Rabbi Avraham Edelstein, a founder and director of Ner LeElef has recently written a good article titled Between a Good Living and a Good Life about the many positive attributes of the Israeli Haredi community.

It should be pointed out that even the staunchest American Yeshivish communities in Lakewood and Monsey differ in many ways from Israeli Haredi society. However many BTs and FFBs across the Modern and Yeshivish spectrums share the values that Rabbi Edelstein highlights, such as the valuing of spirituality over materialism:

As far as values go, the Haredi community gets it right. It is family, and it is the spiritual that count. Seen in this light, the high level of scholarship of the Torah is a part of a healthy and admirable core. In a world where the millionaire is king, we ought to be finding out some of the secrets of a community which seems genuinely disinterested in materialism.

The second major area where BTs share Haredi values are in their appreciation of Torah. We came to Judaism because of the Torah and we continue to work hard to learn and live a Torah life. Here’s Rabbi Edelstein on Torah:

But, in the midst of all of this change, let’s not lose sight of the true values that Haredim bring to the table. Haredim truly believe in the Torah as the central force upholding the Jewish people. On that, we are a part of a broad consensus. Ben Gurion (not usually seen as sympathetic to Judaism) says in his memoirs that there are three pillars of the Jewish people: the Torah, the land and the Hebrew language. The number of secular Israelis who engage in at least weekly Torah study, numbers in the many tens of thousands. Haredim are not unique in adhering to this value. They are unique in the lengths to which they are willing to go to achieve this and what they are willing to give up in the process.

Unfortunately, there is currently much divisiveness among Jews, and it’s very helpful to constantly recognize the common spiritual values most Torah Observant Jews share. Please read Rabbi Edelstein’s article for his thoughts on how to approach some of the issues facing Israeli society.

The recent death of a young boy in a brutal murder shocked the frum community. This is only one of several tragic, strange deaths of our community’s children during the past few years. In 2009, a nine-year-old boy never woke up on Shabbos morning. The cause of death has still not yet been determined. A ten-year-old boy in Williamsburg died when he tried to escape a stalled elevator and fell down the shaft. A five-year-old girl crossing the street for her school bus was killed by a speeding car that ignored the stop signs and flashing lights of the bus. At a bungalow colony upstate, a bear snatched a baby from her carriage.

Three children died in a house fire in New Jersey (which occurred even after firemen had been called to check out a smell of smoke). Three sleeping children, including a baby, were murdered in Itamar with their parents.

Why did these strange terrible tragedies happen? Why do innocent young children die?

The question, “Why do innocent young children die?” is only part of the larger question of why any tragedy happens, which in turn is part of the biggest question of all, “How can a loving merciful G-d bring so much misery upon the world?” Job tried to answer these questions three thousand years ago and could not.

Perhaps we should be grateful in the sense that nowadays the death of children is something rare and unusual. In prior centuries it was commonplace for children to die. One monarch had fourteen children who all died very young. A noted tzaddik from the Old Yishuv had nine of his eleven children die during his lifetime. Rabbi Meir and Bruriah of the Talmud lost their two sons, while Rabbi Preida showed mourners a bone from the burial of his tenth son (the Talmud is unclear on whether this means just his tenth son died or if ten of his sons died). Rav Moshe Feinstein zatzal lost a young son to whooping cough in Russia. Jewish cemeteries have tiny headstones for infants. The Holocaust, which claimed six million Jewish lives, also killed one-and-a-half million Jewish children.

What do we do? Start off by hugging our healthy, wonderful children and thanking G-d for them every day.

Think seriously about the meaning of the blessing that a father says when his son is Bar Mitzvah, thanking G-d for “being released” from responsibility for his son. What does this release mean? Does a young child die for his parents’ sins, G-d forbid? G-d forbid! Then why would there be criminals and villains with with healthy, fine living children?

One explanation is that such children are Gilgulim, reincarnations, neshamos that only need to come to Earth for a very short time, in order to finish something important, and then return perfect and cleansed to Shamayim. That the parents are granted such precious neshamos as a brief loan of gems (see the story of Rabbi Meir and Bruriah above). The neshama finished his/her mission here in only ten years instead of seventy, and thereupon goes back to G-d.

I don’t know the answers to these unanswerable questions. One person said it as follows: “On Earth there are no answers. In Heaven there are no questions. Yet no one from here is rushing to get there.”

