Shabbos Hagadol Drasha 5775­ Wicked Or Worthy? The Four Sons and the Future of Modern Orthodoxy

Rabbi Ariel Rackovsky Shabbos Hagadol 5775

Yes, I Want To Be In That Number

This past December, I was in Love Field airport in Dallas waiting for a flight back to New York.

My flight was early enough that I had to be at Love Field well before any minyan commenced in

Dallas, so I had to daven in a quiet corner of the airport. I put on my Tallis and Tefillin and

davened quickly, trying to remain relatively inconspicuous. As I finished davening and put my

things away, a woman came over to me with a tentative look on her face, looking as though she

wanted to say something.

“Excuse me, I noticed you were praying very devoutly just now.”

I wanted to tell her that my prayer was anything but devout, but I said, “Yes, I had been

praying.”

She produced a pamphlet from her pocketbook and said, “I wonder whether you have considered

that the Messiah has already arrived?”

I replied, “Not for me, he hasn’t.”

She said, “Well, we all have our paths to the Lord and to salvation. Thank you for your prayers!”

And she turned around and left.

I had a lot of time to reflect on this authentic Texas experience on the flight home. Initially, I was

extremely put off that she would try and convert me like that. I was under the impression that

what is known as “replacement theology,” the belief that Jews are no longer the chosen people

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and must be converted to attain salvation, was on the wane. The session I attended at AIPAC

about Christian support of Israel led me to believe that devout Christians were our friends, and

blessed political allies. Yet someone offering to convert me like that brought to mind thousands

of years of forcible conversions to Christianity of our ancestors by the Catholic and Orthodox

churches, recalled the many who adopted external identities as Christians to avoid persecution

and the numerous others who chose to give their lives rather than succumb. Upon further

reflection, I realized that it was unexpectedly nice of her to leave me alone when I rebuffed her

efforts; she could have been way more persistent than she was. Finally, I thought that what she

did was really nice, an altruistic gesture, actually. She didn’t know me at all, yet she was clearly

deeply concerned about my soul (not to mention hers) and wanted to make sure, to quote the

popular hymn, that I wanted “to be in that number, when the Saints come marching in” and was

worthy of it. The truth is that, lehavdil, being among those who merit redemption is not only a

concern among Evangelical Christians. In the book of Daniel (7:18) we already find a reference

to the “holiest ones meriting the kingdom of heaven,” by implication leaving out those to whom

this description does not apply. In fact, redemption, and who is worthy of it, is a major theme of

the Seder and the focal point of a key narrative in the Haggadah.

The Wicked Son’s Question

At the beginning of Maggid, the Haggadah tells us that the Torah speaks about four sons, four

paradigms for the kind of people who will be at our Seder Table. Each one of these is based on a

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Passuk in the Torah describing interactions between parents and children. The Torah tells us that

a day may come when our children will ask us,

והיה כי יאמרו אליכם בניכם מה העבדה הזאת לכם

“What is this service to you?” This text is used by the Baal Haggadah as the question asked by

the “wicked” son:

הגדה של פסח רשע מה הוא אומר? מה העבדה הזאת לכם? לכם ­ ולא לו. ולפי שהוציא את עצמו מן הכלל כפר בעקר. ואף אתה

הקהה את שניו ואמר לו: בעבור זה עשה יי לי בצאתי ממצרים. לי ­ ולא לו. אילו היה שם, לא היה נגאל. The wicked one, what does he say? "What is this service to you?!" He says `to you,' but not to

him! By thus excluding himself from the community he has denied that which is fundamental.

You, therefore, blunt his teeth and say to him: "It is because of this that the Lord did for me

when I left Egypt"; `for me' ­ but not for him! If he had been there, he would not have been

redeemed!"

It seems that this wickedness of the so­called wicked son is based on his attitude toward religious

practice and how much he engages in it, but the Haggadah is not content to stop there. Whatever

criteria is used to define who is redeemable, the wicked son is not “in that number.”At the

conclusion of his statement, the Haggadah asserts that had this wicked son been alive during the

time of the exodus from Egypt, he would not have been redeemed. This is a shocking statement,

amplified further by examining some of the texts on which this statement is at least partially

based. Look at the next source, a passage from the Talmud Yerushalmi in Maseches Psachim:

תלמוד ירושלמי (וילנא) מסכת פסחים פרק י בן רשע מהו אומר [שם יב כו] מה העבודה הזאת לכם מה הטורח הזה שאתם מטריחין עלינו בכל שנה ושנה מכיון

שהוציא את עצמו מן הכלל אף אתה אמור לו [שם יג ח] בעבור זה עשה ה' לי לי עשה לאותו האיש לא עשה. אילו היה אותו האיש במצרים לא היה ראוי להגאל משם לעולם.

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This passage expands the antagonistic nature of the question asked by the wicked son, asserting

that this is why he would never have been redeemed, under any circumstances. The Pesikta even

elaborates when he would have died, suggesting that he would have been among those who died

in the three days of the duration of the plague of darkness.

פסיקתא זוטרתא (לקח טוב) שמות פרשת בא ­ בשלח פרק יג בעבור זה עשה ה' לי. כנגד ארבעה בנים דברה תורה, אחד חכם, ואחד רשע, ואחד תם, ואחד שאינו יודע לשאול: לכל אחד ואחד נתנה תורה דרך להשיב כפי ענינו, שהרי העולם נברא בארבע מדות של בני אדם, אחד רשע, ואחד חכם,

ואחד תם, ואחד שאינו יודע לשאול, וכל אחד ואחד נדרש בענינו, רשע מה הוא אומר, מה העבודה הזאת לכם, כלומר לכם ולא לו, ולפי שהוציא את עצמו מן הכלל שלא אמר לנו אלא לכם, בידוע שכפר בעיקר, לכך נאמר בעבור זה עשה

ה' לי, כלומר לי ולא לו שאלו היה שם לא היה נגאל, אלא היה מת בשלשת ימי אפל

This Medrash describes a winnowing process that took place during the time of the exodus from

Egypt, in which only a small percentage of Jews were redeemed. One passage in the Mechilta

offers differing opinions as to the percentage of Jews who made it out of Egypt, with estimates

ranging from 20% to two percent to .02 %! Look at the next source on your source sheets.

מכילתא דרבי ישמעאל בא ­ מסכתא דפסחא פרשה יב והיה כי יאמרו אליכם בניכם בשורה רעה נתבשרו ישראל באותה שעה שסוף התורה עתידה להשתכח ויש אומרים

בשורה טובה נתבשרו ישראל באותה שעה שהן עתידים לראות בנים ובני בנים להם שנאמר ויקוד העם וישתחוו וגו' למה השתחוו משום שנאמר וחמושים עלו בני ישראל אחד מחמשה וי"א אחד מחמשים וי"א אחד מחמש מאות עלו ר' נהוראי אומר העבודה ולא אחד מחמש מאות עלו שנאמר רבבה כצמח השדה נתתיך וגו' (יחזקאל טז ז)

And It Shall Come to Pass, When Your Children Shall Say unto You. Evil tidings were

announced to Israel at that time, namely that the Torah would ultimately be forgotten. But some

say, it was good tidings that were announced to Israel at that time, that they were destined to see

children and children’s children; for it is said: “And the people bowed the head and worshipped.”

Why did they worship? Because of the following: It is said: “And the children of Israel went up

armed (hamushim) out of Egypt” (Ex. 16:18), this means, one out of five went up. Some say, one

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out of fifty, and some say one out of five hundred. R. Nehorai says: By the worship! Not even

one out of five hundred went up. For it is said: “I caused thee to increase, even as the growth of

the field” (Ezek. 16:7).

Who Was Really Redeemed?

If so few people were redeemed, observance seems like a weak criterion for redemption. If

virtually no one was observant, what was the threshold of observance that merited salvation?

Besides, if so few were redeemed it stands to reason that observant people may have been

included among those who didn’t make it, perhaps far more observant than the wicked son the

Haggadah vilifies. Moreover, many midrashic accounts suggest that the redemption only

happened as an act of kindness, not as an act of justice to a deserving nation. Take a look at the

next source on your source sheets. It’s a passage from the Medrash Rabbah in Vayikra. The

literal meaning of the word גוי is “a nation,” but usage of the term has evolved to become a

derogatory one for a non­Jew. It is with this vernacular meaning that the Medrash translates the

words גוי מקרב גוי, because it proceeds to heighten the similarities between the nation that was

redeemed from slavery and the nation that had enslaved them.

ויקרא רבה (מרגליות) פרשת אחרי מות פרשה כג אילו ערלים ואילו ערלים,

These are uncircumcised and these are uncircumcised.

