We Are the Children of the Winter of ’73 (Tzohar – 2005)
Rabbi Michael Abraham
“We Are the Children of the Winter of ’73”
(A Response to Sagi Cohen and Rabbi Ze’ev Karov)
Sagi Cohen’s letter reminded me quite a bit of the well-known and controversial song that begins with the words appearing in the title. First, the recurring mantra: “We are teenagers, young people, soldiers in the army…” The language and pathos in which it is framed also recall that song. But just as with the song, so too here, we must beware of being captivated by the aesthetic charms (and perhaps also the sincerity) of a text whose content is problematic.
Just as in the song, so too in the letter, there is an uncompromising demand, accompanied by accusation, directed at the generation of parents and teachers. In both there is a dependent expectation that others will solve my problems for me. But there is no help for it: there are no easy solutions. The distress felt by quite a few young people, and also by older people, ought to stir those who feel it to action, not to provoke them into casting criticism at those who are doing the best they can (even if their strength is not always all that great).
A. You Did Not Labor, Yet You Found?!
A few years ago, when students in our yeshiva were searching too intensely for the “Torah of the Land of Israel,” I told them that the Torah of the Land of Israel (if there is such a thing at all) is not something one searches for, but something one produces. Their feeling was that they had to find a place where this coveted form of Torah was taught, but in my opinion their distress ought to have stirred them to create that Torah themselves, in the spirit of “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” (Avot 1:14), and not “But if I am only for myself, what am I?” (Avot 1:14).
And one more remark regarding the hoped-for solution. In the wake of the essay “The Generation,” and perhaps also for various tactical reasons, we never stop describing the wonderful generation we have, which is always better than we are. And even if it has shortcomings, that is because of its greatness, not, God forbid, because of weakness of mind. Yet I, for my small part, often feel otherwise (what follows is a generalization, and of course as such its validity is limited).
This is a lazy generation, unwilling to read and study anything that does not satisfy it immediately. More television and cinema, less reading of demanding material. Everything must be spoon-fed, and if possible, with no effort at all. In general, it is best to finish everything by the age of twenty-two, since university is waiting.
This is a generation that tests the Torah’s suitability to its needs at every moment. If the Torah passes the test, then it is worthy of some attention. But usually it does not pass the test, and therefore there is no point investing in it. How many of our young people sit and seriously engage in “analytical study” for more than five years – with no rabbinate, no rabbinical judgeship, no teaching, no volunteering and contribution to society, no demonstrations for or against the disengagement, no protests for and against all kinds of things inside and outside the study hall, and the like – simply sitting, toiling, and learning?
Our younger generation is enslaved to the visual, the immediate, and the physical, and consistently refuses to engage with what is deep and spiritual, and with anything that demands intensive investment. Its challenges are one-hundred-kilometer treks, not completing tractates through in-depth study. There is an engagement with “spirituality,” but only of the kind that is easy to attain. This is a generation that identifies spirituality with experience (under foreign influences, and this is not the place to elaborate), not with exhausting long-term study. It generally lacks even a minimal education in any field whatsoever, sacred or secular, and yet demands that its parents and teachers satisfy all its desires (and they, mistakenly, usually try to do so).
This is a generation that has despaired of intellect and longs for experience. A generation that kicks against limits. A generation that wants the confirmation and insight that Abraham our father received only after the Binding of Isaac – the identity between our natural feeling and the divine will (see Olat Re’iyah I, 92-93) – before it has bound anything at all. It is a generation trying to bring the Torah down to eye level, rather than lifting its eyes (or its mind) up to the Torah. Even when explanations are finally offered, what is demanded is an explanation for “someone who was never here at all” (as the letter puts it). Why? Were you not here for the past twenty years? Are you too a child taken captive and raised without Jewish knowledge?
If that is indeed the case, then we truly are guilty and have sinned. But the proper response is not to comply with these childish wishes; on the contrary: to stop complying, and to begin passing the task on to the next generation. Perhaps Sagi Cohen can explain to me why one should observe the laws of family purity, dietary law, and the Sabbath, as though one had never been here at all?! I do not know how to explain this, and I would be glad if he could help me do so.