As you may know, Beyond BT contributor William Kolbrener earned an MA from Oxford and PhD from Columbia University and is currently a professor in the Department of English at Bar Ilan University in Israel. William is an internationally renowned authority on Renaissance poetry and philosophy, with books on John Milton and the proto-feminist Mary Astell. He has recently written a book Open Minded Torah: Of Irony, Fundamentalism and Love.

In a recent interview with Jeffery Goldberg (JG) of the Atlantic, William (WK) discusses his approach to becoming observant.

JG: Here’s a kind of rude question: Do you know what you’re missing? And the natural follow-up — do you think I know what I’m missing, by not embracing the lifestyle that you have embraced?

WK: When I was a graduate student in the English Department at Columbia, after not showing up one Friday at the West End Bar, and soon after being seen in the corridors of Philosophy Hall with a kippa, I heard whispers, suggestions that somehow overnight, I had turned into a fundamentalist or fanatic. Not just that, I was taking on unimaginable and unnecessary restraints, avoiding the more urgent demands of the creative, autonomous and independent self. Friends who wondered at my sudden absence from Friday night rounds and subsequent refusals of invitations for sushi (back in the eighties kosher sushi was scarce) might have quoted Freud: ‘Religion is the obsessional neurosis of humanity.’ The Jews, for Freud, who in this regard were worst of all, act out their own dramas of self-deprivation through ever more ‘strict observance,’ and avoidance of pleasure. My friends certainly thought – as many others after him – that I was ‘missing out,’ and not only on sushi or beers on Friday night.

But while some contemporary Jews look at the strictures of Jewish tradition as limiting, Open Minded Torah is about finding pleasure in relationships, and different, authentic and creative voices in the framework of both age-old traditions and contemporary communities. In the Western philosophical traditions that I teach, starting with Plato, objectivity and distance are often celebrated. In the Jewish tradition, it’s not disengaged neutrality (vulgarized distilled today in a culture of ‘whatever’), but relationship which is central. A teacher in the Talmud is not one who stands outside, like a contemporary academic in an Ivory Tower, but one who literally connects, not only people to God, but communities, people to people. So what from one perspective may look like constraint or restriction, from another is engaged connectedness, with the risks and opportunities it affords. The Jewish tradition says that for every Jew there is a corresponding letter in the Torah. Open Minded Torah shows how connecting to one’s letter and what a psychologist calls the ‘True Self’ are – even for us in the twenty-first century – related, both of them acts of love, offering different kinds of pleasure.

JG: And the follow-up — do you think I know what I’m missing?

WK: My book is not about advocating a lifestyle, but cultivating a voice (my own), and in the process perhaps helping others to cultivate their own. Judaism, like psychoanalysis, emphasizes the primacy of the psyche, self, or soul. I cannot — no one honestly can — speculate on what others are ‘missing’: to dwell on that question is a sign of avoiding the one more urgent to me: what am I missing? Those who do not ask that question – whether they are wearing red bandannas or large black skull-caps – and frantically asserting that they have already reached their goals, provide, with their ‘certainty,’ a cover story for self-doubts about facing the demands of an unknown future.

When an old high school friend heard of my new Jewish observance, he commented that I was taking the easy way out, relying upon the ‘crutch’ of religion. But for me the Jewish tradition does not provide answers, but unexpected resources to help refine the questions I ask. The sages of the Talmud assert, the premature proclamation of having arrived at a truth is a form of stagnation or death. Only acknowledging lack and imperfection – again what I am missing – permits the possibility of further discovery. In my book, the Jewish tradition provides a framework for such discovery, an impetus for striving, the means through which deepening connections to the past possibilities for new futures emerge.

The Rambam’s 13 principles of faith can be grouped into three:
– Belief in G-d
– Belief in Prophecy
– Belief in Hashgachah
The Ramchal structures the first three sections of Derech Hashem along these lines with the fourth section emphasing Serving G-d.

The famous Ramban at the end of Parshas Bo details how Yetzias Mitzrayim provides clear evidence of these three principals:
“The supernatural wonders indicate the world has a G-d who created it, knows all, oversees all and is all powerful. And when that wonder is publicly declared beforehand through a prophet, the truth of prophecy is made clear as well, namely that G-d will speak to a person and reveal His secrets to His servants, the prophets, and with acknowledgment of this the entire Torah is sustained.”

