Outlook

How to uphold societal ideals is one of the thorniest issues facing any community — chareidi society included. The vigor of a society depends on the existence of shared ideals. But if those principles are not promoted in the proper way they will be undermined.

First ideals must be advanced in a positive fashion rather than as a cudgel with which to beat others over the head and to assert one’s own superiority. The latter approach only leads to an ever-more-bitterly-divided society. Many years ago my rosh yeshivah told me a joke about two Jews who get together to survey the world. They proceed to divide the world into increasingly finer divisions — e.g. Jews and non-Jews religious and non religious chassidic and litvish. At every stage one side of the divide is dismissed as “stam nothing.” In the end one says to his friend “That leaves only you and me and you are stam nothing. So that leaves only me.” No society thrives when a large percentage of those who self-define as members are made to feel that they are “stam nothing.”

Second it is crucial to remember that every ideal is just that — an ideal. Almost by definition there will be both many individuals who cannot fully meet that elevated level (obviously we are not speaking of normative halachah) and a very large number of different circumstances that have to be reconciled to the ideal. Anyone who has ever had the privilege of being close to gedolei Yisrael has witnessed the nuanced way they balance the ideal versus the specific situation of each individual and family who consults them.

Decades ago a brilliant young baal teshuvah who had come to Ohr Somayach just before completing a graduate degree at Oxford University received a letter from Oxford that he had to return immediately for six weeks or forever forfeit his degree. He went to Rav Shach ztz”l together with his rosh yeshivah and to everyone’s surprise Rav Shach told him to complete the degree. (A few days later he returned to his rosh yeshivah and said “Libi chashka b’Torah” (My heart desires only Torah) and never went back. But Rav Shach wanted the choice to be fully his.)