A Tale of Two Torahs

Only one of them preserved us

Likud Minister Dudu Amsalem recently made headlines for a statement in support of a draft exemption for charedim, which Bibi is still working to push through. He declared that “a (charedi) Torah student is the ‘diamond in the crown,’ and does not contribute any less than a soldier who fights in Gaza.” Amsalem reaches this conclusion based on the fact that “when looking at the history of the Jewish People, we see that without Torah there is no Jewish People.” One wonders if perhaps it’s more about the fact that without charedim there is no Likud. But for now, let’s take Amsalem at his word.

It is indeed correct that the Torah has preserved the Jewish People over history. But Amsalem’s mistake is presuming that the Torah which did that is identical to the Torah of the charedi community today. Not only is it not identical, it’s not even remotely similar. In fact, it is pretty much the exact opposite.

While Shavuot celebrates the giving of the Torah, there are two very different Torahs being celebrated this week. Some will be celebrating the festival of the giving of this one:

• A Torah which encompasses both our obligations to God and our obligations to man, in order to create a just society;

• A Torah whose study is described by the Sages and the Rishonim as being for the purpose of knowing and fulfilling the mitzvos;

• A Torah which Rabbi Akiva encapsulates with “love your neighbor as yourself” - do for him that which you yourself would want;

• A celebration which takes place on the day of the harvest, the culmination of our work to provide for ourselves, undertaken with full effort along with God’s help;

• A festival which is marked with the reading of Megillat Rut, about a young woman who forgoes the opportunity for safety and security and puts herself out with selfless commitment to the Jewish People;

• A festival which follows a parasha that talks at length about the tribes being drafted into the army, which is appreciated as something of great value, the ultimate expression of chessed;

• A celebration of a Torah which is epitomized in our heroic young (and older) people who, both despite and because of their love for studying Torah, understand that putting Torah into practice means making sacrifices with their learning, careers, family life and potentially their health and (God forbid) even their lives, in order to enable the Jewish People to survive, as we have seen so powerfully in the last three years.

(Above: Zecharia Haber, the epitome of a Torah scholar, who also authored a special zemer to sing on Shavuot. He gave his life in Gaza on behalf of the Jewish People.)

Others, however, are celebrating the giving of a very different Torah:

• A Torah which is to be studied all day long for many decades by all young men in the community, primarily for the purpose of (allegedly) increasing their personal knowledge of Torah, as per the innovative redefinition of Torah lishmah created by R. Chaim of Volozhin;

• The above Torah study being in place of their having any serious responsibilities to supporting their families or to helping the Jewish People, no matter what crises are happening (except for political campaigns, in which case they have to leave the Beis HaMidrash and engage in full hishtadlus);

• A Torah which despite all its stress on honesty and Chazal’s stress on raising one’s children to be self-supportive, tells them that they should create a society that relies on others to support them instead and which engages in deception to get money from everyone else;

• A Torah which despite supposedly making them grow intellectually, produces “Gedolim” with absolutely no plan for their community to survive economically, no matter how much hardship this is causing for them, and certainly without any thought for the long-term consequences;

• A Torah which despite supposedly making them grow spiritually, produces “Gedolim” who declare that religious Zionist soldiers are killed in Gaza because they were taught “warped Torah”;

• A Torah which despite supposedly making them grow ethically, produces “Gedolim” who tell their followers that they shouldn’t help relieve the ever-growing crushing burden on those who are making endless sacrifices for us all, no matter how many broken lives and suicides this causes, and that they shouldn’t even do chessed for them, or even show any concern or gratitude for them.

It’s two different Torahs. One of them is something beautiful, an elixir of life that preserved us from Biblical times through to today. The other is a poison, a modern aberration which threatens to end us.

Those who are celebrating the former are part of the thousands of years of sacrifice and tradition that makes up the Jewish People and kept us going. May they receive all the blessings of Torah. And I wish them a chag sameach.