Are We Comfortable?

I don't react to everything I see and hear on the world wide web. The volume of complete nonsense is so great that I would never ever finish forever, so I try in general to focus on the positive in Hashem's world. This post will be an exception.....

1] One popular lecturer on a Torah website likes to say about his Rebbi [a gadol of whom we all know and learned from his students] with unmasked enthusiasm and pleasure as if he was telling about a fantastic quality  "He felt completely comfortable in the Western world".

That sentence brings to the fore the most basic question every Jew in the modern world must face. What is our relationship to the outside world? Is it one of comfort and "at-homeness" or one of being a stranger and foreigner? The answer is unquestionably the latter. The attitudes and most behaviors of the western world are antithetical to what the Torah personality strives to be. We go to work if we must and then we run back to our religious Jewish ghettoes and wish we never had to leave [except to make a kiddush Hashem]. We don't want their sports and movies, internet and television. The general society encourages a person to gain as much physical pleasure as his budget and the law allow. The Jewish attitude is that we are here to maximize our spiritual pleasure through connection with Hashem. The outside world contaminates. Period.

I am not arguing with this gadol. His talmid knew him and I didn't but he has a famous essay [see the late great Torah journal "Ha-Darom" 5763 page 152 and on] where he says that we are all גרי תושב [as Avraham Avinu said to the bnei ches]. We are תושבים - residents, of the world. We abide by laws and pay our taxes faithfully [even when Obama then uses it to help the Arabs rebuild terror tunnels and  weapons to liquidate the State of Israel and the Jewish People...]. But we are also גרים, strangers. Our weltanshauung [hashkafa in fancy German] is shaped by Moshe Rabbeinu and Rebbi Akiva, Abaye and Rava, the Rambam and Rashi. Our goal is to learn as much Torah possible, to minimize our need for the creature comforts of this world and to perfect our middos. We couldn't care less who won the World Series or what new show is appearing Mondays at 9pm or what some "mushchas-dike" ["corrupt" is a poor translation] actor tweets. We don't know and don't want to know.
When someone tells us the latest in nonsense - we don't feel comfortable. It is NOT our world. Our world is in one buiding. We call it a ... Beis Medrash.

2] This lecturer also notes that his Rebbi never went to mikva and that he doesn't either. I don't know about his Rebbi [although I believe him about himself] but it is well known that there are opinions in the rishonim [which the shulchan aruch doesn't codify] that when one is a Baal Keri he may not learn Torah or daven until he goes to mikva. EVERYBODY agrees that for added kedusha a Baal Keri [and even not a Baal Keri for that matter] should "be toivel". It is not praise to say such words and I would rather here "shvach" of gedolei yisrael and not "gnai" i.e. behaviors which we should not strive to emulate. It is considered a more "chasidic" custom to be makpid on mikva [for men] but many great non-chasidic gedolim were very careful as well [see here]. Rebbi Akiva Eiger would break the ice in order to immerse himself in the freezing European winters of the 1700's. When you learn a Rebbi Akiva Eiger, you are not just coming into contact with his tremendous, unparalleled mind and powers of analysis but with his tremendous kedusha and yiras shomayim as well.

I have a lot more to say, particularly about the aforementioned Rabbi's lectures but I will suffice with this for now. He, of course has many many mylos and zchuyos as well which I laud and appreciate.  But I want people to always remember that just because someone says or does something and he bears the title "Rabbi" doesn't make it correct or Torah-dike. Much is said [like lashon hara] and done [like machlokes] in the name of Torah and they are anything but....