“If we don’t vote, we don’t exist.” Those words, spoken with passion and conviction by my dear chaver Rabbi Yechiel Kalish, stopped me in my tracks during an enjoyable dinner that we were sharing recently.

Rabbi Kalish ought to know. He serves as Coordinator for Agudath Israel of America’s Commission on Government Affairs and as their Midwest Director. He is charming, engaging, and extraordinarily knowledgeable in the ‘ways and means’ of how government operates.

Rabbi Kalish and many other dedicated officers in Jewish communal organizations represent you in governmental matters that are important to your life. Securing financial support for mosdos Hatorah. Getting government grants for chesed organizations. Lowering your taxes. Protecting your rights in the workplace. Equally important are the initiatives that the leadership of Agudath Israel and other Jewish organizations are working tirelessly to actualize. School vouchers. Tax credits for yeshiva tuition payments. Financial aid for parents of learning disabled or handicapped children.
Read more Do You Exist? – Please Take the Time to Vote on Election Day ›

I am writing this for myself as well as anyone else that could benefit from it.

Several years ago, someone approached Rav Mordechai Schwab, zecher tzadik livracha, and asked him to comment on a statement of Rav Shach regarding the Chabad movement. (This was before the Rebbe’s petira.) Rav Schwab’s response was a complete refusal to comment. Rav Schwab (although he was a Yekke by yichus) was clearly a strong Litvak, and much more aligned with Rav Shach’s derech ha’avodah and hashkafos. And yet his response was “dumia”, complete silence and refusal of any involvement in the discussion.

I was once at a JEP dinner in Monsey. The guest speaker was of a somewhat more modern orientation. Since Rav Schwab’s son, Rabbi Yehudah Schwab is the director of JEP, Rav Schwab attended and sat at the dais. His seat was facing forward toward the general seating. The guest speaker was behind him at the microphone. Being the incredible baal middos that he was, he could not turn his seat around so that his back would be toward the tzibbur. He also could not fail to treat the guest speaker with less than the ultimate kavod. So, he turned his seat a bit, and sat with his (80 year old) neck crocked around at an uncomfortable looking angle for the entire length of the drasha, never removing his eyes from the speaker.
Read more The Real Solution to Broad Communal Harmony ›

A conversation I overheard during Simchas Torah.

“I can’t believe how much chesed there is in your community. I’ve been to a number of different communities and I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“That’s because there are kiruv rabbis here who have devoted themselves to bringing Jews back to the fold. There is a lot of young fresh enthusiastic leadership here.
However, there are a lot of ‘sheep’. There’s just starting now to be some ‘thinkers’.”

I didn’t finish the conversation because I wanted to down the bourbon and get back to the dancing. But the brief thought struck me as an important principle that underlies a lot of communities. Who are the sheep and who are the thinkers?

In order for Judaism to survive there needs to be the ability to continue what was already started. Sheep, a word not usually used as a compliment, in the context of Torah Judaism is a necessity. If everyone is a leader then nothing gets done. The Sefer HaChinuch points out the need to have one leader even if that leader is making mistakes! Because without a leader you have anarchy. You have several Torot, not one Torah.

This was exemplified by Yitzchak who imitated everything his father Avraham did. He looked like him. He had two kids, one on the path, one off. He pretended his wife was his sister. He redug the wells his father dug. Why didn’t he have his own unique identity? Because that WAS his identity. He was the pillar that continued in his father’s footsteps, that created a people of God. Abraham made many students. Where are they? They didn’t have the ability like Yitzchak did to continue what Avraham started.

But.

We are in golus. Our communities are not perfect. We have many flaws. It often takes a fresh look, or an objective look at things to notice the flaws. Sure we need sheep, but we also need thinkers. We need people that are going to fight for the practical issues that are causing problems in our communities, and for the spiritual issues that are plaguing our communities.

Nothing is an accident. The BTs have the benefit of objectivity that can help a community grow.

But only if they are thinkers.

Rabbi Weiman’s new book, which discusses independent thinking,

A Simple Guide to Happiness: From a Mystical Perspective

is available to BT readers at a 10% discount. To order call 314-814-6629 or email MWeiman@kabbalahmadeeasy.com

Short and sweet, Rabbi Weiman’s book will touch a happy chord inside your soul.

Like any other community, the St. Louis Torah community is not unfamiliar with tragedy. One of our most beloved rebbes died a few years back, barely 40 years old. One of our rebbeim has a child diagnosed with cancer. Too many divorces in such a close community.

But in ten years here I can’t remember anything like the shock we experienced over Sukkos, when a violent car accident sent four children to intensive care, children of the kiruv rabbi most singly responsible for building mitzva observance in our community.

Since then, so many people have commented on the outpouring of chesed and the powerful demonstrations of achdus, the whole community packed into the Aguda shul one Chol HaMoed evening at 9:00 with barely an hour’s notice, the bikkur cholim, the round the clock Tehillim and learning, the children coming for hakafos on Simchas Torah so the rav’s shul would not feel the melancholy of their spiritual leader’s anguish.

I wasn’t able to be there myself. My first obligation was to my students, I decided, after debating long and hard over which loyalty held the higher priority. As it turned out, it was the best Simchas Torah I can remember. I looked about the shul again and again, basking in the nachas of how so many of my students and former students — at least three-quarters of those dancing and singing — blended their energies together to fulfill the words of the niggun they sang: ivdu es HaShem b’simcha!

During a pause in the hakofos, a friend came over and suggested that one of us write an article about the communal response and the Kiddush HaShem of our community’s response to crisis, about the intensity of the achdus and the chesed.

My response was instantaneous: how much greater a Kiddush HaShem, how much greater a step forward to bring Moshiach, if we could do it without the crisis. As a teacher of Jewish History, I come back over and over and over again to how frequently we as a people have made the same mistake, waiting for tragedy to show our quality instead of binding ourselves more closely to our neighbors in times of blessing. If we could rise to the occasion on our own, those occasions of crisis and tragedy would never have to happen.

Then, as I reflected on the demonstration of achdus and simcha going on in shul around me, the dancing, the singing, the unrestrained joy of celebration before HaShem, I realized that we’re really not that far away at all. It’s not one great leap but one simple step that we have to take. The unity and the joy and the kindness are already within us. We just need to let it all out without waiting for it to be ripped out of us by our neighbor’s pain.

Let’s turn the aliyah of these concluded holidays into action. Let’s look for every opportunity to show kindness, to show unity, to express ahavas chinom — unreasoning love — to supplant the unreasoning hatred that plunged us all into darkness two millennia ago and has kept us there ever since. Let’s not wait for another tragedy.

Ivdu es HaShem b’simcha! Serve HaShem with joy!

Please daven for:

Rafoel Dovid HaLevi ben Bracha

Elisha HaLevi ben Bracha

Elyahu Chaim HaLevi ben Bracha

Tehilla bas Bracha

Reuven ben Tova Chaya