So Part I was in Yiddish. Today I'll do English. Just because. לא בא לי לכתוב באידיש היום.
I have no beefs with Reb YY Kalmanovitch. They say he checks his tefillin every day, every inch of the retzuos, to make sure that they're mamesh black. That he davens for hours till literally klois haNefesh. That he learns until he physically can't anymore. 20 hours a day. Friends of mine have told me that chas vesholom to speak ill of him. Which is good, because I do not intend to. What I write here is not to attack the messenger. כי מי אני ומה אני, עפר רימה ותולעה. b'etzem, what's left for me to say? A man who apparently - based on what people tell me - has no shaychus to the real world spoke up last week and said that 1) we cannot be mispalel for the success of the IDF. And 2) That it's better for these soldiers who are sinners to die in combat al kiddush hashem rather than returning to their sinful lives and to die a natural death. And he has proof for everything he says! גיי טענה זיך מיט אזא איינער. So what's behind people who spend their time engrossed in Torah and prayer having such feelings and preaching such ideology? I have a theory. ברשות הקל החונן דעת. Hear me out please.
There are several figures in our generation, Haredim living in E. Israel, who were known to espouse extremist views:
1) Moshe Hirsch
2) R. Eli Weintraub
3) R. Y.Y. Kalmanovitch
The common denominator is the fact that they were born in the United States and later on went up to the Holy Land, where they came in contact with "real" Jews, not the American diluted Jew. Yet, in Israel they each went their own extreme way. Hirsch married Katznellenbogen from NK and fell in love with Yasser Arafat. His kids follow in his ways - somehow the meshugoyim always manage to perpetuate the meshigas. And the latter two became quasi-independent tzaddikim in the greater Litvish/Bnei Torah world, with extreme views, even more than the Brisker Rov and Chazon Ish. What they lack is proper hadrochoh. They get to the Holy Land and they acquire an acute form of Jerusalem Syndrome. They fall in the love with the zealots, thinking that this must be the right and proper way, since everything they do is old-fashioned, so how they think must also be authentic! They become their own guiding lights, they accept no מרות. In essence it's like a Baal Tshuvah (no offense) or a newcomer to a certain chassidus; if he does everything just by the book, but without consulting those that have a little seniority on him, האט עס אזא פנים. You can sit all day and look up reasons to divide Jews and build walls. You'll probably find many such quotes and "proofs." But you'll be wrong. That doesn't mean that you don't supervise who your children are friendly with, but you don't become a professional מקטרג either. Especially not בשעה שהשטן מרקד בינינו and Jewish blood is being spilled. In other words timing is everything. And this is not to absolve myself from learning and davening, but what good is the learning and the davening if it doesn't bring to Ahavas Yisroel?
Stay Tuned for Part III. בעז"ה
