Q&A: An Entirely What Kind of Gathering?
An Entirely What Kind of Gathering?
Question
I was present at the event that on your site was described as “a great spectacle of desecration of God’s name… a gathering that was entirely wicked,” but my reason for participating in it was different from that of most of those present. I came because I aspire to see the Haredi public integrated into the military framework.
We are no longer in a generation forced to fight for its physical survival every single day, although even today dangers and challenges still stand before us. Precisely for that reason, we must act wisely and moderately, and strive for military service to be conducted with a high level of religious sensitivity and quality.
Reality shows that Haredim will not enlist as long as there is no fundamental change in the conditions. Rabbi Leibel has repeatedly emphasized many times that the army does not live up to its commitments, and that there is a deep lack of trust toward the system.
Therefore it is hard for me to understand the benefit of sharpness and harsh wording toward the Haredi sector. What exactly are they supposed to achieve? After all, it is clear that before long the Haredim will constitute a very significant part of the population, and from that follows the critical importance of advancing enlistment and integration.
The situation requires the general system, and especially the secular public, to show a willingness to compromise. This is a shared national interest. It is painful to see people from our camp, who ought to understand the importance of the state’s Jewish identity, joining those whose fear is דווקא of the strengthening of that identity.
Answer
You are making a basic mistake. My words were not intended to be sharp in order to achieve something, and therefore consequential considerations are irrelevant. I described reality as it is. It was a horrific wicked gathering, a desecration of God’s name the like of which there has not been. And if there is justice and a Judge, everyone who took part in it will one day be held to account. That is the fact, in my view. You can suggest that perhaps I should conceal this for reasons of utility, but the statement is not one made for the sake of achieving some benefit. Beyond that, in my opinion there are no utility considerations here at all, because these wicked people are not looking for and do not want a solution. One must impose it on them.
Discussion on Answer
Spare me all these slogans. This is a society that conducts itself wickedly. The fact that there are people who do so out of lack of thought changes nothing whatsoever. You can argue in favor of individuals, but the society is wicked. Among the Nazis too there were surely some who did not think enough and therefore acted as they did. So what?
And beyond all that, I have written more than once that in the final analysis the individuals are responsible for the way the society conducts itself. If each individual is not responsible, then who is?
I’m pinching myself and checking whether this came from your pen, Michi, or whether someone impersonating you wrote in your name, because I have two possible ways to interpret this discourse: either you are completely, completely detached from the Torah world atmosphere (and I’ve known you for over 20 years, and I know you really were at Netivot Olam and more, so it doesn’t fit for me to think of you that way), or you are writing out of abysmal hatred, out of some personal stake (I don’t know why — maybe once some Haredim hurt you or a member of your family in such a major way that it cannot be forgiven and you cannot restrain your anger; in that case you are willing to risk ruining the rationality that usually characterizes you when you deal with pure science, something like what characterizes Ben Caspit whenever the pair of letters “Bibi” appears near him, when he loses his composure; he once admitted he has an obsession and no control over it).
Otherwise I truly have no logical explanation for what came out under your hands on the keyboard. But since I’m making an effort to judge you favorably, I’ll try to mediate reality to you without getting into various Torah discussions. What they call: come down to earth for a second and take one Haredi like me or like all my former yeshiva friends. The farthest place I can imagine you thinking about me and my friends is that you see us as children captured among the gentiles. (Of course this is only for the sake of discussion, and it is obvious to you and obvious to me as plain as day that there are no bears and no flies, and we are right and you are mistaken.) But is someone who is coerced by being such a captured child, and has no ability to get out of that circle of captivity, called wicked and a desecrator of God’s name? Even if you were right in the halakhic definition for our purposes here — which of course is not true — it is obvious that this does not change the picture for our purposes, because it is obvious to you and to the readers here that when you write that they are wicked and that it was a wicked gathering etc., you do not mean to define something now in abstract Brisker conceptual analysis. Rather, your intention is to accuse us of corruption and moral evil that exists consciously within us, and that nevertheless we act out of bad and corrupt character traits, and therefore we do what we do — something like what a right-winger thinks about an extreme leftist type like Yair Golan, and vice versa what a leftist like Yair Golan thinks about Bibi. (And usually it may be that in that case the truth is somewhere in the middle and neither of them is a great saint.) But to take someone who is immersed in such a conception and within such a framework, and who has no possibility of seeing, so to speak, the light that you discovered or invented, and who is fully convinced in his heart that he is doing a commandment, without any buzz or rustle or suspicion or pangs of conscience whatsoever that maybe this is not a commandment and certainly certainly not a transgression — who even mentioned such a thing — so how can you accuse him of wickedness and desecration of God’s name?
So as not to go on too long, for now I’m not explaining to you why the maximum you can reach is that, in your own view, we are no more than children captured among the gentiles. If you do not agree with me on this assumption, I’ll write you the simple explanation in the next comment; it is very easy to show you this. (Though it’s hard for me to believe that you don’t understand this yourself, but I’m giving a chance that maybe, just maybe, you have really not been immersed in the Haredi Torah public for many years — I mean the people who sit in the study hall, not those who wear Facebook, WhatsApp, and TikTok through the internet — maybe something got distorted for you in your perception of actual reality. I’m not saying this cynically but truly as an attempt to judge you favorably.)
Thank you. I’m moved by the goodwill. I hope that when you make it up to second grade in yeshiva and learn to read and write, you’ll remember to read what I wrote in the comment above yours.
Just don’t get dragged into the world of emotions, so they won’t demote you to first grade.
I moved Yosef’s continuation here:
I very much appreciate your honesty and your substantive criticism, which has what to stand on.
In every society there are many who act as they were accustomed to act, not out of analysis or depth, but out of personal bias or intellectual laziness. And yet, I do not think that such a broad public can exist on a foundation of falsehood or emptiness; there is always some vitality of truth within it, even if it is covered by thick and coarse layers.
The Haredi public is no exception. It seeks to preserve its spiritual identity, that consciousness of “I have set the Lord always before me” — what is sometimes called “exilic Torah,” detached from general and national matters. But at depth, this is a necessary foundation in the identity of the complete Jew.
There is no doubt that in other publics too one can find people who live out of that same cleaving and reverence, just as within Haredi society there are those who feel connected to the fate of the state. But that does not change the general essence of each group and the inner tendency that drives it.
Therefore I see this as the struggle between “ordinary holiness,” guarded and protected, and “the holiness within nature.” And without that “Leviathan,” there is concern that “the wild ox” will swallow even the righteous who came to enjoy the feast.