Once again, the sound of the Red Alert sirens can be heard
in the south of Israel,
and that invariably means a pit stop in the closest bomb shelter.
In EmunahSpeak:
Nu?, we quoted HaRav Yisachar Shlomo Teichtal's
fascinating account of a great assembly of gedolei Torah that met at the home
of R. Yisachar Dov of Belz ztvk”l in the city of Rutzfort, Hungary to where the
Rebbe had escaped at the outbreak of the war in 1914. He describes how for
almost an hour the senior member of the group, R. Moshe Dovid Teitelbaum z”l,
av beit din of Madiar-Lapush in Zibanbergen, grandson and foremost disciple of
the Yitav Lev z”l, petitioned the Rebbe of Belz to initiate a movement of awaking
to repentance which “would undoubtedly influence the entire generation to
return their hearts to our Father in Heaven.” When he finished, the Rebbe
answered him briefly and to the point:
“O Rebbe of Lapush, have you concluded
your petition? When Mashiach arrives, the Jews will repent. In the
meantime, it is of utmost importance that the Jews love one another.
One must love even the lowliest Jew as himself. One must engender unity
and keep far away from anything that causes disunity. The salvation of Israel during
times of trouble rests on this.”
On these words Rav Teichtal commented:
“Know and understand this, and do not be a pious fool who is quick to find
fault with Israel.
Do not cause disunity among those who are united, particularly at a time when
the divine attribute of justice hovers over all of Israel. It is a time of
trouble for Ya’akov, may the Merciful One protect us!”
No one who made
a difference gave these words the time of day, neither then nor now, a hundred
years later.
And that
includes funerals, for as we pointed out in the same essay:
In the way we deal with others Hashem
deals with us. When we ask Hashem to send us Moshiach when we don’t
deserve it are we not asking for the ultimate chesed that He could do for
us? And isn’t the ultimate chesed on our part a chesed shel emes?
And yet, when a family of Torah Jews is
slaughtered in their beds or eight Yeshiva bochurim are gunned down in their
Yeshiva we seem to be incapable of stepping outside of our label saturated
existence long enough to attend the funeral. It matters not a whit how
many people show up because it’s not a numbers game.
It’s all about the mosaic of Torah Jewry.
In Shomayim, three hundred of EVERYBODY
at a levayah will trump thirty thousand of only a certain SOMEBODY every
time.
Hashem wants
that there should be achdus by Yidden.
Period.
There's nothing
to talk here. What Hashem wants Hashem
gets. If we can't get it together by
means of our own free will, even at a funeral, then Hashem will force it upon
us. He will bring about circumstances
that will send us running for the nearest bomb shelter and we won't care who's
in there with us because it's a matter of life and death.
Given a choice
we would hold our nose and look to hang out elsewhere. So for that very reason many of us will not be
given a choice. We will be forced into a
situation that in better times we would have avoided like the plague, but we'll be okay with that because the bomb shelter, in addition to offering physical protection, is also reputation safe.
We don't have to worry what our ideological comrades will think of us when we come out into the sun sandwiched between two guys sporting knitted kippas. It's understood that we were forced into this juxtaposition by the exigencies of the moment.
Unfortunately, what others think of us all too often trumps our better instincts. So when we are confronted by situations in which our participation can't readily be explained away by the exigencies of the moment we take a dive as to our better selves and take a pass on a funeral and the like lest someone think that our presence signifies agreement with the world view of the dearly departed.
We don't have to worry what our ideological comrades will think of us when we come out into the sun sandwiched between two guys sporting knitted kippas. It's understood that we were forced into this juxtaposition by the exigencies of the moment.
Unfortunately, what others think of us all too often trumps our better instincts. So when we are confronted by situations in which our participation can't readily be explained away by the exigencies of the moment we take a dive as to our better selves and take a pass on a funeral and the like lest someone think that our presence signifies agreement with the world view of the dearly departed.