In his Shabbos Hagadol shiur, Rabbi Welcher pointed out that after the Hagadah focuses on Hashem’s Hashgachah, we thank Hashem with 2 perakim of Hallel and continue with the Matzah which according to some Achronim is representative of the Todah offering. The meal can be considered part (or subservient to) the “Matzah Offering” and this is perhaps why it is not considered an interruption of the Hallel.

Rabbi Welcher also pointed out that the Hodaah in Tefillah makes Hashem’s presence more real than the more abstract Shevach and Bakosha components.

Although Yetzias Mitzrayim illustrates all three principals it our thanks for Hashem’s Hashgacha which is our focus and our primary means of connecting to Hashem.

It might be instructive to focus on the Hodaah of the seder with the intent of using that as a springboard to uncover and focus on Hashem’s Hashgacha through out the year. In this way we can continually increase our Hashem consciousness, which the Ramchal points out is the root purpose of all the mitzvos.

Wishing the entire Beyond BT community a Chag Kosher V’Someach.

By Rabbi Ben Tzion Shafier

Eighty percent of our emunah problems and ninety percent of our questions on HASHEM stem from one mistake — we play G-d. Playing G-d means I know exactly what I need. I need to marry that woman. I need that job. I need my child to get into that school.

I’ve talked to HASHEM about it. I’ve explained it Him. I’ve even brokered deals with Him. “If You grant me this, I’ll …”

Yet for some reason, He just won’t listen.

“HASHEM, what’s the deal? Are you angry with me? Are You punishing me? Why do You insist in making my life so difficult? This is what I need. It’s so clear. Why won’t You just grant it to me?”

And I go on asking questions. “It’s not fair. It doesn’t make sense! HASHEM, what do You want from me?”

The problem here is quite simple – I am playing G-d. I know exactly what I need, and now I have figure out how to get HASHEM to understand that. The simple reality that maybe, just maybe, this isn’t good for me never seems to cross my mind.

Historical Perspective

The strange part of this is that I have lived through situations that didn’t exactly turn out as I thought they would. I absolutely had to have that job; it was just what I needed. I could earn a living, support my family, and still have time to learn. It was the perfect fit. In the end, I didn’t get that job, and I had major questions. “HASHEM, why?! Why aren’t You there for me?” Then five years later, I find out that the entire industry is being shipped over to India. Oh…

I tried to marry that woman. She was perfect. Great match, good family. She would make a fantastic wife and mother for my children. And it didn’t go. “HASHEM why have you abandoned me? This is what I need!” She married someone else, and two years later, I find out that term “mentally unstable” is a mild description of her situation. Mmmmm….

Another time, my son absolutely, positively had to get into that class; it was just right for him. Great rebbe, good atmosphere – it was perfect for him. And the menahel wouldn’t let him in. “HASHEM, why? Where are You?” Then, two months later, I find out that there’s a child in that class who would have been the worst possible influence on my son. It would have been devastating. Hmm…

Part of Human Nature

And, we do this all the time. We act as if we truly know what is best for us. We run after it. We hotly pursue it for all we’re worth. “No obstacle is going to get in my way. Nothing will prevent this from coming about.” And when lo and behold my efforts are thwarted — the questions begin. “But, why? It’s not fair! I am a good person. HASHEM, why won’t You just help me?”

The problem here is quite simple; we are playing G-d. We act as if we know exactly what we need; we try to convince HASHEM to give it to us. And when it doesn’t go — the questions start.

And while it’s easy to see the folly of this when other people do it, when it happens in my world, then the real challenge begins. To break out of this, we need to change two perspectives. The first one is easy to grasp. The second one is far more difficult.

Perspective #1 – HASHEM Loves Me

The first perspective is that HASHEM loves me more than I love me. HASHEM is more concerned for my good than I am. HASHEM has my best interests at heart to an even greater extent than I do.

While this concept may sound lofty, it isn’t that far removed from us. To see it in action, all you have to do is study your life. Look back on the strange twists and turns of fate that brought you to where you are today. Every Jew has a story. “I met that person, who just happened to mention…” “I ended up in that that course, where it just so happened that….”

