I know of a BT who lives in Hawaii. He attended the same imitation of a yeshiva that I attended, a year earlier or so, the one that sees itself as the supreme and only valid school for BTs (an improper imitation of the idea of Hashem Echad), the place for the "best and the brightest," as it says on its pathetic website. And since they try to recruit only wealthy guys or those who go to elite colleges (and the two are often the same), arrogance is pretty standard over there. I learned of his whereabouts from a post where he was blasting somebody in the true style of guys who go to that place for the best and the brightest. So when I heard that he found his way to Hawaii, I judged: Oh, so he's not one of the successes, one of the ones that soar as he doesn't live in Lakewood or Flatbush or best of all Israel, or at least Baltimore or Passaic where some of those guys land.
I sat with that judgement for a while. But over time it hit me, why can't he live in Hawaii? All you need is a community of some kind with a mikva, a minyan, kosher food, and a school. SSMF. You don't need a dozen mikvaos. The famous basketball player Julius Erving told a young Charles Barkley, why do you have all those cars? You only need one. Save your money. Likewise you don't need 52 shuls that you never enter. What's the true benefit of being in Flatbush? You can live there your whole life and never enter for any reason all but three shuls. Why do you need more? What does it do for you? Why is bigger better? If the size creates unfriendliness as it does in spades in Flatbush, then it's only hurting you. BTs are all alone, no frum aunts, uncles, or grandparents. Living in an unfriendly place is hazardous to the health, and with size comes unfriendliness because friendliness generally results from familiarity. That's why people in small towns are more friendly, and people in large cities are not.
But more importantly, I think many people lack faith in Hashem and His Torah, which includes faith in the power of mitzvos. If you are observing the rules of the Torah in Berkeley, California, what is the problem? You are keeping the mitzvos, that's powerful in itself. They contain the ratzon Hashem that is being released into the world via your Torah observance.
What people have, rather than faith in Hashem and His Torah, is faith in the frum oilam. That's really what they believe in. They believe in a look, a style of clothing. A black suit is seen as frummer than a blue one. They relish the site of shul buildings. Many believe in a grumpy face or in feelings of superiority, in contempt for the world. They believe that's what makes you frummer. Not mitzvos, not study, not contemplation but construction of buildings. When I was considering moving to Cleveland, a rabbi criticized the idea, "You want to be in a place that's growing." What he meant was one where there's lots of construction of buildings that I'll never enter. What's the point of it? Is it just a feeling of arrogance that we are in the cool place, the biggest place, the richest place? What's the connection to engagement with Torah and mitzvos and tefillah.
Not only that, but where's the happiness? Rabbi Avigdor Miller says that the reason we count up instead of down for omer is that we are counting food. Usually you count down to your birthday or vacation. Three days to go. Two days to go. With Omer we count up. Says Rav Miller, we are adding up all the food. Omer is a measure of grain. Thank you for a week of food. Thank you for two weeks. By the end, we are so full of gratitude that we are happy to accept the Torah. He says that performance of mitzvos is an expression of gratitude.
You will not feel gratitude if you are miserable. It's not enough to be thankful that you have legs if those legs take you to a job that you hate as you pass streets that you think are ugly.
I, for example, don't like the modern state of Israel. I don't enjoy the society. For one, I feel uncomfortable with unfriendly or brazen people. And that's what Israelis are like. I don't like dull beige buildings, which is all you see in Jerusalem. I don't like militancy. I grew up in New York where nobody from my generation ever went into the military. And I didn't care for the men who went in my parents' generation. I felt that the military turned them into hard and violent people. Well, militarism is the defining feature of Israel. It's everywhere. Rabbi Hershel Reichman, the author of those summaries of Rabbi Soloveitchik's Gemara shiurim, although a Zionist, told me that you can't live in Israel if you can't deal with militarism. I appreciate him for this because he moved past dogma and recognized that human beings have feelings and predilections that must be honored. He realizes that you can't just say, a Jew belongs in Israel. It's not simple. You can't live in a place that offends your sensibilities.
Fortunately, the Torah does not mandate locations for observance. Theoretically, you could live all by yourself, but that is very difficult and not good for children. But you don't need a metropolis. The halacha is reasonable. You need a shul, a mikva, kosher food, and a school. America has scores of places like that. Canada, Oceania, Europe and now South America also have places like that. And many of them to me are lovely places. I happen to really enjoy the Midwest, the South, and Canada. I like the West Coast too. I just don't can't deal with New York or Israel. And there's no reason I should be living in those places. And the main reason I do is because people who don't know me very well (even though they have "known me" for years), told me that's where I had to live. Shiduchim feeds into this. You come to NY for shiduchim and you can't leave because arrogant NYers see the rest of the country as a joke and the slip their nonsense into your head. It's like that famous NYer magazine cartoon about how NY sees the rest of the country. Frum NYers are just as bad as the posh NYers of Manhattan.
There should be a frum version of this. I'll attempt it.
That's the NY view. So you go there for shiduchim and you can't ever leave. I'm starting to think that you need not go live there for shiduchim or yeshiva. Don't move there at all. Live where you want to live, because just as spending 5 seconds with a yeshivist puts you in danger of being sucked in to his vortex forever, it's the same with living in NY.
Go to a place that has a shul, a school, a mikva and food. SSMF. That's all you need. Books you can order online.
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