Why the disengagement is happenning

As I write this, the disengagement is well underway. Many people are still working, hoping and praying to stop it, but right now it there is a chance it will complete on schedule. Instead of exploding in hate for those that we love to blame, let's try to see why it is happennning and what we need to do to prevent the next one, and hopefully reverse this one.

This past Parshat Bechukotai, over lunch, I was giving a D'var Torah based on one of my original Meturgeman speeches; the concept in that Parsha's Tochecha of levels of Divine anger/punishment, each one to take effect if we don't listen to the warning of the previous levels. I mentioned, from Vayikra 26:17, that at the first level we would lose some battles but not yet be conquered. One of my guests (who until recently was in a tent in Gaza) immediately said that that sounds like losing Gaza but not the rest of Israel! This is not a person who would agree with a lot of what I say; but the logic of the comparison just struck her. It's even more striking if you read the previous verse, 26:16, which speaks about sewing your seed in vain for your enemies will eat it...and guess who's getting those greenhouses and the produce in them?

What does this show? The Palestinians are not getting Gaza because of some evil chilonim in the government, and not because of the pressure of the rest of the world, but because Hashem is angry with us for not listening to him!

But, you ask, how can that be? We are all good, frum people! Why, in the last several years, observance and Torah learning have risen to incredible levels. Even so-called Modern Orthodox are more observant than they used to be. So where's the problem?

Was anybody awake and listening last Shabbat to the Haftara? Chazon Yishayahu, for which the Shabbat was named? What does the Navi say to us B'shem Hashem? We make Him sick with our empty ritual observance! We are not persuing justice, helping the widow and orphan. This is the reason destruction comes. There is, to be sure, much chessed and caring in the dati community; but there is much else to be ashamed of, much of which we ignore or rationalize away. Hashem does not ignore and does not rationalize.

We are coming up on the Yamim Noraim; one of the things we will say, and everyone will comment on, are the three things that take away the evilness of the Divine decree: T'shuva, T'fila, and Tzedaka. There have been many calls for prayer, including the mass prayer at the Kotel, but I have not heard any calls for mass repentance, and the only calls I have heard for charity have been for food and supplies for the people camping in Gaza...none for additional support for the many, many people in need in this land. Demonstrations and prayer are wonderful, but they don't meet the Divine requirements by themselves.

God also doesn't like chutzpa; and we have shown plenty of that lately (He doesn't mind when we argue or challange Him, but with respect.) In general, in our self-righteous convictions that we are right and everyone else is not only wrong, but beneath contempt. More specifically, all the people who are telling us, "God won't allow the hitnatkut to happen." I didn't know there were any Neviim among us today! He certainly doesn't think so, because it appears that so far He is ignoring their false promises in His name. And as I said once before in another location, there have been great leaders promising the same thing before every major disaster in Jewish History.

Finally and most important for this particular case. No advance in the so-called "peace process", including the hitnatkut, has ever happenned without one or more religious parties in the government voting for it. In general, they join/stay in the government because of large extra piles of money budgeted for their Yeshivas. When we criticize, they always have two excuses: 1) someone else will join the coalition instead of us so it makes no difference, and 2) it is a big mitzva to get extra funding for Jewish education.

Number 1 has never been proven, because there has never been a time when ALL the religious parties refused to join the government. As for number 2, in the long run there is no extra money; at best it comes from the yeshivas of the other parties. This time, the government is spending two billion dollars (almost 9 billion shekels!) on the hitnatkut; eventually that will mean reductions of all our services, including education.

But on a more important level; I'm sure the people making the decisions to join the government are all Chachamim and Tzaddikim (I'm not being facetious, I mean it). But what does the Torah tell us twice? (Shmot 23:8 and D'varim 16:19.) A bribe blinds the eyes of the Chachamim and confuses the words of Tzaddikim! Which means they can't even judge on themselves and say the money is not a bribe! (It may not be a bribe D'Oreita, but it is surely a very strong Safek, and it teaches the chilonim in government that there are always datiim who have their price.)

When some of our own people vote for the hitnakut, how can we blame anyone else? Maybe if we really started cleaning up our own house, we could reverse this setback and truly set ourselves on the road to the Geula.

A ray of hope

The afternoon of Tisha B'Av the atmosphere starts to lighten; we begin to look forward to the building of the final Beit Mikdash that will not fall. This year on Tisha B'Av in the afternoon, I was at Tzomet Bar Ilan in Yerushalaim, and I saw a new poster there on the Haredi posting board. The message was, "Yehudi M'karev Yehudi", a Jew brings a Jew close. There was a large picture of a Haredi man with his arm around a chiloni man. This is the correct way to go, and to see such a thing in a Haredi neighborhood makes us realize that there are sensible people out there working in the right direction.