When you look back on the events that have shaped your life, you see the hand of HASHEM. You see HASHEM orchestrating the occurrences that shaped your life. And now in hindsight, you see that HASHEM was taking care of you, guiding you, leading you. While you were living through it, it looked “bad” It appeared that HASHEM didn’t care. However, after the fact, you understand that it was done out of love, and concern for your ultimate good.

Perspective #2 – HASHEM Knows Better Than I

However, knowing that HASHEM loves me is the easy part. The second concept, which is far more difficult, is knowing that HASHEM knows better than I what is best for me. And understanding that HASHEM knows better than me what it is that I need.

HASHEM created the heavens and all that they contain. He wrote the formulas for quantum physics and molecular biology. He views the entire universe with one glance. He sees the future as the past. And He has the wisdom to see far-reaching results. What will this bring to ten years from now? What will the consequences be twenty years from now?

I, on the other hand, see about two inches in front of my face. I can’t remember what I had for breakfast this morning. I make mistakes. I blunder. I get confused and caught up. As much as I think I know, I am often wrong. That which I think will be so good for me, is so often just the opposite. And, I forget. I forget lessons. I forget facts. I forget results. I forget consequences.

HASHEM doesn’t. HASHEM remembers every event since Creation. And HASHEM made me. He is my Creator, and He knows me even better than I do. And so HASHEM understands my needs better than I do.

While this may sound obvious, it is —until it comes to the thick and thin of life. In the busyness of doing, and going, and accomplishing, this simple reality fades from my sight. I need that. I must have this. I have to accomplish that. And, when I face the brick wall blocking my path – I push on, bucking against everything in front of me. And I ask questions: “HASHEM, where are You? Why aren’t You helping me?”

The idea that maybe, just maybe HASHEM is telling me something. Maybe HASHEM is saying no – never seems to cross my mind. Maybe it’s not going, because it’s not supposed to go. Maybe HASHEM knows better than I what is for my best. “Hmmmm…. Never thought about that.”

Putting It Into Practice

When I fully embrace these two ideas — that HASHEM loves me more than I love me and that HASHEM knows better than I what is best for me — I approach life differently. I still try. I still put in my effort. I use my wisdom, reach decisions, and then pursue them but now it’s different.

I have my part, and HASHEM has His. My role is to go through the motions; HASHEM is responsible for the outcome. And if I try and it doesn’t go, and I try again and it still doesn’t go, I don’t kick. I accept. When opportunities don’t present themselves despite my best efforts, I turn my eyes to heaven and say, “HASHEM, You know best. I trust in You.”

And finally I understand life and my place in it. I am the creation, and HASHEM, You are my Creator. I am but an actor on the stage; I have my part to play, You direct the play, and You alone write the script. I know that you love me and take care of me. My job is to do; and You take care of the rest.

This is an excerpt from the new Shmuz on Life book: Stop Surviving and Start Living. The book will be in seforim stores beginning April 2011. Pre releases copies are available now at www.TheShmuz.com.

By Allison Josephs

With four kids, ages seven and under, my husband and I have been exhausted for basically seven years straight. We’ve found that the best way to manage our sleep deprivation is by taking shifts and fortunately, the division of labor comes naturally in our house.

When darkness falls on nights that he has nothing in particular to do, the moment my husband stops moving – and this can literally be while he’s standing – the man will fall asleep. If left alone – and I must confess, I have a hard time leaving him alone if it’s before, say, 9pm – he will fall deeper and deeper asleep until he reaches a land that’s far, far away.

In other words, I take the night shift. This works out well, since the sound of a door opening or a kid coughing is enough to stir me. My nighttime duties these days involve nursing a newborn every couple hours, but also sometimes include rocking a toddler back to sleep, getting medicine for a sick five year old, and comforting a seven year old with a bad dream.

By the time morning comes, I dread wakefulness, so my dear husband takes over. The morning shift can sart as early as 5AM at times. Nowadays it often begins something like this: “Daddy, Mommy, I need yaw help…Mommy, Daddy, I’m stuck.” My husband will then stumble down the hall and open our two year old son’s door at which point he’ll declare, “I wanna watch Dora.”

During the periods that I’m nursing a baby, my morning sleep is almost always pierced by the distant sound of crying. At that point I’ll call out to my husband to let him know that I’m awake and that he can bring me the baby.

Many times when this happens the baby is cold to the touch, and there’s nothing I love more than taking my cold, crying baby under my covers and enveloping him in the warmth and the comfort that is his mommy.

