|
Reply to UOJ Blogsite: Criticizing Pre-Holocaust Daas Torah Rabbi Dovid Eidensohn The UOJ blogsite has recently featured criticism of the Chofetz Chaim and Reb Elchonon Wasserman, and their Daas Torah. This was exactly my point in my vociferous criticism of what passes today for modern Daas Torah which is really Daas Sechoro. People are so fed up with what goes on today in the Torah world that they assume that all rabbis are the same, chas visholom. "We must publicize the fakers lest there be Chilul HaShem." This is the point; this is the problem. Now it has come to this: Criticizing the holiest rabbis of the centuries. Yes, there is Chilul HaShem; so what else do we expect? The "government program" Rosh Yeshivas and the "marry a rich girl" Rosh Yeshivas have destroyed many people including parents who are ready to retire and must fork it over. Their cruelty is incredible. They have no shame. Now they are going to get the hate they deserve. But will the Torah survive their debacle? I have always demarcated between the present leadership and the true gedolim of the past generations. I will therefore reply to the attacks on the Chofetz Chaim and Reb Elchonon. The attack on the Chofetz Chaim is based upon his own remark that perhaps instead of fleeing the Bolsheviks he should have died in Russia or fought them, and thus weaken them. Bloggers at UOJ have seized upon this statement to say that they would have disagreed with the Chofetz Chaim and battled the Bolsheviks, and that the Chofetz Chaim's error shows that he was capable of wrongly teaching Daas Torah and that Bloggers are better able at times to present true Daas Torah, not Gedolim. I have checked the source of this story, this statement of the Chofetz Chaim, and found it on page 206 of HoRav HaDomeh LiMaloch: Reb Baruch Ber. The Chofetz Chaim is quoted a bit differently there. The Chofetz Chaim said, "The Jews of Russia made a mistake in not fighting the Bolsheviks with the sword and spear...even though they would die, they would weaken the force of evil and we would win." Hearing this Reb Baruch seized an iron poker and said, "We are going." The Chofetz Chaim told him it was too late. Thus, the Chofetz Chaim said that if "the Jews in Russia," thousands and thousands of Jews, had attacked the Bolsheviks, and many would die, they would have merited to weaken the power of evil and to succeed. One person, even the Chofetz Chaim, did not have this power. Why, then, did the Jews in Russia not rebel? Why were they unable to compare their fight with the Bolsheviks to the fight of the Hasmoneans against the Greeks? There, too, for spiritual purposes the Jews should fight. But there was a great difference. In Russia, the Bolsheviks were Jews, even Yeshiva students, like Trotsky. Some were not Jews, but at least the leadership was Jewish for the most part. The program of the Communists was a highly attractive fiscal package promising everyone never to worry about hunger again, from cradle to grave. Thus, if some Torah Jews had rebelled, many more Jews would have supported the Communists. Thus, rabbis in Russia may have been reluctant to fight the Bolsheviks who were Jewish when Russian Jewry was sympathetic to their basic fiscal program. Chanukah was different. There most Jews hated the Greeks who regularly raped Jewish brides and anyone else. The High Priest was almost a king in Israel, in the tradition of Ezra and Shimon haTsadik, High Priests who had great influence even in government matters and in foreign affairs. Matisyohu therefore began, as High Priest, with a band of followers, and much sympathy from the majority of the Jewish population. He was fighting in Israel at the time of the Temple, where Jews anticipated miracles. But Jews in Russia, where even Orthodox homes and Yeshivas sported Communists, were much less likely to go to war with the Bolsheviks. Thus no rabbis we know of, including the Chofetz Chaim who was there, declared war on the Bolsheviks. This was a realistic assessment of what would happen if they did. The rabbis who declared war would be killed, and all Torah Jews would be immediately hunted down and destroyed. The plan of Torah Jews at that juncture was to escape from Russia and to stay out of the way of the Bolsheviks. At that juncture, the Bolsheviks were not unhappy that their enemies should leave. Rather than close that window of opportunity to leave Russia, all of the Torah rabbis in Russia decided not to war, but to allow those who could leave to do so in peace, and even those who must stay, were unable to launch a war due to the weakness of the rabbis and the power of the Communists. Also, who knew if in Russia in a war of Jew against Jew the miracle of Chanukah, a war against pagans, would be repeated? Again, if "the Jews" rose up against the Communists, they would win, but would the majority of Jews, or even a sizable segment of Jews, agree to die for such a cause? The Bolshevik Revolution took place during the First World War, after the cream of Jewish youth was forced into a desperate war, and torn from religion. The war, everywhere it touched, destroyed Torah. Thus, when towards the end of the war, when the Bolsheviks seized power, the Torah community was very badly damaged, the Yeshivas were in exile or even shuttered, the rabbis lacked the influence to declare war, and few were interested in dying. Thus the Chofetz Chaim and nobody else either fought the Bolsheviks. The decision of Reb Elchonon Wasserman to refuse to help students go to certain Yeshivas that boasted college programs sounds very strange, but let us again examine the historical reality. A student in YU in those times, and probably today as well, had to study science and evolution from teachers and texts that were deniers of Torah and Creation. A student was also influenced by other types of thoughts considered treife and even minuse by Reb Elchonon, for good reasons. The halacha is clear. Rather than going to a place of minuse one must die. Students born in America or Germany who were infected by these treife thoughts by the very air long before they went to Yeshiva were different. Studying these things did not twist people's beliefs. But European Yeshiva students were different. They would be twisted, and experience showed how many were lost when they left the Yeshiva to go to other places. To sum up: let us not compare today's spiritual paucity with true Gedolim. And let us not judge generations past that were different than our own.
|