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18 Tammuz 5764 - July 7, 2004 | Mordecai Plaut, director Published Weekly
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Shema Yisrael Torah Network
Shema Yisrael Torah Network

Opinion & Comment
Hashkofo Highlights from HaRav Chaim Shaul Karelitz, zt'l

compiled by L. Leiner

Part I

For a generation, HaGaon HaRav Chaim Shaul zt'l stood on, spiritual vigil. With clarity of mind, he transmitted the tradition of our masters in every subject that came to the fore. In the fulcrum of his battle, stood the basis of the chareidi public's collective adherence to the word of our Gedolei Torah. To this end, he organized something he called "The Bloc for Compliance and Actualization" (Hagush Letzi'us Vehagshamah). As a sort of extension, he founded and stood at the helm of the Shearis Yisroel Beis Din until the end of his days. For the third yahrtzeit, on 20 Tammuz, three years of a palpable vacuum, we are publishing some sparks of light from his teachings and philosophy, whose vibrant relevance has not waned.

Concerning the Study of Tanach in Our Days

Ever since the rise of the accursed Haskoloh movement in the world, its avowed goal was to swallow up the holy Tanach and desecrate it by stripping it of its holiness, G-d forbid. The Maskilim established themselves, as it were, as guardians over the Tanach, just as their heirs and followers instituted themselves as guardians over Eretz Yisroel, and they defiled that study as a holy undertaking.

They related to the holy figures depicted in Tanach as if they were picayune peers, our own contemporaries, more or less, paralleling the ancient Biblical times to our latter days. The brunt of their work was to reduce the greatness of those ancients and place them on par with our own generation and times, as if they were equal to us, without the vast generation gap.

All of ancient history, including its illustrious figures, was reduced to mere tales, novel material, newspaper items. They allowed themselves a free hand to putter around, to stir up the soup of history which they concocted and doctored, and then to ladle it out according to their desired degenerate distortions, devoid of all spirituality. They critiqued and analyzed Tanach as if they were newspaper commentators of our times, removing the dividing parameters between holy and profane, and consequently between Jewry and the nations and all other such demarcations.

The written Torah was reduced, G-d forbid, to mere literature which they rewrote and redefined according to their own standards. (See Rambam on his commentary on Ovos, Chapter One, on the Mishna: Antignos of Socho.)

This approach to our sacred Torah roused the gedolim of recent generations throughout the Diaspora to denounce them categorically and to deny them any say on religious matters. Our leadership insisted on forbidding the teaching of Tanach to the children of our ranks before they were fully versed in the Oral Tradition and had gained the due reverence and appreciation for Torah, the teachings of Chazal and their exegeses upon the Scriptures, so that they would thus be well-grounded in the proper approach towards the study of the Written Torah Text.

The Recognition of the `Rishonim as Angels' is Necessary For our Modern Times

There exist in the ranks of authors and historians, people who are G-d-fearing and Torah-observant but whose works do not reflect the vast distance and spiritual span that lies between the ancients and our present day. Thus, in their ignorance, they serve the purposes of the other camp admirably, to our dismay.

Anyone of this latter day who does not correctly recognize his place and status as a `donkey' in comparison with the ancients who were considered `men' worthy of that epithet, is reducing the entire Torah, G-d forbid, to inanity. Whatever is left after his dealing with the Tanach -- if he makes no differentiation between them and us -- is totally irrelevant because of its irreverence.

How can one presume to approach Torah as a G-d-given document and blueprint if he does not draw that differentiation between the ancients and us, lowly latter generations? Under that approach, the Torah loses all significance and substance!

In our times, in this era of sophisticated cameras and recording devices, any child can create the figure of a so- called angel with wings and cherubic countenance and yet subscribe no holiness to that configuration. There has been a devaluation of the concept of "angel" in our times. And who knows, if there has perhaps not been a far worse devaluation regarding the third of the basic Thirteen Principles by those lightheaded people who bandy about holy concepts wholesale without meaning, who attribute powers to some gross machination of their imagination, "Who say to the wood, `You are my father,' " a totally idolatrous concept which does nothing to obligate man to anything -- values or ethics.

I heard from a late Torah scholar that a melamed who is incapable of teaching the episode of Yehuda and Tomor or the sale of Yosef with the same simplicity and wholesomeness as sefer Vayikra and the subject of leprous lesions and impurities, is not qualified to teach innocent and pure young children altogether, since it is unavoidable for him not to inject the spirit of Haskoloh into this child even inadvertently. For whoever expels or transmits anything, expels it from within himself and who knows what far-reaching damage this can cause!

He also remarked that the gentiles of the ancient generations were of a much higher caliber than those of this present one, with a parallel comparison between them as angels vis-a-vis men. They were, however, angels of the sinister kind, avenging angels so to speak, but even avenging angels are celestial creatures as compared to the mortals of today.

The Obligation to Study in Bais Yaakov

It is the obligation of every G-d-fearing Jew, loyal to Hashem's Torah, who desires the good of his fellow Jew, to explain to whoever is willing to hear the simple truth: Whoever seeks to educate his daughter to a genuine love for Torah in the manner of our mothers and grandmothers, and to inculcate in them a boundless reverence towards Torah scholars from a clear recognition that they are the purpose of the world and they are the true protectors of the Jewish people -- has only one option, which is to send his daughters to study and receive instruction and outlook in any of the many Bais Yaakov institutions.

These schools are the sealed cruses of oil that bear the stamp of the Kohen Godol, so to speak. They bear the seal of approval of the leaders of the generation and only in these institutions are they sure to grow as a Jewish daughter whose whole aspiration and purpose in life is purely spiritual, steeped in the true love for Torah and in total submission to the Torah leadership of our generation. There they will learn to aspire to cleave to the Torah and to its followers and to continue the chain of generations of Klal Yisroel who choose the way of Torah and to adhere to its leaders of generation to generation.

This cannot be said of private institutions which do not bear the seal of approval of our Torah leaders. The teachers and educators in such places are, themselves, far from submissive to our gedolei hador and are greatly removed from a love and reverence towards those who teach and study Torah. They are under the misguided inferiority complex that Torah scholars do not do enough for the people and for the homeland etc. What, if so, can one expect from them?

Those who toe this line are not ashamed of their philosophy, and present it proudly for all to see, for their readers to read. Wise was Rabbenu Elchonon Wasserman ztvk'l Hy'd who said that it is pointless to be angry at a mirror that portrays a distorted image of the one looking at it -- if this is a distorted image to begin with!

It is noteworthy to repeat wherever one can what the Brisker Rov zy'a said once to a male nurse who cared for him during his final illness. The Rov inquired about his family and the man said that he had a daughter studying in a secular school, since he considered himself a secular Jew. Said the Rov, "I want to do you a favor. Listen to my good advice: Enroll your daughter in Bais Yaakov. Then you will know that you have a daughter!"

Every person should be made to realize that anything less than a Bais Yaakov education will not guarantee for a person that he actually does have a daughter. Anyone who is interested in the happiness of the next generation has only one choice: To send his sons to the holy yeshivos and his daughters to Bais Yaakov. For only this way can he hope not to be disappointed, not to be shamed before Moshiach Tzidkeinu.


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