Tolerance is in vogue, but does it go both ways?
A week ago, I happened to pick up a distinguished-looking older gentleman walking at the side of the road in White Lake, near Satmar Country. (Yes, that’s how they refer to their bungalow colonies: Satmar Country, Klausenberg Country, Vizhnitz Country — as if these are little regimes with capital cities, flags, and borders you have to cross through, whispering Levi Yitzchok ben Sarah Sasha all the while.)
Some young children near the side of the road were “playing” demonstration, waving anti-Zionist signs and screaming gevald, and I asked my elderly passenger, who clearly remembered the Rebbe, Rav Yoel Teitelbaum, what he thought: Was this the Rebbe’s legacy?
If I imagined that his presence in my car obligated him to engage in discussion with me, he clearly saw things differently. He pulled out a sefer from his shopping bag and started to learn as I drove. Then he lifted the old volume of Mishnayos, Seder Taharos. “This,” he said, “this is what the Rebbe wanted from us.”
Minutes later, I dropped him off at the shul, the seat next to me still simmering with his quiet intensity.
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