Outlook

A talmid chacham approached me last week with a question about the chareidi media’s coverage of the horrible Carmel Forest fire in which forty-four people died. In the secular and national religious press he noted there were pictures of the victims and at the very least some context to the lives lost — parents spouse children and siblings. But in the chareidi press the coverage focused almost entirely on the religious Jews who perished in the blaze — for instance Rabbi Uriel Malka a rav in the prison services — or on particularly moving stories like that of the sixteen-year-old Haifa fire department volunteer Elad Rivan who rushed from his high school classroom to join rescue efforts and was overcome by the flames. Absent were the capsule biographies of the other victims. Why? he asked. (A caveat: I cannot personally confirm this claim; I did not read the entire chareidi press.)

One does not want to make too much of this. The staff of Mishpacha’s English edition for instance had less than a day to put together its entire fire coverage.

At the same time it is incumbent davka upon Torah Jews never to forget that the loss of every Jew diminishes all of us. “Jewish unity” used to be a frequent Jewish federation slogan before the pretense became laughable. But the further Jews are removed from the shtetls of Eastern Europe and immigrant neighborhoods from a common history and shared experiences the fewer bonds they feel to one another. Only belief in the Torah can truly account for our essential connection to one another — something that once required no explanation. We are bound because we all stood at Sinai and were charged by Hashem with a world historical mission. The loss of any Jew is the loss of the potential to fulfill our collective mission. And as guardians of the true basis of Jewish unity we Torah Jews must not allow ourselves to become desensitized to the tragedy of any Jew cut-off in his or her prime.

There are many forces that endanger that sensitivity. In Israel we — of necessity — raise our children in such a way as to minimize the influence of the surrounding society. Sometimes we avoid focusing on the mesirus nefesh of Israeli soldiers for instance lest they become the role models for our sons. But in doing so we also run the risk that they will lose their awareness of the essential connection to the individual Jews that society comprises.