[Avodah] HaRav Aharon Lichtenstein zt"l

[Micha Berger via Avodah]

Today's blog post.

    ... Can't we find children who would have helped him and still know
    the gemara? Do we have to choose? I hope not; I believe not.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha


HaRav Aharon Lichtenstein zt"l
Posted on April 20, 2015 - 1 Iyyar 5775 by micha

When someone passes away, I try to find a life-lesson from their lives
that I can incorporate into my own. This is rather easy with regard
to Rav Aharon Lichtenstein, as the rosh yeshiva left the Centrist /
Modern Orthodox / Religious Zionist community with a cheshbon hanefesh,
an accounting of our communal soul. Things that he saw we as a community
need to look at and improve.

See "By His Light: Character and Values in the Service of God" by R'
Reuvein Zeigler, notes of shiurim by Rav Aharon Lichtenstein, pp 220-252,
which is available on-line at Yeshivat Har Etzion's Israel Koschitzky
Virtual Beit Midrash, as the email shiur from the series "Developing a
Torah Personality" Lecture 12: Centrist Orthodoxy: A Spiritual Accounting.
<http://etzion.org.il/vbm/english/archive/develop/12develop.htm>
Listing the rashei peraqim (subtitles):
    * The Shift To the Right
    * The Need for Soul-Searching
    * Commonalities and Differences With the Right
    * Shaking Our Confidence In General Culture
    * The Complexity of Experience
    * Literary, Psychological and Historical Sensitivity
    * Attitudes Toward Zionism
    * "Torah Only" or "Torah And"
    * The Possibility of Integration
    * Theory and Practice
    * Dialectical Tension or Tepid Indifference?
    * Instilling Passion
    * The Need for Spirituality
    * Diffusion and Dilution
    * The Ascendancy of the Moral Over the Intellectual
    * "Do Not Fear Any Man"

Here's one piece near the end, that stays with me each time I read the
article:

    ... Perhaps much of what I have said in relation to culture, quoting
    Arnold and Yeats and others, seems very rarefied. People may be
    asking themselves, "What does this have to do with us? We have to
    deal with children in elementary school or high school; this is not
    our concern." Nevertheless, I have related to culture at its apex,
    because the kind of vision which is maintained at the pinnacle has
    an impact, and should have an impact, upon what is done at lower
    levels. In this respect, the awareness of the evaluation of culture
    does have practical consequences for whatever level of education we
    are dealing with.

    Granted that, our challenge is to see to it that indeed we maintain
    our position with depth and gusto. Given our constituency, of
    course, we cannot instill many of our students with the optimal
    level of love of Torah; we know from where they come. But, within
    our overall community, and surely within its leadership, such a
    level should exist. Woe unto us, if the only choice lies between
    tepid compromise and arrogant kana'ut.

    A couple of years after we moved to Yerushalayim, I was once walking
    with my family in the Beit Yisrael neighborhood, where R. Isser
    Zalman Meltzer used to live. For the most part, it consists of
    narrow alleys. We came to a corner, and found a merchant stuck there
    with his car. The question came up as to how to help him; it was a
    clear case of perika u-te'ina (helping one load or unload his
    burden). There were some youngsters there from the neighborhood, who
    judging by their looks were probably ten or eleven years old. They
    saw that this merchant was not wearing a kippa. So they began a
    whole pilpul, based on the gemara in Pesachim (113b), about whether
    they should help him or not. They said, "If he walks around
    bareheaded, presumably he doesn't separate terumot u-ma'asrot, so he
    is suspect of eating and selling untithed produce..."

    I wrote R. Soloveitchik a letter at that time, and told him of the
    incident. I ended with the comment, "Children of that age from our
    camp would not have known the gemara, but they would have helped
    him." My feeling then was: Why, Ribbono shel Olam, must this be our
    choice? Can't we find children who would have helped him and still
    know the gemara? Do we have to choose? I hope not; I believe not. If
    forced to choose, however, I would have no doubts where my loyalties
    lie: I prefer that they know less gemara, but help him.

    If I can refer again to my experience over the last several decades,
    I think that one of the central points which has reinforced itself
    is the sense, in terms of values, of the ascendancy of the moral
    over the intellectual -- with all my love for and commitment to pure
    learning. But, when all is said and done, you have to be guided not
    by what you love; you have to be guided by Torah. And the Torah
    tells us what is good:

	He has told you, O man, what is good, and what the Lord requires
	of you: only to do justice, and to love goodness, and to walk
	modestly with your God. (Mikha 6:8)