While nursing him in bed like this the other day, I started thinking about God’s feminine traits. In Judaism,we believe that God is gender neutral, but has attributes that we can relate to from both genders.

We talk about God as a King when we try to conjure up images of power and majesty in our relationship with Him. But God has a feminine side as well which we refer to as the Shechinah. The Shechinah is the mother-like presence of God that is said to dwell upon us.

The wording used in conjunction with the Shechinah is usually resting “upon us” or being “spread over us,” which I used to picture as having God’s presence be above us like a ceiling. And to tell you the truth, such imagery has always been a bit disappointing to me.

Don’t get me wrong, to merit having God’s presence as close as my ceiling would be a huge deal, but having God’s presence rest only above me seems to lack the nuturing aspect that I assumed would come along with the maternal side of God.

When I brought my baby into bed the other day, though, I realized that my blankets were “spread over” him and “rested upon” him. Suddenly, my ceiling imagery came crashing down and turned into a warm, enveloping blanket.

The next time we are crying out from one of life’s challenges, may we feel God’s comfort and embrace, like a baby snuggling up close to his mother. And the next time a baby snuggles up close to his mother, may that baby let his mother sleep.

Reprinted with permission. Allison writes at Jew in the City.
Allison Josephs was raised as a proud Conservative Jew in a small town in Northern New Jersey, but due to an existential crisis she had as a child, she spent years searching for the meaning of life. At the end of high school she started looking into Judaism more deeply and saw that there was tremendous depth and beauty within Orthodox Judaism, but realized that it was an option that so few Jewish people ever considered, as public opinion of Orthodox Jews is so negative.

Allison has begun a campaign to change the public perception of Orthodox Jews and traditional Judaism through her videos, blogs, and articles. She’s also editing an anthology debunking the most common myths and misconceptions people have about Orthodox Jews. Allison has been involved in the field of Jewish Outreach for over a dozen years, teaching and lecturing, and has worked for Partners in Torah, Sinai Retreats, NCSY and Stars of David.

Since downsizing considerably to move from Pennsylvania to Highland Park, NJ, my husband and I have been sharing a closet in our bedroom for the past six years. Our turf is clearly divided, his belongings to the left, mine to the right, and like wool and linen, never the two shall mix.

My husband is in charge of making sure that our closet keeps smelling nice. I don’t ask what he does to make sure that happens, and he never volunteered the information.

One day, I saw something on the top shelf of my closet that I wanted to pull down. I was too lazy to get a stepstool, so I prodded the corner of the box with a hanger, hoping that I would be able to catch it as it fell off the shelf into my waiting arms.

ARGHHHHHH.

Sitting on top of that box was a plastic cereal bowl I didn’t know was resting there.

Filled with baking soda.

My husband’s secret weapon.

Before I even knew what was coming, responding to my hanger’s prodding, this bowl sailed through the air, did a 180, and deposited about two cups of baking soda all over me. One moment I was eager to check out a box on the top of the closet, and five seconds later I was sputtering, and trying to breathe through nostrils full of white dust. My face, arms, torso, legs, shoes, covered in a white film that is hard to describe, but picture throwing a handful of flour up in the air and letting it settle on you wherever it may land. You get the idea. The angel dust even spread itself all over my hanging clothes, and as I opened my mouth to scream for my husband, it entered my mouth as well. (Baking soda is renowned for its dental health qualities, but I don’t recommend eating it raw.)

The sight my husband and children found as I slunk out of our closet should have aroused sympathy, but instead, it brought on gales of laugher, the rolling on the floor, every time you try to control yourself, you just laugh more… kind of laughter. You see, apparently, I was quite the sight.

But Hashem brings the refuah before the maka. My hair was covered in a cap, and although coated in baking soda, I was spared the grief of a sheitle full of baking soda, which might have been a novel way to introduce some extra shine to my wig, but who needs the hassle?

It wasn’t long after the baking soda incident saga that I felt Hashem’s preparation for the maka in another palpable way. I visit once a week with Mrs. Lola Mappa, a lovely holocaust survivor residing in Lawrence, NY, for whom I am privileged to write her memoirs. As I was leaving her home today, she suggested to me that I borrow a scarf of hers, so that I shouldn’t be cold on the way home. I insisted that I was dressed warmly enough in my jacket, and that I would only be in the car anyway, so there was no need for a scarf. Lola has a big heart, and she wouldn’t hear of it. She went to her room and removed from a drawer one of her personal scarves and showed me how to wrap it around my neck for warmth. I appreciated her kindness, although I felt the scarf to be entirely unnecessary. I left with it wrapped securely around my neck.

