Another Av, the Same Old Story -- Tisha B'Av 5773
For a few years my favorite NY news radio was blocking international streaming, but it's back. So once again this year, when the Nine Days started, I switched from music to news. And, just like four years ago, I immediately heard Hillul HaShem B'Farhesia. This year it was even worse...a one-two punch on Rosh Chodesh and the second of Av.
On Rosh Chodesh, of course, it was the monthly brouhaha at the Kotel. It's a chazaka now that the soi-disant "Woman for the Wall" will, while claiming the purest of intentions, make an international Hillul HaShem every month. It doesn't matter how pure their motives are (and, while I have suspicions about hidden agendas, I have no doubt that the motives of many of those involved are pure, albeit misguided), nor how evil they perceive their enemy, the Women of the Wall to be (a perception with which I completely disagree), the RESULT is Hillul HaShem, and that's all that counts. It doesn't even matter that, as the Woman for the Wall claim, some of their members try to stop some of the other hareidi protesters from cursing, spitting, throwing dirty diapers, rocks, and bottles. The world doesn't see that...the world sees 'thousands of Ultra-Orthodox protesters' trying to stop the poor 'liberal women' who only want to pray their own way. As RebbeYochanan Ben Broka says (Avot, 4:5), "In Hillul HaShem, accidental and purposeful [commission] are the same." It's done, and there's no way to take it back.
(Dirty diaper throwers versus women who want to do what Rashi's daughters did, all at our holiest site, and the diaper throwers are the good guys? I hope to have more to say on all this in the near future.)
The next day, Av 2 (July 9, 2013), there were new reports about an old scandal: homosexual abuse by frum teachers of frum students at Yeshiva University High School, and alleged coverups by YU. It was in the news because of the victims' lawsuits. This is at least the second such scandal relating to the non-hareidi OU/YU world (the first being several years ago involving the director of NCSY), and we know it happens in the hareidi world as well. (Nice to know there are things that unite both worlds.)
Yet we piously posture and point at the evil Western world for allowing same-sex marriage.
The saying of Rav Tarfon in Erechin 16b needs to be updated: if we say to the secular/non-Jewish world to take the speck out of their eyes, they can respond to us that we are covered head-to-toe in shmutz.
And people wonder why we're fasting today, instead of having a barbeque on Har HaBayit. We can and will have that barbeque, when we wake up to what HaShem is telling us and return to His work of Tikun Olam. במהרה בימינו.
On Rosh Chodesh, of course, it was the monthly brouhaha at the Kotel. It's a chazaka now that the soi-disant "Woman for the Wall" will, while claiming the purest of intentions, make an international Hillul HaShem every month. It doesn't matter how pure their motives are (and, while I have suspicions about hidden agendas, I have no doubt that the motives of many of those involved are pure, albeit misguided), nor how evil they perceive their enemy, the Women of the Wall to be (a perception with which I completely disagree), the RESULT is Hillul HaShem, and that's all that counts. It doesn't even matter that, as the Woman for the Wall claim, some of their members try to stop some of the other hareidi protesters from cursing, spitting, throwing dirty diapers, rocks, and bottles. The world doesn't see that...the world sees 'thousands of Ultra-Orthodox protesters' trying to stop the poor 'liberal women' who only want to pray their own way. As RebbeYochanan Ben Broka says (Avot, 4:5), "In Hillul HaShem, accidental and purposeful [commission] are the same." It's done, and there's no way to take it back.
(Dirty diaper throwers versus women who want to do what Rashi's daughters did, all at our holiest site, and the diaper throwers are the good guys? I hope to have more to say on all this in the near future.)
The next day, Av 2 (July 9, 2013), there were new reports about an old scandal: homosexual abuse by frum teachers of frum students at Yeshiva University High School, and alleged coverups by YU. It was in the news because of the victims' lawsuits. This is at least the second such scandal relating to the non-hareidi OU/YU world (the first being several years ago involving the director of NCSY), and we know it happens in the hareidi world as well. (Nice to know there are things that unite both worlds.)
Yet we piously posture and point at the evil Western world for allowing same-sex marriage.
The saying of Rav Tarfon in Erechin 16b needs to be updated: if we say to the secular/non-Jewish world to take the speck out of their eyes, they can respond to us that we are covered head-to-toe in shmutz.
And people wonder why we're fasting today, instead of having a barbeque on Har HaBayit. We can and will have that barbeque, when we wake up to what HaShem is telling us and return to His work of Tikun Olam. במהרה בימינו.
posted by meturgeman | 3:25 PM
