Commitment

Yoni Lavie Manager, "Chaverim Makshivim" Website

Until about seven years ago, whoever bought a cellular phone in Israel was forced to sign a stringent contract for 36 months with the company that he had chosen. To transfer to another company or even to another phone plan was difficult, expensive, and sometimes even impossible. However, since then a revolution has taken place in this field, and today the situation is completely different. The clients are free to hop around among the various options, without any long-range obligations. This transformation is very visible in the realm of cellular phones, but in reality it exists within the entire realm of retail business. The client is master, and many merchants compete for his heart and for the contents of his wallet. There can be no doubt that this provides great benefits for the consumers. The system encourages competition in the market, leading to significantly lower prices and improved service.   If we take a look around, we can see that this lack of any obligation and the consequent behavior that is ruled by considerations of comfort and incidental benefit has broadened out to other areas in life, some of which are much more serious. Many students who begin to study a subject in the universities abandon it after a year or two and try their luck with another subject. A substantial number of those who begin some sort of job move within the first five years to another company and often to a completely different type of work.   This phenomenon of hopping is of course also prevalent in the realm of forming couples. While in the past family values were highly valued, and the hope to build a life and a family with a stable partnership was the general rule, today this is true only in very conservative circles. In the world in general people spend the second and then the third decade of their lives in an unending chain of changing relationships, when often their only goal is to have "a partner for the night," with no thoughts of establishing any long-term relationships. The development of readily available contraceptives has also eased the fear of unwanted pregnancies, and links between people have become superficial and "internet-driven." Words like obligations, dedication, and institutionalization sound strange, if not downright threatening.   The Burden of the Path of Halacha   There is no doubt that the spiritual status of the generation and the cultural atmosphere which molds normative behavior has not bypassed the spiritual realm and the religious world. While it is true that in this case there is a built-in obligation and agreement to accept the will of a Divine authority, it seems likely that this too will become something of a "club of members," with common interests and motives mostly driven by experiences and sociological effects. You enjoy the feeling of belonging to a pleasant and positive society, and halachic actions might simply become yet another consumer product which you can move from the shelf into the shopping cart of your life or leave behind, depending on your desires and emotional state at any given moment.   What got me thinking about this issue was a full-color lead story in one of the prominent weekend newspapers of our sector describing "the phenomenon of religious women who remove their head coverings many years after they were married." Let us put aside for now the question of whether there really is such a phenomenon that can serve as a worthy subject for an article. We will also set aside the question of why the newspaper decided to study this phenomenon and not its mirror image – there are many more women who have chosen to begin covering their hair many years after getting married, even though their mothers and the society in which they themselves grew up did not necessarily observe this custom.   For now, I want to concentrate on the main theme of the article and on the way of thinking on which it is based. The matter of covering the head can be looked at in many ways, including aspects that are social, spiritual, and feministic, but its basis is clearly halacha. There is a Torah obligation for a married woman to cover her hair. However, the problem is that one who reads the article will be forced to wade through thousands of words before running into the word "halacha." The very basic question of how committed we are to observing the commands of G-d is shunted aside to a very marginal place in the article, if it appears at all. A number of progressive women who took the "brave" step of throwing the archaic head covering away must cope with the profound questions of the reporter, all of which are advanced in social and cultural terms, much as might be asked about the subjects of remodeling the kitchen or good ideas for spending a vacation.   The dynamic reporter wants the women he interviewed to respond to the challenges of such questions as: "How did you make your decision? At what exact moment did you come to this conclusion?" Or, "Did those around you accept your decision with understanding? Didn't the fact that you removed your hair covering cause religious friends to distance themselves from you?" Not for a moment did it occur to the reporter to ask the question that stands out above all: "How does a religious woman, who believes in the Creator, suddenly decide to press 'DELETE' and publicly begin to ignore a Torah commandment? What about other mitzvot like keeping Shabbat or eating pig? Will you also use similar deep and substantial reasoning about such matters, like when you said, 'I didn't want my nonreligious friends at work to label me as a religious woman, so I decided to leave my hair covering at home.'?"   "I am Religious as Far as I am Concerned"   In utter silence, under our very noses, the "cellular revolution" is taking control and beginning to shatter the spiritual realm too. Without our seeing it, the language of consumerism and opportunism is also penetrating into the world of religion and halacha, while we are beginning to forget the basic fact and our basic declaration as people of faith: We accept the yoke of heaven. Our channel-hopping approach and our constant search for one sale after another cause us to forget that "we are working for Him, and He is not working for us!" We forget that the essence of faith is to open up to something that is exalted and greater than you are, while we are willing to ignore lower-level desires and urges in order to enhance our relationship.   It is true that a generation which is flooded with information and whose technological achievements give the people the feeling that they control everything might find it hard to belittle itself in deference to something that is greater and more exalted than it is (and this generation therefore shows less respect for teachers and parents than ever before). However, if we have also transformed the link to G-d into a " popular request program" and the spiritual world into a "supermarket of experiences" where you take what you want and throw away the rest, the time has come to admit that we have been infected by a dangerous virus, and that it is necessary for a thorough housecleaning, and perhaps even for a "reset." We must go back to being dedicated and faithful Jews who are willing to cancel our will in the face of His will, and remember that this is exactly like the relationship of any couple. "Commitment" is not an ugly word. The opposite is true – this is what truly binds you with great power to the One you believe in, and you truly love Him.