A half-mile from Lola’s home, I heard myself scream as my car made an explosive sound. My right front tire blew out into smithereens, rendering my car immediately incapacitated. I was traumatized by this unexpected, dangerous turn of events, and with shaking hands, I called Triple AAA from the side of the road. (I was not from there, and I didn’t know if they had Chaverim!). I paced the side of the road for quite some time as I waited for Triple AAA rescue to arrive. I was shaking from fear, but I was warm, in my new, winter scarf.

Hashem prepared the refuah before the maka. And good for me, Lola was listening.

Azriela Jaffe is a regular writer for Mishpacha magazine, the author of 24 books, a holocaust memoir writer hired by private families who wish to document their matriarch or patriarch survivor’s life story, and also known in the Jewish community as the “chatzos lady.” Visit www.chatzos.com for more information on how to transform your approach to the stress of erev Shabbos. www.azrielajaffe.com

By Rucheli Manville

Shalom to everyone here at BeyondBT, my name is Rucheli. I’m a recent graduate of the University of Central Florida and I’m now spending the year at the Mayanot Seminary in Yerushalayim. Over the course of my time here, I hope to share some of the insights gained while at a school specifically designed for Baalet Teshuva, such as this one. Please leave your feedback and responses so that we can all learn and grow together!

The Mayanot girls were lucky enough on Sept. 28th to have Rabbi Shmuley Boteach join us for breakfast and Chassidus in the sukkah. Rabbi Boteach said a “quick 30 second thought” for about 30 minutes having to do with the root of all fears… the fear of being insignificant. It really hit home for a lot of us. His premise is that every true fear (not talking about phobias of spiders, etc.) that we have in life has to do with the fear of being insignificant. The fear of death, the fear of being alone, the fear of being poor; all of them stem from the insecurity generated by the fear of being insignificant.

The result of this fear is that we spend our entire lives trying to do something to prove our significance to the world. We work hard for good grades so that we can get into the best college to get the best degree to make the most money so that we can “be someone” in the financial world. We sacrifice our family lives in order to work extra hours for that promotion so that we can “be someone” in the company. We give up our own needs and wants to fulfill the needs and wants of others so that we can “be someone” that the people around us want us to be. We spend so much time doing things that we never actually get to just BE ourselves.

Something incredible happened when Rabbi Boteach was telling us all of this… a revelation of sorts about why I’m here. I worked in high school to get good grades and good SAT scores so that I could get a scholarship to go to college. I went to college on scholarship and worked hard to get good internships. I held leadership positions in countless extracurricular activities to boost my resume. I worked my butt off to get a great job when I graduated so that I could do something with my life.

The time came to graduate, and the job offer that I worked so hard to get came my way. And I turned it down.

People called me crazy. My family worried that I did so much to get to where I was and then I just let the offer sit there; they worried I would never use my degree. My friends couldn’t believe that I was turning down the kind of opportunity that we had all set our eyes on for the last five years of our lives… longer, 18 years of education! But I said “no thanks, I’m going to Israel.”

Maybe I’m crazy.

Or maybe I’m tired of doing, doing, doing.

So I bought a one way ticket to the other side of the world, to a place where I don’t have to DO anything. Here, I can just BE. I can be myself, I can return to my essential soul, to my natural state of existence. Yes, I’m still learning. Yes, I’m still “doing” things. But the reasons for my actions have changed entirely, because for once I’m not trying to do something in order to do something else in order to get something that society sees as a quintessential part of being significant. Instead, I just get to live.

I think that for the first time, I’ve finally realized what it means to be free.

Next time you’re busy doing, take a moment to think about what you need in order to just be who you really are. And if you’ve had that moment where you realize you are truly free to live your life, please share!

Originally posted here.

Forks in the Road: Old Divisions, Modern Ramifications
Rabbi Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer
We Might Be a Little Late!
Originally published here .

This essay is some one hundred and fifty years late. Events since, some fortunate, most unfortunate, have blurred the differences between the great schools of thought that developed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.

