Following a few minutes of me talking about how miserable life is in Israel, my neighbor handed me a copy of Spring Hill Times. He's a nice fellow, from the West Coast of America, and means well. I know what he is doing, he is thinking, this guy needs to be more positive. And the Spring Hill Times "Positivity on Every Page" will help.
So I open up to an article called "Hashem Loves You." It features a story by Nachman Seltzer which goes as follows: a divorced guy named Ezra is doing "his best to keep learning and doing the right thing despite his challenging circumstances." His father asks him to drive three hours to Acco to visit his sister, which he agrees to in order to fulfill the mitzvah kivud av v'eim. In Acco, he finds parking in the permitted blue lined spots (as opposed to the red lines), but after visiting with his sister for two hours sees a policeman giving a ticket. He questions the ticket to which the policeman says, "Don't you see that six inches of your car is parked on the red lines!?" Ezra says, "Rubo Kekulo!" which is a halachic principle meaning the majority is equivalent to all, meaning most of the car is within the blue line so it should be good enough. The policeman says, "If six inches were shaved off your vehicle would you be happy? Surely not!" And writes the ticket.
Ezra returns home to find a summons from his wife's attorney, charging him with violating a restraining order for which he can receive "severe penalties." He goes to court and claims he was in Acco at the time she claimed him to have been too close to her. Judge shouts "Prove it!" Ezra shows the ticket. Judge counters "You proved that YOUR CAR was in Acco, but maybe someone else drove your car and YOU were not in Acco." Ezra tells the story of the encounter with the policeman. Judge says bring him to the court. He comes and remembers the comment "Rubo Kekulo." Judge clears the charges. A few weeks later Ezra receives a check for 300,000 NIS in compensation for the false charges. And so writer Seltzer tells us, "Ezra saw clearly how going out of his way to do Kivud Av brought him great Sechar in this world as well as Olam Haba!"
The article goes on to mention a non-related item that Rav Pinchas Sheinberg used to say that he considered his ticket to olam haba to be telling ladies to ease up on the Pesach cleaning because they were over-straining themselves. Going beyond the halacha was robbing them of Simchas Chaim. The Torah is pleasant and sweet and it's possible to prepare for Pesach in a fun and geshmak way.
The article concludes by saying that "I believe the biggest Chesed one can do is share the Spring Hill Times with everyone you know, and maybe even subscribe a friend or neighbor as a sweet surprise! They will thank you forever!"
So let's unpack all this. What we are seeing here is Yeshivism with sugar sprinkled on top. I appreciate that this publication from Monsey is trying to sweeten up the Yeshivist derech a bit. That's utilizing a good American influence, but the problem is that sugar on top of bitterness isn't really sweet, and it leaves you with feelings of guilt that you still aren't happy. The message is that if you were just more positive, you'd be happy. This, rather than change your circumstances, which includes your derech.
Let's look at the story. It's a nasty story full of nasty people. The ex-wife sounds like a real treat with her restraining order. The policeman is an Israeli policeman meaning obnoxious. He could have said, "I'm sorry sir but six inches outside of the permitted line is substantial and obstructs..." blah, blah, blah, whatever is supposed to happen in the red area. Instead, he fires back with his clever argumentation. The judge is obnoxious with his "Prove it!" (There are way too many exclamation marks in the prose here. What's pleasant about that?") He could have said, "Sir, I see your point, but it could be that someone else was driving your car. Do you have some way of proving that you were the driver?" Even Ezra is obnoxious by delivering to what was likely a chiloni policeman a Talmudic reference that didn't apply. If you keep most of Shabbos are you still not violating Shabbos? I see Ezra's response as something of a Chillul HaShem actually, making religious people seem dishonest and irrational.
