Rav Aharon Lichtenstein ztz"l
I recall in my late adolescence there were certain problems which perturbed me, the way they perturb many others. At the time, I resolved them all in one fell swoop. I had just read Rav Zevin’s book, Ishim Ve-shitos. In his essay on Rav Chayim Soloveitchik, he deals not only with his methodological development, but also with his personality and gemilus chasadim (acts of kindness). He recounted that Reb Chayim used to check every morning if some unfortunate woman had placed an infant waif on his doorstep during the course of the night. (In Brisk, it used to happen at times that a woman would give birth illegitimately and leave her infant in the hands of Reb Chayim.) As I read the stories about Reb Chayim’s extraordinary kindness, I said to myself: Do I approach this level of gemilut chasadim? I don't even dream of it! In terms of moral sensibility, concern for human beings and sensitivity to human suffering, I am nothing compared to Reb Chayim. Yet despite his moral sensitivity, he managed to live, and live deeply, with the totality of Halakha —including the commands to destroy the Seven Nations, Amalek and all the other things which bother me. How? The answer, I thought, was obvious. It is not that his moral sensitivity was less, but his yirat Shamayim, his emuna, was so much more. The thing to do, then, is not to try to neutralize or de-emphasize the moral element, but rather to deepen and increase the element of yirat Shamayim, of emuna, deveikut and bittachon.
I have subsequently thought of that experience on many occasions. I recall once hearing someone, regarded as a philosopher of sorts, raise moral criticisms of various halakhic practices. When asked about these criticisms, I said, “I know that particular person. He doesn't look for a foundling on his doorstep every morning.”
So what we need to do, I think, is not to weaken our moral sense or that of our children and students. Rather, we need to deepen and to intensify our commitment, our faith, our sense of obedience, our yiras Shamayim. We need to deepen our sense that God has nothing in this world besides yiras Shamayim, and that our moral conscience needs to develop within its context.
There is, finally, another problem —one which affects us within the Centrist Orthodox community more than others. Let me illustrate. I remember some years back, when I was still living in America, a man who had given a lot of money to the Skverer chassidic community invited my wife and myself to see their institutions. When we came to the elementary school, we saw the walls plastered with signs dealing with the mitzvot of hashavas aveida (returning lost objects), bikkur cholim (visiting the sick), gemilut chasadim, etc. I was struck by the fact that all the posters dealt with the area of bein adam le-chavero —not a single mention of Shabbos, tefillin or tzitzis! In any Centrist Orthodox school, you would have seen posters only on the latter subjects (to the extent that there would be posters dealing with mitzvos at all).
I immediately realized the reason for this difference. In the Skverer community, you had children growing up in an environment where their teachers could take Shabbos, tefillin and tzitzis absolutely for granted. That was the given; the possibility that a person would reject these never occurred to them. Therefore, they were able to focus all their energies upon those areas within which even people who are practically and philosophically committed to Shabbos and kashrus may nevertheless fail. This is something which we, unfortunately, cannot do. Within both our educational and political systems, we find ourselves driven repeatedly to safeguard the ritual area, which we feel is uniquely ours. We channel so much of our energies and resources into these particular elements both because they are distinctive to us, and because we feel that unless we emphasize it massively, the kids will not get it at all.