Doubtless, the Satmar Rebbe (R. Yoel Teitelbaum) had this blurring in mind when he is said to have remarked that he himself was the last true Chasid, and that the Brisker Rav (R. Yitzchak Ze’ev Soloveischik) had been the last true Misnaged.[1] It is said that the Satmar Rebbe explained the devolution of both Chassidus and Misnagdus with the following parable:[2]

Once there was a woman whose husband would only eat fleishig (meat dishes), which she dusifully prepared for him. Their daughter came to marry a man who would only eat milchig (dairy dishes). Not wanting to deprive her son in law, the mosher in law prepared for him, as well, the food he craved. For several years this practice continued, with father and son in law eating in separate rooms.

Now, it came to pass that the family became impoverished and could afford neisher fleishig nor milchig. The woman was compelled to cook potatoes for both her husband and son in law. Nevertheless, the two continued their custom to eat in separate rooms. After several years elapsed in this manner, the two realized that there was, indeed, no point in their remaining separated and finally came to dine together.

Nevertheless, as we all strive to enhance our individual and collective Avodas Hashem (divine service), it is worthwhile – perhaps essential – to know what we might choose as our goal or aspiration.

The Great Divide

The nature of that goal has been the subject of a debate that has raged since the middle of the eighteenth century, when Eastern European Jewry erupted into the controversy surrounding Chassidus. Henceforth, the Ashkenazic Jewish world divided along the lines of Chassidus vs. Misnagdus. To be sure, there are other, significant trends in Judaism, including the (Hirschian) Torah im Derech Eretz school and, of course, many rich variations of Sephardic Avodas Hashem. The most blatant divide, however, is along the Chassidic/Misnagdic fault line. It is this line that we will attempt here to delineate.

But before we really begin: Caveat emptor! It would be the epitome of presumptuousness to purport that a short (or even long) essay might succinctly and precisely capture the distinctions between these schools of Avodas Hashem. We intend to examine a relatively narrow bandwidth of the differences, focussing more on exemplary thinkers and Ovdei Hashem (paragons of Avodas Hashem) who grappled with these distinctions in their personal struggles to formulate their own pathways in the hope that the reader will use these distinctions as a springboard for contemplation and understanding. In this effort, we follow in the footsteps of R. Dessler, the Michtav Me’Eliyahu, (in a recently published essay[3]) and others who pursued a simplified definition of differences, for reasons R. Dessler eloquently expresses.

We must begin our conversation with a definition of the “newer” Chassidic model of Avodas Hashem. The reason for this is simple: Existing philosophies are often forced to articulate their defining characteristics only when faced by a new challenge. This seems to be the case with Misnagdus. Despite its earlier origin, it was only forced to define itself as a philosophy when it came to battle the revolutionary Chassidic movement. The very term Misnaged can only be understood if one knows the context of Chassidus. Its meaning, “Opponent,” is only intelligible if one realizes toward what the opposition was directed.

“Mainstream” Chassidus and Chabad

Chassidus itself divided into two significant camps, that of “mainstream” Chassidus, and that of Chabad. Each side argued that its respective derech (pathway in Judaism) was the most accurate reflection of the Ba’al Shem Tov’s (R. Yisrael, the founder of Chassidus, also known as the Besht – an acronym for Ba’al Shem Tov) novel approach to Avodas Hashem. What was that approach and what did each side represent as the means of implementing that approach?
Read more Forks in the Road: Old Divisions, Modern Ramifications ›

Yaakov Avinu represents the highest level of perfection among the Avos. Avraham Avinu produced a Yishmael; Yitzchak Avinu produced an Esav. But Yaakov’s progeny became the Twelve Tribes; each one of them entered into Klal Yisrael.

Avraham’s defining middah (characteristic) was chesed (loving-kindness); Yitzchak’s was the opposite, gevurah (strict judgment). Yaakov’s characteristic of emes (truth) can be viewed as a synthesis of the two.

The above schema is well-known. But it raises an interesting question. Why did HaKadosh Baruch Hu have to proceed through Avraham and Yitzchak to reach Yaakov? Why could He not have just started with the embodiment of emes in Yaakov? Apparently, emes could only arise out of a creative tension between chesed and din. That tension was a necessary condition for reaching the ultimate perfection.