B. Growth or Revolution?
And another remark. Even if I do not know all those wonderful explanations Sagi seeks, it is clear as day to me that if tradition and the transmission of Torah – from Moses our teacher at Mount Sinai down to us – have any meaning at all, then it is not incumbent on us to seek substitutes for the Torah, but to build upon it another level: “If she is a wall, we will build upon her a turret of silver” (Song of Songs 8:9). And one who does not build a turret upon it apparently does not believe it is a wall. The conclusion is that one cannot seek a new Torah so long as one has not immersed oneself deeply and intensely in the existing Torah. The next level is necessarily a continuous extension of the Torah that has come from Sinai to us. Only thus will the next link in the chain be formed (and indeed is already being formed). Anyone who tries to replace it – to build his turret on virgin ground – will smash his head against the mountain: “This Torah will not be replaced” (from Yigdal, based on Maimonides’ Ninth Principle).
We have received the tradition that the words of the Sages are “like well-driven nails” (Eccles. 12:11; see Hagigah 3b). They are fruitful and proliferate, but that too only from the nails themselves. Anyone who has grown weary of the witticisms of yeshiva study, or for whom mysticism sounds too detached, should delve more deeply into them so as to extract from them the core and the framework for building the next level, rather than searching for substitutes.
Therefore, contrary to what Rabbi Karov wrote, I oppose revolutions. One of our most serious problems is the search for a revolution. Incidentally, that itself is the best way to ensure that no revolution will come into being. The “revolution” will arise only when we are unaware of being revolutionaries – precisely out of a sense of fidelity to everything we have received.
Contrary to other things Rabbi Karov wrote, I also would not recommend that any of the perplexed of this generation sift out from the Torah we have received only what suits them. Everything must be accepted, all the way through. The Torah of exile is not a mixture of food and refuse from which one should select something, or remove something else. The Torah of previous generations is the stage from which the next stage must be built. We must take it – every bit of it – and process it in our own way, in our own language, and with our own logic. If there is such a thing as the Torah of the Land of Israel, it will be created in this way, and in no other. This may seem like a semantic distinction, but in my opinion the difference is as wide as the entrance to a great hall.
I also would not send anyone on spiritual quests to solve his distress. One must sit and delve into all the treasures of the existing Torah, using for that purpose the existing and accepted methods, and only afterward, when one already knows היטב the existing, can one try to seek and innovate the next level. To build the turret on the wall, not in its place. And perhaps in this way we will help some of the perplexed of this generation, and the next as well.
C. “If I Am Not for Myself…”
To conclude, a few personal words. For my own humble part, in all my inadequacy, I felt a similar distress. But I did not look for a study hall that would answer my distress; rather, within the Torah I learned from my teachers, I found solutions that help me personally, and for that I am grateful to them today and every day. I studied in a yeshiva in Bnei Brak where nothing was opened except Talmud in-depth (and sometimes also broader-coverage study, and perhaps the Mishnah Berurah as well), yet from these very things I found what my soul sought. On the one hand, my learning today, and my thinking today as well, are not acceptable to those teachers of mine, but neither do I aspire that they should be. On the other hand, I truly and sincerely feel that everything came from them, and from them alone. They did not solve my problems for me; they helped me, in their way, find my own solutions.
The paradoxical conclusion is that no one will solve our problems for us. On the other hand, there will be no solution that comes only from us. As stated, the Torah is in the category of “well-driven nails” (Eccles. 12:11; see Hagigah 3b).
Rabbi Kook already wrote about this (in his letter/eulogy for the Sochatchover’s grandchildren): on the one hand, Rabbi Eliezer the Great is known as one who never said anything he had not heard from his teacher (Sukkah 28a). On the other hand, the Sages testify that he said things no ear had ever heard before (Sanhedrin 68a; 101a). How can this be? What his ear heard from his teachers was itself something no ear had ever heard before – apparently not even the ears of his teachers themselves. Incidentally, Rabbi Eliezer’s own students answered him in kind (see Sanhedrin 68a; 101a, and this is not the place to elaborate). In my opinion, one who does not know this feeling has no real foothold in the Torah of Moses.
D. “If You Have Labored and Found – Believe It” (Megillah 6b)
The answer to these distresses is not to abandon study and seek convenient, broken cisterns that hold no water (Jer. 2:13). Nor is the solution to replace it, as though one were looking for a tanker with purer distilled water. The search entails hard work, refining and improving the water we already have. But as Winston Churchill already said: “I did not promise you a rose garden.” And in the language of the Sages, mutatis mutandis, one who believes in the Eternal One and labors and sows is assured that he will find – and that his faith will be confirmed as well (cf. Shabbat 31a; Megillah 6b). It seems to me that in this, Sagi, all of us are prepared to help you and walk with you.
And the rest – go and study (= in the sense of “learn,” not “finish”; Shabbat 31a)…