An encounter last week with a fine Yerushalmi yungerman has impelled me to write about a topic that’s been troubling me for a long time. I hope I won’t regret having brought up the issue — yet I think it imperative that we give it our attention.
This yungerman happened to meet me at a wedding and in an offhanded manner he asked me “Don’t you think somebody ought to be doing kiruv among the chareidim too? Why do you only focus on the nonreligious?”
I gathered that he knew something about the kiruv work I had done in the past as part of the first corps of lecturers in the Arachim movement and more recently when I have had the privilege of doing a some speaking before nonreligious students in the framework of the very fruitful Nefesh Yehudi organization. At first I thought he was joking but I quickly realized how serious he was. “Let’s arrange to meet ” I said “and we’ll see what you have to say.”
We met in a certain shul. And this is what he reported: “What can I tell you? I’m a kollel man I learn well; I even enjoy my learning and I stick to a regular schedule. But I’ll be honest with you — I don’t believe in G-d. Everything I do is just a sham.”
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