My friend Rabbi Aharon Lopiansky first articulated this insight while counseling a young ba’al teshuva who was torn between his desire to deepen his own Gemara learning and his sense of obligation to share what he had already learned with the great majority of Jews who have never tasted Torah in their lives. The most important thing, Rabbi Lopiansky told him, was to continue to live with the tension rather than try to deny the validity of either goal.

Many of the most difficult choices in life are of this nature. The choice is not between life and death, good and evil, but how to balance two Torah values. The easiest course is often to suppress one side of the equation and to remove the tension. But from such a course, emes will not emerge.

Avraham Avinu and Yitzchak Avinu both were tested in ways that required them to act against their dominant middah. For Avraham, the greatest test was Akeidas Yitzchak, which required him to act contrary to the message he had taught the entire world for decades by sacrificing his own son. Yitzchak’s greatest test, as described by Rabbi Dessler in Michtav M’Eliyahu, came when he affirmed the blessings to Yaakov.

Yitzchak knew that Yaakov was at a higher spiritual level than Esav, and thought therefore that Yaakov should not receive any material blessing but rely exclusively on strict justice. When Yitzchak sensed, because of Yaakov’s voice and the scent of Gan Eden emanating from his clothes, that it was Yaakov standing before him, he recognized a Divine hint to depart from his lifetime emphasis on strict judgment and that Yaakov might need a blessing of material bounty. Thus his great fear and trembling.

Avraham and Yitzchak were severely tested. But only Yaakov, the man of emes, experienced a life of unbroken travail – from being forced to flee from his brother Esav, to the twenty years in Lavan’s house, to the confrontation with Esav, to the twenty-two years that he mourned for Yosef. Only Yaakov could have said, “Few and bad have been the days of the years of my life. . . (Bereishis 47:9). From Yaakov we learn that fashioning a new synthesis, while holding fast to two competing poles, is the most difficult task. But only by doing so can emes emerge.

Too frequently, when we hear something with which we disagree our initial inclination is to suppress it. Yet often times, both on an individual and a communal level, we would benefit from an airing of both sides of the debate. On most important issues that affect us as individuals and as a community, there is more than one perspective that is relevant. And the truth is more likely to emerge from the clash between the varying approaches than from one side of the debate trying to censor the other.

The great historian of the Italian Renaissance Jakob Burkhardt wrote in the 19th century that the future would belong “to those who see things simply.” And in the next century, we witnessed totalitarian regimes that slaughtered tens of millions of human beings in the name of some easily grasped ideal promising to free human existence from all tension and complication.

THE NECESSITY OF Avraham Avinu and Yitzchak Avinu, with their diametrically opposed defining characteristics, preceding Yaakov Avinu also has important implications for our understanding of Jewish history. Far from being static, Jewish history follows certain cycles and patterns. The Ohr Somayach, in a famous passage, describes one such pattern with respect to recently exiled Jews arriving in a new land and the change from one generation to the next.

After every catastrophic event that destroys the previous equilibrium, there is a pendulum swings until a new equilibrium is found. Let us take one contemporary example. The period between the beginning of World War I and end of World War II completely destroyed a European Jewish civilization built over nearly two millennia. In order to rebuild the entire world of Torah learning destroyed by the Nazis, Rabbi Aharon Kotler in the United States and the Chazon Ish in Eretz Yisrael declared a societal ideal of long-term Torah study for all males that had few precedents in Jewish history. The pendulum swung in one direction, as part of the rebuilding.

As the original small flock of dedicated idealists who rallied to the banner of Reb Aharon and the Chazon Ish has miraculously swelled today to an entire community of hundreds of thousands, encompassing a wide range of abilities and spiritual levels, the pendulum has begun to swing in the other direction in search of a new equilibrium.

But whatever happens in the future it is s crucial to understand that the extreme response was absolutely necessary, just as the pure chesed of Avraham and the pure din of Yitzchak were necessary for Yaakov to emerge. And so it has been with many of the great conflicts in Jewish history, like that between Chassidim and Misnagdim. In retrospect, the extremes of the early Chassidic movement and the fierceness of the Misnagdic response can be seen as necessary for the synthesis of the qualities of both that has emerged.

We could all gain a great deal in the way of tolerance if we recognized that approaches that we dismiss out of hand are often the necessary expression of one pole of an inherent tension. Our task as individuals and a community is too forge our own synthesis from the tension.

Reprinted with permission of Jonathan Rosenblum.