Re'eh 5773 -- The Rebbi You Wish You Had; An Ounce of Protection
by Jonathan Rosenblum
Mishpacha Magazine
August 2, 2013
https://www.jewishmediaresources.com/1626/reeh-5773-the-rebbi-you-wish-you-had-an-ounce
The Rebbi You Wish You Had
We are already well into summer, when many of us have more free time for reading than during the year. To those whose summer reading tastes do not run to escapist page-turners about shark attacks or haunted houses, I'd like to commend In Search of Torah Wisdom: Questions You Forgot to Ask Your Rebbi by Rabbi Yisroel Miller.
In Search of Torah Wisdom is by no means light reading – it touches, in one way or another, the most basic issues of Jewish belief and conduct – but it is reader friendly. Divided into nine sections and 75 or so separate chapters, there are many pesuchos and stumos for the reader to think about what he has just read and absorb the implications.
For once, the title, particularly the subtitle, pretty much describes the book. This is not a work for ba'alei teshuva, though ba'alei teshuva will also benefit from it. Almost every question posed presupposes a level of sociological knowledge of the Torah community and at least the amount of Torah knowledge that every yeshiva student will absorb by osmosis over a decade or more.
In Europe, yeshivos were primarily elite institutions. The ubiquitous poverty of Eastern Europe dictated that only a small percentage of Jewish young men could pursue full-time Torah studies long past bar mitzvah age. Only those of exceptional ability or with an exceptional desire to learn (yeshiva studies – at least in the intra-war period – meant going against the societal grain) continued in the great Lithuanian yeshivos.
But because the yeshivos were elite institutions, with much smaller student bodies than many contemporary yeshivos in both Eretz Yisroel and abroad – e.g., Mirrer, Bais Medrash Govoho, Chevron, or Ponevezh – the talmidim had a far greater chance of forging a deep personal connection with one of the legendary figures, such as the Alter of Slabodka or Rabbi Yerucham Levovitz, who viewed their role as helping each talmid reach his fullest spiritual potential.
Many contemporary yeshiva students and kolleleit never succeed in developing a close connection with a rebbi who can develop their understanding of a Jew's relationship to Hashem and prepare and guide them for life's inevitable ups and downs. Too frequently the effects of that lack of relationship, and the consequent failure to develop a solid foundation of Torah knowledge and self-understanding, is only felt years after leaving yeshiva or kollel.
Without a relationship with a rebbi, yeshivaleit are unlikely to develop the Bachirus haDaas (Clarity of Understanding) that is the subject of Rabbi Miller's final chapter and the goal of his sefer. No book can replace a personal relationship with a rebbi, especially one who knows the talmid well, and Rabbi Miller makes no such claims. But it can provide a taste of what such a relationship might be like and of the fruits of being able to discuss crucial issues.
The style of In Search of Torah Wisdom recapitulates in some respects a personal discussion. I would guess each of the questions deals with an issue that troubled Rabbi Miller himself or was asked to him in his more than three decades as a rav and teacher – in most cases both. Those questions fall into two basic categories. Either they are ones that we instantly recognize as having troubled us, but which we never fully resolved. Or they are questions that stun us into wondering: How could I never have asked myself that question?
The "answers" are not presented as the definitive statement on the topic nor even as a comprehensive statement of everything the author has read or thought about the topic. The number of citations is moderate, and never designed to show off the author's erudition.
Rather each answer offers an approach to thinking about the issue that in its ostensible simplicity and elegance suggests that the response is the result of many years of contemplation. By offering less than could be said about most of the questions, the answers become the beginning of a conversation and point the way toward further lines of inquiry.
RABBI MILLER is a thinker, someone who must work matters out for himself, not just follow the herd. I suspect that one of the reasons he decamped for the relative solitude of Calgary, after nearly a quarter century at the helm of a major congregation in Pittsburgh, was the desire to be freed of many of the communal distractions to which rabbis are subject, in order to spend his day in study and thought, as well as interacting with individuals at a deep personal level, at crucial junctures in their lives.
