Rabbi Bloch is the rav of the Lakewood minyan in Monsey. He recently spoke in Flatbush and said that he changed the topic of his speech on his way to giving the speech. This was because of a story he just heard a story about a rebbi in a classroom of 14 yr olds in a good yeshiva in a very frum area.
The rebbi was teaching the Gemara in Kesubos about a ger katan who at age 13 has the right to decline being Jewish. A good boy in the class innocently asked - why would this kid want to become a Jew?
The shocked rebbi thought he was making trouble but he saw that the whole class agreed with the boy! He made a questionnaire and asked everyone to check one of three boxes anonymously on a paper. Today if you had a choice, what would you pick: 1) you'd choose to be Jewish 2) you'd choose not to be Jewish 3) undecided
The entire class except for two boys wrote they would want to be goyim. One wrote undecided and one wrote he'd choose to be Jewish.
In R' Bloch's words:
Don't tell me that that's because of the Internet! That's foolish!
We are goofing big time.
These are 14 yr old kids whose parents have some control over them; What about when they're 15, 17, 19?
How do they say the bracha "asher bochar banu ... ", "shelo asani goy"?
We had these kids for 9 years in school!
This is where we're holding. We are failing immensely in giving over to the children: what is our religion! We are failing terribly in conveying "ashreinu mah tov chelkeinu." We say the words, do we mean them? That Hashem is our chelek and that goraleinu is olam haba and how pleasurable-fun limud ha'Torah is (if it's done right).
If the children were given this feeling, the joy of being a yid, then "s'eis" - you'll go up. Yes, you have to be careful of aveiros, but Hashem said, "im lo seitiv," if you won't have this warmth, desire for something higher, then "l'pesach chatas roveitz" - sin crouches at the door, with or without a computer. Kayin did not have a computer. The sota did not have a computer ...
If you desire to get close to Hashem, you are moving up and away from bad things. If you're just going to fence off the bad stuff, I have news for you. You won't be able to fence it all off. It's impossible.
Our grandparents did something right. It has become popular today to look at ourselves as being great and our grandparents as so-so. We have it backwards.
40 years ago, R' Dessler described our generation as one of chitzoniyus. Our generation is completely about status-kavod.
A father came to speak to me, he's ready to die. His son came home for bein ha'zemanim and put on a T-shirt and shorts to play basketball. After 15 minutes or so, I asked the father about tefillin and the father said he does not think his son puts on tefillin. The father was agonizing about the T-shirt and shorts and not ready to die over the tefillin. That is why the kid is not wearing tefillin! Because he sees it's all about appearances. We have honest kids and they ask, why should anyone want to be be a Jew! Good question.
We have to give kids the yumminess of being a yid. Fear of gehinom won't do it. People ask me what to do about their children not wanting to stay at the Shabbos table. The Shabbos table must be the highlight of the week. The father must be a DJ, MC, comedian, journalist. When your daughter goes into the kitchen, you want her to say wait, don't continue until I come back. The kids should be glued to the table.
I don't think the story with the 14 year olds is an isolated situation. I am almost positive that it is indicative of the general situation today.
The problem is not that the kids don't get it. The problem is that YOU don't get it and they don't get it because you don't have it.
I repeat, we undervalue our grandparents. What we have is more visible yiddishkeit. What they had was more genunine, internal.
link to his speech
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I saw a website called Unchained, set up by women who had married as frum women and had raised children in the frum world and then decided no longer to be frum. They were now trying to free other frum women from the shackles of frum marriage. They basically felt that they were never given a choice about their marriages or way of life and now wanted out. This was complicated by the fact that they had to fight with their ex's in court for the right to give their children a non-frum upbringing after initially raising them frum. They felt like victims from their family's ostracism of them. They obviously felt that they were owed acceptance. They claimed that they were in abusive marriages which may have been true.
ReplyDeleteThe point that I am trying to make of all of this is that these women are coming across as the valiant saviors of tyrannized frum womanhood. They and others in organizations such as Footsteps and Jewish federation believe that they must free Jews from forced Judaism.
Obviously there needs to be a warmth and an acceptance of those whose frum behavior needs improvement rather than a cold shunning. Frumkeit cannot be just a collection of chumrahs that are enforced by those who sit in judgement of others. Sometimes we need to find a place in frum society for those who don't totally fit in.