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Aspaqlaria

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Watering our Weeds

Posted: 23 Feb 2009 03:24 PM PST
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Aspaqlaria/~3/M14mKPoiYcU/watering-weeds.shtml


In an online discussion, someone lamented the fact that National Public  
Radio ran a long story about sexual abuse among Chasidim (or perhaps  
Ultra-Orthodox in general; the reporter was inconsistent). He wrote that  
NPRs story seemed to imply that abuse was perhaps more common among the  
Chassidim of Williamsburg than elsewhere.

Im not sure if thats true or not. Remember that with so many children, a  
smaller percentage would still lead to more cases. My bet is that it isnt,  
and simply the existence of the study and exploring the topic make it look  
that way. However, just the fact that its not self-evident that our  
communities are far less plagued by these blights  from this issue to  
fiscal impropriety to violent crime  is itself very significant.

As I always chime in on such discussions, Torah produces noble baalei  
sheleimim. And mitokh shelo lishmah, ba lishmah. If our abuse and other  
crime statistics arent clearly superior to those the rest of the countrys  
(especially after correcting for other socio-ecomic factors) it would be  
experimental evidence that what the mainstay of our community is practicing  
isnt Torah. And it should be obvious.

Or as R Harry Maryles pushed me to put it in an Avodah discussion: If we  
view Torah as a tool, its not being used for the purposes for which it was  
created.

It seems to me the two formulations only differ on the breadth of the  
definition of the word Torah. In both Im trying to describe a community  
that keeps mitzvos anashim milumadah without yiras Shamayim, simchah,  
hislahavus, an intent to reach qedushah, etc. You can call that keeping the  
Torah but not using it for what it was meant, or you can call it not really  
keeping the Torah. The difference is terminology.

The topic of Torah to the soul: A comparison to rain for the ground; it  
causes what was planted there to grow, a cure or a poison. Similarly Torah,  
causes what is in his heart to grow. If what is in his heart is good, his  
yirah will grow; if whats in his heart is a root sprouting poison weed and  
wormwood then the bitterness thats in his head will grow.

As they wrote the righteous will walk in it, and sinners will stumble in it  
[Hoshea 14:10, as explained by Chazal], and as they wrote To those on the  
right the medicine of life is in it, and to those on the left, the poison  
of death. [Shabbos 88b]

Therefore one must cleanse ones heart every day before study and after it  
of impure attitudes and middos with a fear of sin and good deeds.

This [process] is euphemistically called going to the bathroom. They were  
was about this they hinted when they said Going to the bathroom is greater  
than all of it. (Berakhos 8a) And when they said Whomever spends a long  
time in the bathroom, it is lofty. (Ibid 55a) Also when they said, Get up  
early and go, in the evening go (Ibid 62a) they intend to say that in his  
youth and in his old age he shouldnt distance himself a great distance from  
his Creator so that he couldnt be helped.

One must inspect which evil middah is strong within him, and after that  
clean it out. Not like those men of desire who wallow in what they want,  
and the desire grows greater. It requires a lot of slyness, to be sly in  
yirah (Abayei, Ibid 17a) in opposition to the snake was sly.

One who is lazy in weeding out an evil middah, isnt helped by all the legal  
fences and protections that he does. For any disease which isnt cured from  
withinEven the fence of the Torah which protects and saves will be useless  
because of his laziness. (c.f. Rava, Sotah 21a; Beiur haGra Mishlei 24:31,  
25:5)
- Vilna Gaon as quoted in Even Sheleima 1:11


The Gra, in a quote that pretty much declares the essential need for a  
Mussar Lifestyle (Mussar with a capital M, as later developed by the  
movement), compares learning Torah to watering a garden. If you have  
beautiful plants, it will produce healthier, more beautiful plants. If you  
water weeds, all you get is more weeds. Learning Torah without attention to  
middos will simply produce more forceful personalities with bad middos.  
Learning without mussar (lowercase m, a commitment to spiritual development  
in general) is worse than valueless; it can be destructive!

Sadly, I think the Vilna Goans metaphor is born out. We live in an era  
where few seek to understand the ideal at any depth greater than what they  
absorbed in the early grades. There are few attempts at a systemic study of  
aggadita, or how to tie that to ones observance of mitzvos and lifestyle.  
Aggaditas role has been reduced to nice vertlach on the parashah or a  
thought of Chazal with not grand picture, no grounding, no attempt to  
define a target to which one should aim their lives. (When its not merely  
reduced to a fantastic tale to keep younger students attention.)

I think that is the same social force that brought Brisk to the fore  its a  
style of learning that not only allows one to neglect such studies, but  
actually invites such elision. (Symptomatic: Making a siyum on a volume of  
gemara without making any attempt to comprehend large sections of narrative  
within it.)

And unfortunately we see weeds in our garden. Well watered weeds. Talmidei  
chakhamim who make a splash in the national media for tax fraud. Schools  
founded and funded on embezzled money. Someone who prepared and teaches daf  
yomi who sold treif chickens for years. Or todays news  someone selling  
shaatnez talisos. And even among the masses, an entire under the table  
economy designed to violate dina demalkhusa dina (the law of the land is  
the law), which undebatably applies to taxation. Disdain for Jews of other  
stripes. Etc we all know the communal problems, no need to wallow in them  
any further.

Im not blaming Brisker Derekh for these ills. I am actually saying the  
causality is in reverse: We want answers about what to do next, with no eye  
toward the forest for all the trees. That kind of culture will cause people  
to gravitate toward a modality of learning which doesnt try to explain the  
trees relation to the forest. But also, I think that if were to cure the  
problem, advocating other modalities in our children may be part of the  
solution.
An aside:
I dont think the current problem dates back to R Chaims day. In R Chaims  
day, the battle wasnt against apathy, it was against competing Isms. (Thus  
all his antipathy against Zionism.)
Also, in R Chaims day, his message wasnt only his lomdus. It also included  
his amazing lifestyle. I Googled looking for stories of RCBs gemillas  
chessed, I couldnt find a good source, so heres some chapter headings:  
playing horsey with the local children (no one wanted to be the horse),  
playing Cowboys and Indians and being left tied up (and he wouldnt let the  
gabbai untie him, the children would be disappointed; instead he waited  
until they got back from dinner), people coming in and out of his home (the  
time he put down a pen in the middle of writing chiddushim and a homeless  
guy walked away with it was just typical), the time he forced Brisk to be  
mechallel Yom Kippur to bring money for pidyon shevuyim  and the captured  
man was actually guilty of being an (atheistic) Communist!, etc, etc, etc

Along the same lines as introducing means of teaching gemara which more  
frequently links the halakhah to the question of values is one that  
actually addresses rather than skims the aggadita. Few of us were given any  
methodology for learning those portions of the gemara. The Maharsha and  
Maharal are useful source texts for deriving the underlying meaning of some  
of those fantastical-seeming stories.

Similarly, few men have the tools to learn neviim acharonim, sifrei Emes  
(Iyuv, Mishlei, Tehillim), and the other parts of Nakh that inculcate basic  
values. (Women are sometimes more fortunate in this regard.) When we teach  
Dinim Class, we need to spend as much time on the mitzvos that lack  
well-defined units of measure and limits of obligation, or that relate to  
interpersonal or fiscal law as we do to the rites in Orach Chaim.

Much can be done without a change in what is taught, but in how its taught.  
After all, our current emphasis on Talmud Bavli dates back to before  
Tosafos. To them, it was already an old practice to center education on the  
Bavli, and they need to explain why thats so, despite the beraisas  
recommendation one divide ones time equally between Tanakh, halakhah and  
gemara. They expected Bavli to be learned in a manner so that one pulls out  
from the mixture all three. These lessons of machashavah and mussar, of the  
inspiring conceptual ideal and the means to live up to them, could in  
theory be pulled from gemara alone. I believe its more difficult, but that  
question should be seriously considered before toying with a priority  
system that predates much of what we do from how we wash our hands upon  
waking up to the choice of prayers with which we embellish qerias Shema  
before going to bed.

These are the questions me must seriously explore if we are to weed our  
garden.

And of course, and really first, we need to constantly think about these  
issues in our own lives and in setting educational policy. These ideas are  
just to get the ball rolling, not a canonical list.
And in fact, that underlies the concept behind The AishDas Society .  
(Please see our Mission Statement paper. For all the time the chevrah put  
into honing it just so, it would be nice if people actually read it.) To  
quote from that paper, To be observant not merely out of habit or  
upbringing, but to connect with every deed on an intellectual and emotional  
level. The intellect needs the Maharal, or RSRH, or Besht or AND the heart  
needs to be refined so that one actually translates that to action. And  
THAT becomes AishDas, the synthesis of the fire and the law, a whole that  
is greater than its parts. (The mission statement itself is about what TADS  
offers to help that actually happen.)

Let every page of gemara studied remind our youth that we not only must  
follow halakhah, we must do so for the sake of building and being qadosh.



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