I read this story and think, why live in a nasty place and strain to have a positive attitude about it? Live somewhere normal. Now, Ezra may not have that choice. His ancestors foolishly moved to Israel and he might be stuck. But I am not stuck ultimately, and if I'm complaining about life here, maybe the solution is to leave, and not just to be "positive" about it. One of the Zionist evangelists who pushed me to move here said to me "You have to be positive" after I expressed my hesitations. Being positive is something you do after your decision is irrevocable (like with marriage), not what you do when you are making decisions. If you have hesitations you don't blow over them with faked positivity. The same lady was full of negativity about America like all Zionists are. She was quite far from positive. She was only positive that everyone must live in Israel.
OJs do this all the time. You express hesitations about some decision, could be marital choice, could be leaving yeshiva, could be where to live, and they blow over your reasoning and pour fantasy talk on top of it. "You guys will be fine," says a relationship counselor to a young man and women who are not getting along during dating. "Your Torah will soar," says a rabbi to a young baal teshuvah who is hesitant about taking a break from college to study full time in Israel where he has no desire to go. "You'll live near Rabbi Schwartz," says a woman who is pushing another woman to move into a tiny cruddy apartment in Flatbush. The inference is that living near Rabbi Schwartz will produce some kind of magical relationship or spiritual influence.
So what happens in the end? The couple married and don't get along (true story, I know them). The young man has a terrible experience in Israel and suffers from being torn from his support systems (that's me). The young couple encounter Rabbi Schwartz only once and have a bad experience, and the apartment proves to be so small and uncomfortable that people who see it even once decline subsequent invitations for Shabbos meals. And the neighbors are unfriendly and the religious environment completely inappropriate for these two people.
But back to the story. The story is presenting a nasty world, which is how Yeshivists see the world. It's full of evil and sheker. Yeshivists hate everything except themselves. By contrast, I like the French. I like their language, the look of their villages, the glory of Paris. I like their sentiment of viva la difference (good relations between the sexes by their allowing men to be men and women women), joie de vivre. I like them. I like the Irish, the religious values, the peat, the moss, the beer, the poetry, the sense of humor. I like their names. I like Italians. I like many peoples, even though I am not one of them. I have tried but failed. I can like something that I am not.
Yeshivists hate everything that they are not. They hate all gentiles. They hate secular Jews. They don't even like Chassidim or Sephardim. They look down on them. They don't like their own baalei batim, except for the rich ones. They don't even like all the Torah. A Rosh Yeshiva once asked me what I was 'learning.' I said mesechta Brochos. He looked at me with disdain. Tell them you are studying Noam Elimelech or Zohar but brace yourself for their disapproval or mockery. They operate with an inherent negativity about everything.
What's good? We see right at the beginning. Ezra is doing "his best to keep learning and doing the right thing despite his challenging circumstances." By learning, the writer doesn't meaning growing wise, learning about life. He means Torah study, which means Brisker Lomdus on yeshivishe mesectas. That's the only good. When publications like Spring Hill talk about the beautiful sunset, that's nice. It's a nice try. Unfortunately, they are saying it to yeshiva people who trained to hate nature. They love that Mishnah that says the one who interrupts his learning to say how lovely is this true has forfeited his life. Only Gemara learning is good.
This is the yeshivist outlook on life. Early on in my OJ career, I sought advice from two well-known rabbis. One is now a Rosh Yeshiva and member of the Moetzes of America. The other is a famous writer. To the first I complained about the unqualified and manipulative head of the fake yeshiva I attended, a man this rabbi knew well. He said, "Forget about Rabbi [name redacted]. Just study Torah." The other one, who held himself up as a counselor and to whom I paid $50 ($100 in today's dollars) in response to my complaints about this fake yeshiva and my struggles in Israel said, "I think you need to learn more Torah." That's the solution to everything.
Of course, I didn't know how to "learn" Torah. That was part of the problem. The yeshiva wasn't teaching us. They had no program. They just opened up to daf beis and started. There was no methodology, no vocabulary sheet.
On top of that, engaging in more Brisker Lomdus would not have been the solution. I came to yeshiva because I had questions about this very strange religion, and it was one of those places where questions are mocked. Just study Gemara was their approach. I was operating without a hashkafa, without an understanding of why I was locking myself in a room from Friday night to Saturday night, ie Shabbos, without any knowledge of halacha, without any facility in Hebrew. The yeshiva taught none of that. So the phrase "learn Torah" wasn't helpful. I knew that phrase already. Nevertheless, it is generally, it is nearly always the only advice that any yeshivist rabbi ever offers.
And they don't help you with it. I told one famous rabbi, a gadol, early on that I didn't enjoy Torah study. I was looking for tips. He said only, "You'll come back to it." He had no tips. I said the same thing to another nearly equally famous rabbi. He said, "Daven for it."
"Daven for it" is the laziest advice. Anybody can say that about anything. You can't just daven. You have to take steps to change things about what you are doing. In the yeshivist world, they never want to change anything, not where you live, not what you do with your day, not with the way you go about what you do. They never change jobs, don't train for new jobs. They don't even approach Gemara study in a new way. They just daven for something to magically change. Hey guys, here's a line Christians like to say, "G-d helps those who help themselves." Try that sometime.
In the yeshivist world you can't help yourself because there is no you. They take away from you all resources including your own mind and your freedom to make decisions. Simply being positive, that is telling yourself fairytales, will not make life sweet.
Elsewhere in this very yeshivish publication, they present the key views of the Chazon Ish, the first of which allegedly is that everyone should be in kollel for life. They don't mention that the Chazon Ish said you can't do lomdus all day long, or that his view of bitachon is not like that of this publication. He didn't believe all becomes good if you just believe it. I really doubt that the Chazon Ish said that everyone must be in kollel for life, and I really doubt he'd put it as first in his list of values. But that's the yeshiva world. That's what they value.
This approach really only works for the Rosh Yeshiva. In America, everyone else must go to work at some point because it costs $200,000 a year to get by. In Israel, apartments are even more expensive and on top of that there's the army, so you can't go there. And if live there, again, you either take some miserable job or you live in poverty.
So let's say that you stay in America and go to work and feel purposeless because the whole purpose of life was presented to you as Gemara study. You didn't prepare for a career, you fell into some job at the last minute so you hate your job. But you are supposed to be positive about all this. You recite positivity affirmations all day long. It's sugar on top of bitterness. It doesn't work. It's lipstick on a pig because the yeshivist so-called derech is a drag.
Now since the Gemara discusses mitzvos beginning to end, you can't totally dismiss mitzvos. But yeshivists don't discuss their value or meaning. They talk only about reward for them, even though the Mishnah says not to serve for reward. So kivud av v'eim in this story produces magical reward in the form of money, which is the biggest reward for a yeshivist because you need lots of money to support your 'learning' habit.
There are practical benefits to honoring parents. The mitzvah is rooted in gratitude. You are giving back to your parents who give so much. This leads you to appreciate all that HaShem does for you. And that gives the feeling that He loves you, rather than stating that He does 100 times as this publication will have you do. I'm not saying that it's bad what the publication does, just that it isn't the best approach.
Nor is talking about bitachon by telling bitachon stories. I find more useful Chassidic discussion into how the infinite interacts with the finite, and also discussing attributes of the Divine. But these guys aren't going to do that. They just tell over hashgacha pratis stories, which again isn't a bad thing. It's just not as effective as Chassidic thought in my view.
So please I understand, I am glad this publication is out there. I wouldn't want to discourage them. However, I think it's lipstick on a pig. Better than no lipstick I guess. Maybe not.
As for Rav Sheinberg, I really doubt that he saw his biggest mitzvah to be Pesach sanity. You know that he could only have saw Torah study as his biggest mitzvah. I didn't know the man, saw him from a distance mostly. Although I talked to him a few times. He's the one who said, "You'll come back to it."
