appease the enemy. But events, and our friendly face-to-face persuasion, may still persuade some otherwise. The synagogues of Gush Katif proved to be another uniting issue. There are more, but I'd like to mention one: the Holocaust.
We settlers bungled it. We began to wear orange stars, and the moment the Left protested, we stopped wearing them. "You are misusing the symbols of the Holocaust!" the Left screamed. Nonsense. It is useless to talk to the Left of Zionism, or of the holiness of Eretz Yisrael. They simply have no preparation for hearing us, and we might as well be speaking Swahili. But everyone in this country has studied the Holocaust. And when we wore the star, and said that they are a Judenrat (not Nazis), sacrificing fellow Jews so that the enemy (and so-called friends like the US) would leave them alone - bull's-eye! They got the message. And it was their guilty consciences that cried for us to stop. And, foolishly, stop we did.
For those who say that nobody killed the Jews of Gush Katif, I can only retort that if you demand that every detail of today be the same as history, then you will never learn anything from history. And the lesson of the Holocaust is not to the Goyim, not that we must badger them with dozens of worldwide Holocaust Museums, so that they "never do it again". But there is a lesson in the Shoah for the Jews. And it is not simply "Never Again" as a slogan to motivate us to fight for our own survival. My God, every organism on the face of the earth knows that lesson; it's not a particularly Jewish lesson. But as I outlined in my essay for Vayakhel: Sacrifice, one lesson of the Holocaust is that one Jew is not to make another Jew into his "fall guy"; that's a manifestation of the sinat chinam that causes and prolongs our exile.
This Shabbos, after reading of the first exile, that of Adam from Eden after he failed to tell right from wrong, the Torah starts to relate the evil of the generation of the Flood (Genesis 6:5): "The inclination of the thoughts of man's heart is only evil all the day." The Talmud in Chagiga (16a) says of this: "Should you say: 'If I sin in the privacy of my own home, who will testify against me?' And the answer is: that person's soul, even the very limbs of his body will testify against him," as the Haftorah of parshat Bereishit says: "'You are my witness,' says God." (Yeshayahu 43:10)
One has only to study the "body" of this country - with the 1,400 terror dead, and the threat of the PLO/PA - and its "soul" after the sin of Disengagement to see the right from the wrong of the deadly, nonsensical Leftist policies of the last twelve years. As we celebrate the 90th birthday of the last prime minister (Yitchak Shamir, may he live till 120) who refused to capitulate to wrong, let us pray that the coming year bring us blessing and salvation.
