[Avodah] Chilul Hashem in the Streets: Response to the Protests - Rav Mayer Twersky

[Micha Berger]

On Thu, Oct 15, 2020 at 06:46:23AM +0000, Ben Bradley via Avodah wrote:
> > I don't think we should be talking about chilul hasheim. If we don't
> > create a culture where mitzvos BALC are thought of as at least as real
> > as mitzvos BALM, we are still set up for this problem.

> True but the mindset that it really doesn't matter at all what the world
> thinks of us is still something of a separate matter. Although a Torah
> true appreciation of the importance of BALC would probably inherently
> deal with the lack of concern for others' perceptions.

My perspective in calling this a more fundemtnal problem is that if we aren't
doing Torah right, the fact that doing it the wrong way looks bad to others
is only a consequence.

>> Worrying about chilul hasheim when avaq retzichah is afoot is a total
>> distortion of Torah. 

> Granted. But avak retzicha is rare. The events of the last week are
> shocking because they are unusual...

I wasn't clear. To me, beating someone else unconscious isn't avaq
retzichah. That term is too mild for the crime. Besides, the hooligans
look like they were a bunch of teens with nothing to do over chol
hamo'eid -- the kind of thing no community over a certain size will
ever be entirely free from. (Although an Other-Focused Orthodoxy would
have fewer, one would think.)

So what /was/ I referring to as avaq retzichah?

I meant the disregard for safeiq piquach nefesh we've been seeing since
March or so. The prioritizing of minyan, halvayas hameis, mesameiach
chasan kekalah -- important as they are -- over the increased number of
medical fragile people who are going to die from these behaviors.


> Albeit that lack of concern for BALC is the common factor . 

>> To me this is a "Mi Lashem Eilai!" kind of moment. People are literally
>> risking others' lives. We can't stay any longer at the "identifying the
>> problem" stage; we need to start working toward a solution. Now....

> And that is the million dollar question. I couldn't agree more that it's
> a mi lahashem eili moment. But indeed who are our leviim?

> The crisis of leadership in Klal Yisroel has never been more evident
> than right now. How do we change things? And I mean quite literally and
> seriously, how do WE change things

I wasn't sure. Not that my efforts are having kehillah-changing success,
but so far I had e-launched two ideas:

- The AishDas Society: as a place where benei aliyah could meet or e-meet.
  (Benei Aliyah was the term Mussarnikim used to refer to what themselves
  and the more spiritually awake Chassidim had in common.) In theory,
  not necessarily mussar, in practice (especially once RGS went off to
  do his own thing), all our programming was mussar. And to leverage
  our influence, we offered services for shuls to help them run their
  own programs. And we have the capacity of providing

- Other-Focused Orthodoxy / Mevaqshei Tov veYosher: as a core for building
  a Yiddishkeit based on BALC (qodmah laTorah).

Whereas AishDas would be for people actively seeking growth (of any sort)
OFO was a repainting of the goal to be growing toward; not necessarily
only for people willing to invest time to work at it. A reframing of
the message in the classroom and pulpit, and thus the mental self-image.
The kind of ideal Rav Shimon advocates and my book expands upon, or that
of the other 35 or so primary sources I collected at
https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/142643.6

But I lack basic tools to make either happen on any scale: (1) a gadol
or at least a charismatic rabbi who is a popular speaker, and (2) a
gevir, without which we don't get the hours, real estate, and other
materials. And most gerivim got that way (or didn't blow through an
inheritance) by knowing how to make things happen.

I dream of staring an OFO flagship shul. I figure that's easier than
starting a school. But since it's largely a sociological phenomanon,
classes, chaburos or ve'adim wouldn't go as far to change someone's
self-definition as an institution signiticant enough to "belong to".

I expect to pass away a very frustrated man. (It's the fate of someone
who never stops being a teenager with a teenager's big dreams.) Unless
I keep on shouting until someone with those tools gets on board...

Meanwhile, there is 
https://www.amazon.com/Widen-Your-Tent-Thoughts-Integrity/dp/1946351555

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 Worrying is like a rocking chair:
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   it gives you something to do for a while,
Author: Widen Your Tent      but in the end it gets you nowhere.
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF