I like to window shop. It is an old habit, so my husband is
used to it by now. We can be walking along a commercial
street and come upon a row of stores. There I go, glancing
into each of the store windows.
Why look in store windows? It gives me an idea of what is
new. We aren't supposed to walk into stores, look around and
ask questions about the merchandise, unless we are planning
to buy something.
It is a form of onaas devorim to raise the hopes of a
merchant and make him believe he is going to have a sale when
in fact you do not intend to buy from him. Most of the time,
I am more interested in looking than in buying. But I still
like to keep abreast of new styles and trends. Sometimes my
window shopping comes in handy. When one of my children asks
rhetorically, "I wonder where they sell..." and names a
certain product, I can tell them that I saw just that item in
a store window on such-and-such street while I was on the way
to the bank, post office or a government office.
I particularly like to look in the windows of jewelry stores.
Jerusalem has excellent jewelry stores and you can tell the
latest trends by looking at what is displayed in their
windows.
Women have always liked jewelry. Eliezer brought camels full
of gifts for Rivka, and prominent among the gifts was
jewelry.
You can't expect today's kallah to want the same type
of jewelry as Rivka Imeinu. You can't even expect her to wear
the same styles as her mother. The styles of jewelry change
quite often and that is nothing new. Scientists can date the
period of a particular level at an archaeological dig by
examining the jewelry found there.
One current trend in jewelry bothers me. It is the style of
the pendants that some of today's women are wearing on their
neck chains.
Historically pendants have included lockets with pictures of
loved ones inside, symbols that reflect the religious
orientation of the wearer, and other things the wearer
identifies with. We are used to seeing a Star of David, the
word "chai," a heart, a name, initial, or the
international peace symbol.
Now let me describe some of the new pendants. There is one
that looks like a rectangle, either plain gold or studded
with diamonds. What is inside the rectangle? Nothing. It
looks like an empty frame. There is another that is a
collection of circles of various sizes. The circles are also
empty. They look like a whole lot of zeros stuck together.
The last of the trendy pendants is something that needs no
imagination to define. Picture a tiny gold handbag hanging
from a chain. People from different areas of the English
speaking world have different names for it, but whether you
call it a purse, a handbag or a pocketbook, the main function
of this item is to carry money. If one chooses to wear such
a pendant, it proclaims to all the world that materialism is
alive and well in her reality.
We had Socialism, Communism, secular Zionism, and feminism
and they each took a toll on the Jewish world. Now it is
materialism that has taken over, but I did not realize that
people would proudly display their allegiance to it by
adorning themselves with golden miniature purses.
A sociologist looking in the window of a jewelry store right
now would have to say that our society is in bad shape. We
have women who are proclaiming allegiance to the shop-till-
you-drop philosophy that started in America and has spread
worldwide, and also those who are looking for a framework for
their lives but don't have anything to put in the frame.
After years of sitting in front of a television set or a
movie screen, today's secular young people don't think. It
isn't so much that they don't think the deep thoughts that
their elders think; they don't think at all! Their ideology
is as empty as the purse, the rectangle or cascade of circles
that they are wearing around their necks.
Part of the system of nature that Hashem uses to hide His
Presence in the world is the concept that nature abhors a
vacuum. That means that when there is an empty space,
something is going to come along and fill it.
We in the frum world should be aware of just how empty
the lives of some of our fellow Jews have become. If there
has ever been a time to reach out, this is it. We have the
Torah. We have to give over our Torah values to our secular
brothers and sisters.
If, G-d forbid, we don't, then some new worthless ideology or
modern equivalent of the Golden Calf will come along to fill
the void and a historic opportunity will be lost forever.
One of my neighbors told me she has been going out with a
group of other women to knock on doors in a secular
neighborhood and explain the beauty of the Laws of Family
Purity to the women who live there. Other women go to
shopping centers on Friday mornings to distribute candles and
information about Shabbos.
Kollel men have been taking off one night each week to go
door to door and urge secular people to enroll their children
in Torah schools.
Both men and women who prefer to do their outreach from home
have volunteered to be telephone learning partners. Even if
they can only learn for half an hour a week, that offers
thirty minutes of life to a person who is merely existing
rather than living.
I know there are also people who are too shy to approach
strangers and speak to them, even in order to reach out and
influence them. If you are one of them, I have a suggestion
for you. Take half an hour every week, at a set time that
works into your schedule, and pray for those of our sisters
and brothers who have not yet found the path to Torah or have
wandered off the path.
You can go to the Kosel or Kever Rochel, or you can do your
praying at home. Say a few chapters of Tehillim,
beseech the Heavens, and most of all, cry. The gates of tears
are always open.
Rabbi Yisroel Salanter used to say that the actions of Jews
in Eastern Europe could affect the lives of their assimilated
brothers in Western Europe. Our tears can fill up the
emptiness in the lives of precious Jewish souls around us and
around the world.
Seize this golden opportunity. One final bit of advice: If
you have a close friend or relative who is not yet Torah
Observant, pray for him or her, among the others like them.
That will give your prayers more focus and hopefully your
prayers will give more focus to the lives of our assimilated
brethren.
