OTD in Yerushalayim

In a Binah magazine interview with Rebbetzin Chana Weinberg, of the Slonimer family, a 7th generation Yerushalmi, a descendent of the Boruch Taam, a Baharan* einikel, I read a shocking thing.

She said that after World War II, when she was in fifth grade, she went to the first Bais Yaakov school in Yerushalayim.  One of the teachers was Chava Landsberg, a student of Sarah Schenirer.  They were approximately forty girls and only three girls remained frum.  "If I tell you their names, you will tremble ... daughters of roshei yeshiva, daughters of Rebbes, all went off the derech completely.  All of my friends and neighbors joined the movements of the Haganah, Etzel, Brit Chashmonaim and Beitar, singing patriotic songs and going to meetings.  The bachurim too joined the Haganah.  I would see boys in the streets, without hats, with guns, and then I would recognize them as bachurim from Yeshiva Eitz Chaim.

"Some of the youth left because of the extreme poverty, but many left because of their chinuch.  In some of these homes, the parents had come from Poland already influenced by the Bund.  Their homes were not whole and the children went searching for what was missing. They wanted excitement, they wanted enthusiasm!

"My friends laughed at me and said that I was naïve, that I didn't know what was going on.  I knew very well what was going on but I didn't ever want to go with them.  I wasn't interested at all.  There were many times I have asked myself why, why didn't I go?

"The only thing I can think of is that I had so much more at home.  I was fulfilled; I wasn't missing anything."


*Baharan stands for Ben HaRav Nachum.  Each of the five sons of Rav Nachum Shadiker (1810-1865) had a dream that they should move to Eretz Yisrael. Without knowing that the others had the same dream, each one packed to leave Poland.  They all met at the boat and traveled together to Eretz Yisrael.  They were known as the Baharan.

When Talk is Dangerous

Tehillim 73:15 אם אמרתי אספרה כמו הנה דור בניך בגדתי
"If I said, "I shall tell it as it is," behold I have made the generation of Your children into traitors."

Rashi: Said Asaph, “If I said in my heart to tell everything as it is, all that His people say about this, I would make them into traitors and wicked men."

Metzudas Dovid: If I say it the way it is, i.e. whatever it is that I think, then the talking will incite even those who are your children, i.e. those who believe in You, for when they hear what is thought, I will make them into traitors which is why I won't talk much.

I heard someone say, based on this verse, that the trend to discuss all our frum society's ills out in the open is the modern day version of "es iz shver tzu zayn a Yid" - it's hard to be a Jew.  How many Jews are being turned off to frum life when they hear about all the crises and social ills we are suffering from?

Back in the early 1900's, when shomer Shabbos Jews sighed over the hardships of being religious, they lost their children who were not interested in living a hard, religious life.  These days, why would someone want to belong to a society which has a shidduch crisis, tuition crisis, parnassa crisis, housing crisis, drop-outs, those who keep "half Shabbos," Kiddush clubs and alcoholism, drug addiction, mental illness, shalom bayis problems and molestation problems? Sounds quite unappealing!

Some editors and askanim pat themselves on the back for "breaking taboos" and (supposedly) dispelling stigmas by airing issues that used to be kept quiet.  Are we gaining or losing thereby, that is the question.  What would they say if they knew that just one person was turned off to Yiddishkeit because of this openness?

a related post

Disappearing Jews

From 1952 through 2012, the rate of intermarriage has risen from 3% to 56%.  I read this statistic and thought, that means that the entire kiruv movement with all the Shabbos meals, all the Pesach sedarim, the menorah lightings, the Discovery programs, the matza and mishloach manos, the campus outreach, all the tefillin, all the summer camps, has been a failure.  Shocking.

You can say that without all that outreach, the intermarriage rate would be even worse.  But that's small comfort.

I knew that the intermarriage rate had grown tremendously, so I don't know why I reacted this way when I read about it the other day.  I think it's because this time, I juxtaposed it with all the heartwarming outreach and baal teshuva stories I've read and heard.  It doesn't make the stories any less heartwarming, but the Jewish reality is quite bleak. 

Nowadays, when Cohens and Weinbergers aren't Jewish because their mothers are gentiles, and McDonalds and Prescotts are Jewish, we Torah Jews are the few and the proud (to borrow the Marines' motto) and it's quite sad.

The Yumminess of Being a Yid

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.

The first thing we need to do is internalize "ashreinu ..."

link to his speech

Our Frum Therapists

I was taken aback to read, in a frum publication, a reference to the "primitive brain" in connection with our self-defense mechanism, the flight or fight response.   That is jargon used by those who espouse evolution who claim it's the oldest  part of the human brain and a piece of brain anatomy that we share with reptiles.  Not something I expect to see in a frum publication or hear from a frum person!

It reminded me of an article I read on a frum website in which the author referred to "our reptilian brain."  In both cases, frum therapists whose books and articles are very popular in the frum world, show how they have been negatively influenced by their secular education. 

It's disheartening because these authors have a lot of good things to say and it's too bad that we cannot rely on frum authors and frum publications and websites to provide us with untainted Torah-true material.  It also belies the claim that frum men and women can study for a profession and somehow (magically?), because of their yeshiva education and allegiance to Torah, remain unsullied by anti-Torah ideas.  We are encouraged to seek out frum counselors and yet, these same frum counselors may promote ideas that are antithetical to Torah.  Caveat emptor.

Greatest Threat to Yiddishkeit - Your Opinion

Back in May of 2008, on Rabbi Horowitz's blog, he asked his readership what we think the greatest threat to Yiddishkeit is. 

I posted:

1) demoralizing chinuch articles that constantly harp on what's wrong

2) absentee mothers, and mothers who don't know what it means to be a "Yiddishe Mama" or don't view that as an ideal

3) giving credence to and incorporating the psychobabble out there into our world; psychologists, social workers and other secularly educated individuals who have warped our thinking and yet, are given honor and allowed to address us and guide us

4) the encroachment and overpowering lure of the secular world

What's your opinion?