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| Rabbi Berel Wein |
I was sent one of his columns by a relative. I have said
many of the things he said in that column myself. Many times in many different ways.
If the leaders
of the Charedi world would see things as clearly and rationally as he does and act to change them,
half of their problems would disappear overnight.
Unfortunately the reality is that nothing will change. It is
a reality in which the Charedim of the Yeshiva world are now deeply entrenched.
They live in a ‘maximum security prison’ of their own making with no foreseeable
way out. But that doesn’t mean the truth should not be told. Especially since I believe that the moderate mainstream of the Charedi world (who together with the much smaller but not insignificant right wing of Modern Orthodoxy irrespective of differing Hashkafos - live similar lifestyles) are the wave of the future. A community I have called the new centrists (small c) .
It is with this in mind that I am going to do something I rarely
do and republish that column here. It follows in its entirety.
We are all aware that we will never again be as smart,
perceptive, clever and knowledgeable as we were when we were 16 years old.
There is no question that from that point of life onwards the trajectory is
always downhill. Nevertheless, there is a great deal to be said for age and
experience and for the tempering of our views and opinions by the realities of
life.
One of the omnipresent facets of human existence is the
continuing eternal disconnect between generations. The young always revolt
against the mores and beliefs of parents and grandparents and search for their
own path in life. Often, this search leads to disaster both for that generation
and for human society generally. One needs only look to the story of humankind
in the 20th century to realize how the rejection of past norms and historical
truths can lead to the destruction of societies and the murder of millions of
innocent people.
The nature of human beings is to ignore advice from people
whom they believe to be irrelevant to current situations and challenges. This
is true in all sectors of human society and certainly in the Jewish world as
well. Any resemblance between the actuality of religious Jewish society today,
whether it be in the United States or Israel and what Jewish society was in
Eastern Europe or in the United States in the first half of the 20th century,
is probably certainly only coincidental. It is not based on reality or on
lessons that should have been learned but are no longer communicated or held to
be of merit.
The current maladies that affect our religious society
center around the dysfunction of family relationships. This leads to what is
euphemistically known as the crisis existing in finding proper spouses, getting
married and building families and generations. There are many reasons for this
societal dysfunction that is so widespread in our time. But part of the cause,
if not the main reason for its existence, is the fact that parents and
grandparents have little to say regarding the lives of their children or in
other cases have too much to say. In the yeshiva world, money plays a greatly
disproportionate role in the process of finding a mate and building a home. The
person involved is much less important than whether one will receive financial
support, an apartment or other material benefits as a reward for marrying one's
daughter. The fact that this is no way to base a lifelong relationship and a
firm foundation for family life seems to be immaterial.
One should not be surprised at the rising rate of divorce
and family dysfunction, of children at risk and other issues which plague our
society. These are natural results of ignoring the lessons of the past
regarding marriage and human relationships and instead, pursuing a life of
self-importance, indulgence, dependence and overbearing arrogance and hubris.
No one wants to hear about the good old days when one married out of love and
attachment to someone else and when no one was guaranteed to be supported by
anyone else but agreed to make his own way in the world.
Much of the religious world has built up a completely
unrealistic picture of Jewish life in previous times. It tends to view the past
not only with rose-colored glasses but with fantasies and fables that do not
and never did reflect the reality of that world and that time. It refuses to
recognize that the Jewish world, of Eastern Europe especially, became secular
in the 19th and 20th centuries. The causes for this were many, but one of them
was certainly poverty. It is difficult to convince future generations that
their lot in life must be that they will always be disadvantaged, poor and
dependent. I find it to be almost cruel for teachers and the heads of
educational institutions to encourage and almost condemn their students to
lives of poverty, unending debt and demeaning dependence on the community and
other individuals.
Everything in the Talmud and in Jewish tradition and all of
life in past Jewish generations speaks against this and yet this is held to be
the most noble of ideas and the one that needs be followed no matter what
misery it causes. The younger generation should speak to their grandparents and
great grandparents and ask them what life was like in their time and what
lessons they learned. They would then gain a perspective that would help them
survive in their generation and build a stronger, healthier and more productive
Jewish society.