I first met him when he was one of the featured speakers at the Sunday morning session of the annual convention of Agudath Israel of America. The topic was "Living a Life of Spirituality Amidst Material Plenty," and I still remember his description of how he and his wife invited the entire Pittsburgh community to the wedding of one of their children, without blowing a hole in the family budget: They served cold cuts, buffet style on paper plates. Clearly this was someone who thought things through for himself, while retaining a reverence for his own mentors, in particular his uncle, Rabbi Avigdor Miller, zt"l.
Something of the dialectical cast of his mind can be garnered from a comment in the midst of his discussion of religious Zionism: "As in so many other controversies, the arguments on both sides had merit. And, as in so many other controversies, most writers on either side seem never to acknowledge that the other's arguments might have any merit at all." That ability to see multiple sides of an issue is essential for any life guide.
In Search of Torah Wisdom is not just theoretical, as when Rabbi Miller deals with the question of what is unique about the ikkarim of emunah or the Aseros HaDibros. It is not the work of youth, but one that bears the marks of experience, of one who has witnessed close up, and perhaps experienced, life's disappointments and trials. The chapters on dealing with suffering or working on bitachon are the products of one who has wrestled with these issues, and is not just reciting pat answers.
Startling insights are interspersed throughout In Search of Torah Wisdom, as well as fascinating historical examples hinting to a wide erudition. But one senses that the author's purpose is never originality for its own sake, but clarity – for himself and for his readers.
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An Ounce of Prevention
After the May beheading of a British soldier in London, in broad daylight, by a Muslim extremist, a spokeswoman for the Islamic Society of Britain stepped forward to attest that all good Muslims were "sickened" by the attack, "just like everyone else." Such responses, Ayaan Hirsi Ali pointed out in The Wall Street Journal, are entirely predictable: After every such attack, "Muslim men wearing suits and ties, or women wearing stylish headscarves, are sent out to reassure the world that these attacks have no place in real Islam, that they are aberrations and corruptions of the true faith."
The only problem with that claim is that such an overwhelmingly high percentage of those carrying out terrorist attacks turn out to be Muslims. And such attacks are celebrated by so many others who appear to be devout Muslims. Omar Bakri, for instance, who received both asylum and generous welfare benefits in Great Britain for nearly two decades, even as he preached jihad against the West, spoke admiringly of the perpetrator, Michael Adebolajo. He expressed pleasure that his formerly shy student could have spoken so calmly to the cameras, justifying his grisly murder, as British police took their sweet time arriving at the scene.
Even as the politicians issued their usual bromides against considering all Muslims potential axe-murderers, the less sophisticated average man scratched his head, as Ali put it, over the attempt to portray a murder committed by someone shouting "Alla-hu Akbar" as having nothing to do with Islam.
The spokesmen in Western suits and women in fashionable headscarves would have a good deal more credibility, she opined, if instead of the usual laments after another horrifying attack, they had embarked on a public and persistent campaign to discredit these Islamist advocates of mayhem and murder. Had they done so, their nattering about the "religion of peace" would ring truer.
WHILE THERE IS NO OTHER REMOTELY comparable phenomenon to Muslim terrorism, Hirsi Ali's observation that preventative efforts speak much more loudly than post facto disavowals has wider application. That's why I was so excited to learn recently of a major communal effort in Beit Shemesh by the Be A Mensch Foundation to introduce into the curriculum of Torah schools material on the proper approach to both non-religious Jews and gentiles based entirely on stories of gedolim.
A pamphlet entitled L'ha'ahiv es Hashem (To Make Hashem Beloved), described, for instance, how Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach did not jump out of his seat on the bus if a non-religious woman sat down next to him. Rather he would wait until the next stop, and then act as if he had reached his destination, even if it meant walking a few extra stops. The pamphlet draws from a larger curriculum developed over the past fifteen years by Rabbi Naftali Weinberg on middos development and mitzvos bein adam l'chavero that is now being taught in 70 or so chadorim. It is designed to help children understand that just because a person is not mitzvah observant does not mean that he or she is not entitled to be treated with kavod.
Hopefully, if the message of treating others with dignity and respect as a means of making Hashem beloved sinks in, we will have to spend less time as a community dismissing as just a few bad apples all the self-styled zealots for whom their righteous ends justify any means.
Related Topics: Chareidim and Their Critics, Islamofacism & Terrorism, Jewish Ethics, Personalities, Social Issues
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