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My late brother, Rabbi Nota Schiller, zt"l, told me an axiom about Israeli society. (An axiom is not, as I imagined as a child, the armory where math teachers keep their axes to chop off the digits of little boys who didn't do their homework. I still have an aversion to anything digital. Frankly, I'm with the Calvin and Hobbes cartoon where Calvin said, "I don't think math is a science, I think it's a religion. … This whole book is full of things that have to be accepted on faith!")
An axiom is something established, accepted, or self-evidently true, something like "We hold these truths to be self-evident."
The axiom my brother told me was that every time Israel indulges in chareidi (so-called "ultra-Orthodox") bashing, the outside world almost immediately indulges in Israel bashing.
It's a Jewish version of Newton's law of motion: "For every action in nature there is an equal and opposite reaction."
As if we didn't have enough tzuris (aggravation), Arutz 14 reported that "Ayelet Hashachar Saidoff, a Kaplan protest activist who admitted that her organization served as a 'poison machine' against the Charedi public, said that they employed a Charedi agent as an advisor who helped them 'discord and dismantle Haredi society.'"
The "Kaplan protest" refers to a liberal protest group called the Kaplan Force, named for a street in Tel Aviv where they launched their campaign against the Netanyahu government. Now that the standoff with Hamas has cooled down — while Israel is mobilizing to defend against Iran — you would think that Saidoff would find something more more important to do than protest. Instead, she has begun sending what she called "Charedi agents to enter synagogues in Charedi communities, where those representatives would publish propaganda materials and pashkevilim (public posters) against Charedi society."
Little does she know, we can generate our own arguments without help. The thing is, though, that the fighting within our community is usually more civil than war.
Yes, there can be vast differences. But often the battling is like guys yelling at each other over the interpretation of a passage of the Talmud. Plato might have called it dialectics — arriving at truth through debate. We just call it "learning."
I witnessed a fight in the shtieblach synagogues in Beis Yisrael, Jerusalem, that taught me a lesson. Most of the shtieblach in Jerusalem are buildings divided into small rooms. They provide round-robin full-service services.
At one minyan (religious service) on the holiday of Simchas Torah, I got caught in the center of an argument between a big Chassidic guy and a smaller guy. He had his back to me, so I couldn't see his clothing, which might have told me what group belonged to, and maybe given me a clue to what they were arguing about.
But I saw the climax: The Chassidic guy grabbed the smaller guy, picked him up, and yelled, "Yehudi! (Jew!)" … and hugged him.
Now that's the way to settle an argument.
We keep hearing lectures about Jewish unity. But nobody can agree about what to agree on.
Once, Rabbi Dovid Orlofsky was riding in a taxi in Jerusalem and the driver was venting to him. The driver pointed to a Chassidic Jew in the street and said, "You see that guy? He hates me."
Rabbi Orlofsky countered, "That man would give his life for you."
The driver replied, "And I would give my life for him!"
Rabbi Orlofsky shook his head and said, "Boy, are we are a dysfunctional family!"
I think that most of the friction between irreligious and Torah communities in Israel boils down to a family squabble. What's really so sad is when it boils over into domestic violence.
It wasn't so long ago that even secular Jews appreciated the central role of religion and the primacy of Torah learning.
In Leo Rosten's The Joys of Yiddish, he defined chacham as a clever or wise person. But it carries a connotation of more than mere intellect: "Atop the Jewish pyramid of respect stands the scholar — not, be it noted, the ruler, the conqueror, the prince, the millionaire, even the rabbi, but the scholar. (A rabbi can, of course, be a great scholar; but scholars were loftier than rabbis.) Power, wealth, honors, prizes, social status — none of these was as respected as learning, which meant learning … Talmud."
With nostalgia bordering on reverence, Rosten noted that "Jewish mothers sang a lullaby of hope that the little son in the cradle might become that most glorious of men: wise, learned, a … chacham." And that's not all. He added, "A chacham is not the highest of chacham, please notice. That paragon is a talmid chacham."
Rosten's awe was practically mystical:
"The most honored figure in the life and culture of traditional Jewry was the talmid chacham. He was the scholar of scholars, a sage and a saint, one of the rare, entirely spiritual souls fit to be called ‘a disciple of the wise.' He was one of those who might contribute to the vast, accumulated teachings and ruminations of savants that were known as ‘the sea of the Talmud.'"
There's an old story about a Southern town where the president of the synagogue visited the Rabbi. He came into the Rabbi's office, only to find him studying a volume of the Talmud.
The next day, the Rabbi was fired. They wanted someone who had already finished learning.
Not so the Jewish communities of old Europe.
Learning is not a path to a goal. It is the goal. And it is endless.
"The scholar was erudite, of course," Rosten wrote. "But in addition he had to be … gentle in manner; sensitive to others; quiet and humble in bearing. … He had to combine scholarship with compassion."
Even the poorest of Jewish communities understood the value of such nobility in their midst. "The Jews exempted many a talmid chacham from … communal taxes, not only because the chachamim were notoriously poor, but because Jews wanted them to spend every moment in Talmud study. Who could foresee what benefits might accrue from their learning? The Talmud says, ‘Talmidei chachamim strengthen peace in the world.'"
Oy, do we need them now.
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Mordechai Schiller is an award-winning columnist and headline writer at Hamodia, the Daily Newspaper of Torah Jewry, where this first appeared. His column has won two awards -- so far -- from the American Jewish Press Association.
Previously:
• Why Pay Less If You Can Pay More?
• Are We Having Font Yet?
• Why Smart People Do Dumb Things
• There is nothing so sad as a stupid Jew
• Asking For It