[Avodah] The Two Tablets

[Micha Berger]

On Sun, Mar 07, 2010 at 11:09:44PM -0500, T613K at aol.com wrote:
: Compared to non-Jews, Jews are exemplary in their devotion to their  
: fellow-man and especially to their fellow Jews.  And compared to R and C,  
: Orthodox Jews have every reason to feel justifiably proud of our  incredible  
: chessed and tzedaka institutions, right across the  spectrum.  

Yes we do, still, the following is not true:
: It is only when compared to our own ideals of perfection that we  fall 
: short.  

You are confusing our wonderful communal infrastructure, which is built
on chessed with internalizing the notion of ethical behavior. You're
repeating the error of the mafioso who uses is ill-gotten gains to better
his church and community.

Let's just sum up some of the ethical highlights of the past year:
    - Spinka
    - The spate of child abuse cases that forced Dov Hikind to get NY
      prosecution more involed in the Brooklyn community. (The "Agudah:
      Stop Protecting Pedophiles" rally outside their May 15th dinner.)
    - The man who sold Bobov shaatnez for their tallisos
    - Joseph Shereshevsky, and the WestTrust Capital ponzi. (And whomever
      O was in on Madoff's bigger pyramid.)
    - All the rabbanim Dwek brought down
    - Tropper
    - The defining silence about Tropper.
    - Elon
    - Balkany's attempted extortion from SAC Capital (a hedge fund)
    etc...

Are you going to assert a surety that our 1040s (US tax form) next month
are consistently more honest than those you're comparing us to? Are we
machmirim in lifnei iveir, or do we let our counterparty make a bad deal?

That's the difference between producing baalei chessed who embody
ehrlachkeit, and people who objectively know that chessed is a mitzvah
(and thus others are tefillin and esrogim -- cheftzos shel mitzvah). We
have a lot both, but if we were better at producing true baalei chessed we
wouldn't have a tail of the bell curve with so many horrible things on it.

But moving on from chessed vs ethics to your statement about chessed
in particular in various Jewish communities:

In the non-O community, the energy we invest in chessed within our
eiruvim tends to become (the misnamed) Tikkun Olam in theirs. There is
a lot of Chessed going on among our non-O brothers -- who have been
at the forefront of eliminating suffering on issues from Baifra to
Haiti. Less is provided for other Jews, but a disportionate amount of
world aid is coming fro them. Yes, it shows a lack aniyei irkha qodmin,
etc... but even the more assimilated are benei Avraham -- bayshanim,
rachmanim vegomelei chassadim.

E.g. The Union for Reform Judaism runs a campaign to supply 50,000
insecticide treated bed nets to families in subsaharan Africa
as a cheap but effective way to stop malaria. ($10 / family!)
http://www.urj.org/nets

...
: I have myself been the victim of rudeness on the part of frum Jews in  
: Brooklyn and Yerushalayim so I know that we have people in our midst who  could 
: stand to  have their rough edges polished.  Nevertheless we have  so much to 
: be proud of.  We need to stress what is positive about  our community, when 
: there is so much more light than darkness. 

And yet we also have to show people how to pick up torches, and spread the
light. It's one thing to remind people the cup is half full, it's another
to pretend that the news of the past year doesn't point to a crisis.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             It is a glorious thing to be indifferent to
micha at aishdas.org        suffering, but only to one's own suffering.
http://www.aishdas.org                 -Robert Lynd, writer (1879-1949)
Fax: (270) 514-1507