The following supplements our report of last week that
covered the large plenum sessions on Thursday night and
motzei Shabbos, as well as parallel activities. This
report covers Convention activities on Sunday.
*
The titles for at least two of the forum sessions that kicked
off the Agudah convention's Sunday program — "A
Strategy for Future Action" (Tefillah) and "Where Do We Go
From Here?" (Kids-at-Risk) — aptly reflected the
purpose of this year's gathering: to devise workable plans
for dealing with some of Klal Yisroel's most pressing
problems.
And, as Agudath Israel of America executive director Rabbi
Shmuel Bloom would announce at the closing plenary session
later that morning, all the discussion, debate and
deliberation that the forum issues had engendered over the
three-day convention had indeed yielded practical results.
The Shidduch Crisis forum produced plans to introduce a
number of new programs under the auspices of Invei Hagefen
— Agudath Israel's shidduch agency — among
them a Shabbos hospitality program for singles. The Kids-at-
Risk forum concluded with plans for setting up a national
"triage" number for parents seeking immediate help and
direction, a "No Jewish Child Left Behind In Kria (reading
Hebrew)" program, and a comprehensive program of study for
sholom bayis and parenting training. The Tefillah
forum ended with plans to expand upon last year's successful
four-week National Tefillah Initiative and to launch a
nationwide ad campaign designed to raise awareness regarding
the power and beauty of our tefillos. The Political
Activism forum concluded with plans to create a new Agudath
Israel program to encourage and oversee volunteer activity in
the political arena. The Medicine and Halacha forum ended
with a decision to form a medical advisory committee to act
as a liaison to the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah in addressing
cutting-edge medical issues.
Plans to further explore the Tuition Crisis at a full-day
conference of parents, school, administrators and
menahalim were also announced on the last morning of
the Convention as was the impending formation of a special
committee that will focus on protecting our children from the
dangers of the Internet.
The closing plenary session, entitled, "Bringing Jews Home:
Everyone's Mission," featured inspiring presentations by two
formerly secular Jews, each of whom shared the story of his
spiritual journey home.
The program commenced with opening remarks by Rabbi Yaakov
Solomon, a psychoanalyst in private practice and a well-
known lecturer for Aish HaTorah Discovery.
Rabbi Solomon recalled for his listeners how swiftly and in
what astonishing numbers the Orthodox community had turned
out several years ago to join in what would prove a
successful search for a young Jewish girl who'd gotten lost
in the woods during a school outing. He reminded them of the
tears that were shed by family friends and total strangers
alike, of the many kapitlech Tehillim that were
recited on the youngster's behalf by Jews around the
world.
Rabbi Solomon then asked the assemblage, "What about the
millions of Jews who are lost in the forest of assimilation?
Where is the outpouring of concern for them? Where is the
mobilization? Where are the Tehillim?"
The speaker invited the audience to imagine for a moment that
it had been any one of them who'd had the zchus of
finding the youngster and returning her to her family.
"Imagine how indebted her parents would be to you for having
saved their child. Now imagine how the Ribono Shel
Olam feels when you search out the lost souls among His
children and bring them back home."
Describing life-before-observance, Dr. David Leiberman, the
session's first presenter, declared, "I was living the
American dream." A leading expert in human behavior with five
books to his credit —- two on the New York Times Best
Seller List — Dr. Leiberman, who today resides with his
wife and family in Lakewood, New Jersey, described himself as
the last person anyone would have considered a candidate for
kiruv.
But it took only eight simple words, the speaker said, to
turn his life around: "Would you like to go to a class?"
Thus began a process that resulted in his trading in "a life
of insanity for a life of sanity, a life of unreality for one
of reality."
"Consider that every secular Jew is walking around with a
label that reads, `Help me — I'm living in a world that
looks real but is not," Dr. Leiberman suggested. He advised
his listeners not to feel sorry for the non-frum Jew,
who has no inkling of what an observant life has to offer.
"Pity instead the Jew who walks by and fails to reach out to
him. What defense will he offer after 120 years?"
For anyone who might argue that he wasn't trained in
outreach, the speaker had a ready response: "One hardly has
to be a kiruv professional to smile or say hello."
Conceding that it can be "embarrassing" to approach a
stranger, Dr. Leiberman pointed out that the shame of doing
nothing at all to save a Jewish neshomoh is infinitely
worse. He recalled that the first mitzvah he took on —
wearing tzitzis — initially caused him much
embarrassment. After a while, though, it became second
nature.
"Make the choice to reach out to another Jew, and pretty soon
reaching out will become second nature too," he said. "As
Jews we are, after all, defined by our choices. They are all
we have; they make us who we are."
Raised "without rules" by parents who encouraged him and his
three brothers to "try everything and then make up their own
minds," the morning's second presenter, full-time-surfer-
turned-chossid Rabbi Yom Tov Glazer of Aish HaTorah in
Jerusalem, did indeed "try everything" — only to
discover that none of it meant anything.
Then he spent what was supposed to be just a few short weeks
studying in Israel, and his life was transformed.
Much of the speaker's talk was centered on the importance of
providing "second stage" support and chizuk to
baalei teshuva. He described the depression and
disenchantment that set in not long after he became
frum — "I'd gotten there fast, maybe too fast"
— and the chain of events that led him to the person
who not only introduced him to chassidus, but provided
a supportive home base for him and, eventually, his wife and
children. Intending to meet a friend in Karlin-Stolin on the
night of Simchas Bais Hashoeva, he'd wound up instead at a
different shteibel in Meah Shearim — Pinsk-
Karlin.
"A chossid there saw me come in; he grabbed me and we
started dancing — something I knew a little about
— and we danced till three in the morning," Rabbi
Glazer recalled. Before he left the shul, he was
approached by another man who invited him to spend Shabbos at
his father's house. The chassidishe mode of
tefilloh — "they were screaming the
davening" — and the minhagim that he was
introduced to on that Shabbos, touched something deep within
him. "That's when everything clicked for me," he said.
Happy and secure at last in his new life, Rabbi Glazer found
he couldn't sleep at night knowing that his brothers and
parents were not yet frum. The result of his efforts
to be mekarev them? "I made my entire family
frum," he told the delighted audience, adding that his
parents helped establish the first Orthodox shul in
their Malibu community and that two of his brothers are today
deeply involved in kiruv.
Baalei teshuvoh make the best outreach workers, Rabbi
Glazer observed and, at the same time, working with baalei
teshuvoh keeps kiruv workers from becoming
"robotic" in their own observance. "We know we're always
under a microscope."
Reminding his listeners that Orthodox Jews are all
"ambassadors of Yiddishkeit," he encouraged them to reach out
to their non-frum brothers and sisters. "Kiruv is the
tafkid hador," Rabbi Glazer declared. "If everyone
were frum, then all the crises that were discussed at
this convention would simply disappear — because
Moshiach would surely come."
As he has for the last several years, Rabbi Levi Yitzchok
Horowitz, the Bostoner Rebbe, closed the convention with a
short, inspirational message.
Whatever the practical outcome of the various "crisis" forums
that were held at that convention, the Rebbe said, at the
very least everyone was returning home with the knowledge
that Jews care about one another's problems. "Some say that
giving a krechtz for another Yid's tzores is
even more effective than davening,"Rabbi Horowitz
pointed out.
Rabbi Horowitz also offered his listeners a prescription for
happiness and sholom bayis, advising them not to dwell
on that which they may consider to be lacking in their lives
— "the half that's not there" — but to be
satisfied with and grateful for what they do have.
With the Rebbe's resounding brochoh for the health,
success and well-being of everyone in the audience, indeed
every member of Klal Yisroel, a truly unforgettable
convention drew to a close.