The Story of the Meturgeman

In the time of the Gemara, the vernacular for most Jews was Aramaic. This means that many people did not understand the Hebrew they heard during davening; most especially during the Torah reading. Since the Torah is the center of our lives, a means had to be found to help people understand what was being read. This led to the institution of the Meturgeman (translator), who actually interpolated an Aramaic translation between each Pasuk read by the Ba'al K'riya. The translation was basically literal but obviously included the interpretation of the translator; we can still see that today when, for example, Rashi quotes one of the written Targums to help explain what a Pasuk may mean.

So how did I come to call myself the Meturgeman? I was the Ba'al K'riya at the Young Israel of Passaic-Clifton, in Passaic, NJ for many years. I had to layn for 2 minyanim every Shabbat morning. At the earlier minyan I was one of many people who took turns giving Divrei Torah. On Sept. 8, 2001 (20 Elul, 5761), I was supposed to speak for Parshat Ki Tavo. As you will no doubt see as you read my postings, Tochecha is something I often talk about, and I had a lot to say that day. However, one of my children ended up in the emergency room (thank God, everything turned out all right) and I ended up not being in shul at all.

That left me very frustrated, with much that I hadn't been able to say. Then, three days later the World Trade Center lay in ruins. Despite how quick we are to see the Divine hand in natural disasters and terrorist attacks when many goyim die, I seem to be the one of the few who realize that, A) 9/11 happened only three days after the reading of longest Divine rebuke in the Torah, and B) More Jews died at Ground Zero in New York than in the entire Intifada up to that point! (And much beyond...possibly even the entire Intifada II so far; I have been unable to find a breakdown of 9/11 deaths by religion.)

A few weeks later, in Parshat Haazinu, another Parsha full of rebuke, I interrupted the gabaim between aliyot and said a short D'var Torah, based on the simple meaning of part of the coming Aliya; similar to what the Meturgeman used to do. (I will reproduce it later on in another posting.) That set the pattern; for about six months after that I would occasionally do the same thing. It was always short, and only once did I do it twice in the same Parsha. Most people liked it, and Rabbi Chaim Wasserman approved. However, there were a few people (I was never told who) who objected so violently that, as the Rabbi put it, the gain was cancelled by the loss, so I had to stop. Since then I have wanted a place to share my observations; so here I am today.

May your ears hear what your ears are hearing

You may have heard stories of famous Rabbis where the punchline is, "May your ears hear what your mouth is saying." In other words, if you apply the logic of the last thing you said to your original complaint, everything is clear. I am looking for something even simpler. People hear the Torah reading in shul, and some even pay a bit of attention to the Haftarah, but most of them are not really listening to the meanings. Some don't understand, some are looking only at commentaries but ignoring the text itself, and some are only busy looking for errors that they can correct (especially those errors that are not required to be corrected!) The simple text of the Torah and the rest of Tanach are the basis for everything we believe in; of course we often need the Oral Law to help us understand it, but we cannot escape the P'shat! Before the Rabbis of the Mishna or Gemara quoted a verse, they understood it in context. Now, too many of us only know the verses from where they are quoted. And it is essential to understand it in context before we can really know what God wants of us.

Since I began to layn, I always made it a point to understand what I was reading before I got up there to actually read it. I can't always translate every word, but I have an excellent idea of what is going on. It is from this concentration over many years on simple P'shat that I have come to realize what God really wants and expects of us and where we have gone astray. Most of what I speak about is towards that one goal: we need to get back on track. Stop blaming the goyim and the chilonim, stop blaming outside influences. Concentrate on ourselves and what we need to fix. That's what I will be talking about here.

God's double standard

Hashem has a double standard for B'nei Yisrael; we would be wise to pay heed to it. Within the nation, He raises the bar the more Dati we are. If we understand that, we see more of where our problems lie.

There is much evidence for this double standard, but here's a simple example. When we are good, 5 of us will be given the strength to vanquish 100 of our enemies, and 100 can chase 10,000 (Vayikra 26:5). But when we sin and are being punished, only 1 of our enemies can vanquish 1000 of us, and 2 can chase 10,000 (Devarim 32:30)! Look at how lopsied that is; He helps our enemies a lot more than He helps us (up to a 50:1 ratio.) The reason is because we should know better. Simarlarly, those who have fully accepted His Torah are held to a much higher standard than those who were born and raised in a non-religous or anti-religious environment. So let's quit blaming them and look at ourselves and what is being done wrong "B'shem Hashem." (Or as one writer once put it, "Shifty B'beit Hashem".) I will continue with this topic in later posts.