[Avodah] Klal Perspectives - Spring 2012

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

R' Micha prefaced:

> I expanded RYL's quote to include the full web page, because I
> feel centrality of this message to this list's mission motivates
> doing everything possible to further discussion.

And I thank you very much for doing so. I tend not skip over the longer
posts here, but the importance of this one must not be underestimated.

 From that article:

> That lack of connection is reflected most dramatically in the
> growing numbers of so-called "adults at risk," i.e., those who,
> at some point in adulthood, realize that they do not know why
> they have been performing mitzvos all their lives, or why they
> should continue to do so. Among younger people, the symbol of
> that lack of connection has become teenagers who text on
> Shabbos. We seek to explore the degree and implications of
> these trends.

I'm not convinced that this is a new problem, nor that it is a growing
one.

If kids text on Shabbos, how much different is that from not davening,
either not going to shul at all, or going to shul but spending most of
one's time in the hallway or playground? For that matter, how different
is it from spending most of one's time in shul, but constantly shmoozing
with friends, or going to the kiddush room for the haftara?

Of course, it is easy to point out that texting is a melacha d'Oraisa
while the others are not, but I think such points are very minor in our
context. The topic at hand is the lack of connection between a person
and his Creator, and all these are symptoms of that same problem.

I am reminded of what Rabbi Haym Soloveitchik wrote in
"Rupture and Reconstruction" (Published in Tradition,
Vol. 28, No. 4 (Summer 1994), and available now at
http://www.bethtfiloh.com/ftpimages/230/misc/misc_35307.pdf)

    In 1959, I came to Israel before the High Holidays. Having grown up
    in Boston and never having had an opportunity to pray in a haredi
    yeshivah, I spent the entire High Holiday period from Rosh Hashanah
    to Yom Kippur at a famous yeshiva in Bnei Brak. The prayer there
    was long, intense, and uplifting, certainly far more powerful than
    anything I had previously experienced. And yet, there was something
    missing, something that I had experienced before, something, perhaps,
    I had taken for granted. Upon reflection, I realized that there was
    introspection, self-ascent, even moments of self-transcendence,
    but there was no fear in the thronged student body, most of whom
    were Israeli born. Nor was that experience a solitary one. Over
    the subsequent thirty-five years, I have passed the High holidays
    generally in the United States or Israel, and occasionally in England,
    attending services in haredi and non-haredi communities alike. I
    have yet to find that fear present, to any significant degree, among
    the native born in either circle. The ten-day period between Rosh
    Hashanah and Yom Kippur are now Holy Days, but they are not Yamim
    Noraim Days of Awe or, more accurately Days of Dread as they have
    been traditionally called.

    I grew up in a Jewishly non-observant community, and prayed in a
    synagogue where most of the older congregants neither observed the
    Sabbath nor even ate kosher. They all hailed from Eastern Europe,
    largely from shtetlach, like Shepetovka and Shnipishok. Most of their
    religious observance, however, had been washed away in the sea-change,
    and the little left had further eroded in the "new country." Indeed,
    the only time the synagogue was ever full was during the High
    Holidays. Even then the service was hardly edifying. Most didn't
    know what they were saying, and bored, wandered in and out. Yet,
    at the closing service of Yom Kippur, the Ne'ilah, the synagogue
    filled and a hush set in upon the crowd. The tension was palpable
    and tears were shed.

    What had been instilled in these people in their earliest childhood,
    and which they never quite shook off, was that every person was
    judged on Yom Kippur, and, as the sun was setting, the final decision
    was being rendered (in the words of the famous prayer) "who for
    life, who for death, / who for tranquility, who for unrest." These
    people did not cry from religiosity but from self-interest, from an
    instinctive fear for their lives. Their tears were courtroom tears,
    with whatever degree of sincerity such tears have. What was absent
    among the thronged students in Bnei Brak and in their contemporary
    services and, lest I be thought to be exempting myself from this
    assessment, absent in my own religious life too - was that primal
    fear of Divine judgment, simple and direct.

R' Soloveitchik's reflections are from over 50 years ago. But we've
seen similar things even longer back. A lack of the "primal fear of
Divine judgment"??? Rav Yochanan ben Zakkai already bemoaned that of
his top students! - "May you have as much Yiras Shamayim as your fear
of basar v'dam."

I hope no one misunderstands me. I do NOT think this to be a minor
problem. It is a very important problem, and I do hope that solutions
can be found and implemented. My only point was to suggest that it is
an *old* problem rather than a new one.

Some might concede that the problem is old, yet point out that the
problem is worsening, perhaps even accelerating. I don't think so. When
I imagine a graph which illustrates our collective devotion over time,
I see a high point at Har Sinai, which dropped off pretty quickly
(as documented in Chumash), and has been falling off ever since --
approaching zero asymptotically, it often seems.

We are discouraged from Tefilas Nedavah, even as a solution to situations
where I was perhaps not yotzay with my prior davening. And why? Because
if I messed up the first one, how much better do I really expect the
second to be?

Yes, there are kids today who text messages on Shabbos, and that is
clearly not a good thing. And in the Mechaber's day, the concept of
beginning Yom Kippur early was so poorly grasped by the women, that when
women would continue eating up until dark, he ruled (O"C 608:2) not to
castigate them, lest they eat b'meizid. Is that any different than our
kids, who don't grasp the importance of avoiding their cellphones on
Shabbos? If there's a difference, I don't see it.

Akiva Miller