אילו מגדלי בלראיות ואילו מגדלי בלאריות,

These grow their hair long and these grew their hair long.

אילו לובשי כלאים ואילו לובשי כלאים,

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These wear wool and linen blends, and these do as well; there was no fundamental difference

between the Jews and the Egyptians. The Medrash is indicting the Jews in Egypt for being, to

use an offensive and anachronistic term, goyish. If not for a binding promise God made to the

Jewish people, they would not have been redeemed, for they surely didn’t deserve it:

לפיכך לא היתה מידת הדין נותנת שיגאלו ישראל ממצרים. א"ר שמואל ב"ר נחמני אילו לא אסר הקדוש ברוך הוא את עצמו בשבועה לא היו ישראל נגאלין ממצרים.

The Zohar explains why they were not deserving of redemption as a matter of strict justice­they

were standing in the “49th gate of impurity,” the penultimate step on the path to complete

perdition. The next source on your source sheet, from the Zohar, is the earliest reference we find

to these 49 gates, often invoked in connection with the 49 days of the Omer, and to the fact that

the Jewish people needed to be rescued before they descended any further.

ועוד, דאעיל יתהון במ''ט תרעי דסוכלתנו לקבליהון. מה דלא אתני עם אברהם, אלא לאפקותהון ממצרים, והוא עביד טיבותיה וחסדיה עמהון.

The Jewish people were pretty far gone, yet they were redeemed anyway. So what, indeed, is the

criteria for redemption? Did the Jewish people merit salvation, or require it? And if profligate

sinners survived a winnowing process, what did you have to do not to be redeemed­ and what is

so egregious about what the wicked son says that marks him in this category?

Three Approaches

The Netziv

I’d like to share several approaches among later commentators that could help shed light on the

enigma of redemption, each one quite different but equally relevant. Rav Naftali Tzvi Yehuda

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Berlin, the Rosh Yeshiva of the Volozhin Yeshiva­ the mother of all Yeshivot­ offers a

remarkable explanation in his commentary on the Haggadah. Paraphrasing the Netziv, there were

two kinds of people redeemed from Egypt­ those who were deserving and those who were

useful. No one who was inherently wicked was saved on his or her own merit; rather, they were

saved by their connection to the righteous, whether in the present as associates or in the future as

ancestors. The criterion for salvation of a wicked person was whether that person was a

component in the establishment of the future Jewish people, as the progenitor of a righteous

family. If a person had no such utility, he or she would not have been redeemed.

הגדת אמרי שפר לרבינו הנצי"ב

...דאף על גב שיצאו כמה רשעים, זה לא היה אלא בזכות הצדיקים. דווקא אותם שידע הקב"ה שהם צוותא ונצרכים לקיום בית אבות. אבל כשהוא בפני עצמו, אי לא היה נצרך להבית אב, לא היה נגאל.

In the thought of the Netziv, worthiness of redemption has less to do with one’s present than

one’s future. A person could be completely lost, assimilated and sunk in the 49th gate of

impurity, but there was still hope if subsequent, righteous generations would emerge from him­

and there is no doubt that such a person could be the progenitor of such illustrious individuals.

We all know people like this­ shmendriks who, somehow, have wonderful children. Tanach has a

few such stories as well, for example, the righteous king Yoshiyahu who was the the grandson

of the epically wicked Menashe. The wicked son is not redeemed because he is not such a

person. He is not a critical ingredient in the Jewish future, as he has no role in the establishment

of righteous generations.

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The Meshech Chochmah

Rav Meir Simcha HaKohen of Dvinsk, in his commentary Meshech Chochmah, expands on the

Medrash that describes the salvation of the Jews as a גוי מקרב גוי, one nation from another. What

was it that made the Jews indistinguishable from their neighbors and masters? Rav Meir Simcha

answers by pointing out that the observance of mitzvot happens on two levels­ the גופי תורה, the

actual mitzvot themselves, and the סייגים, the fences erected around the mitzvot and prohibitions.

The former category is defined by strict observance; the latter is defined not just by additional

halachic strictures, but by cultural values and behaviors that preserve distinctiveness, be they

language, names or even modes of dress.

משך חכמה שמות פרק יב פסוק כב

ואתם לא תצאו איש מפתח ביתו עד בוקר. הנה המתבונן יראה כי במצרים נשתכח מהם גופי תורה שהיו "גוי מקרב גוי" (דברים ד, לד), 'הללו עובדי עבודה זרה (והללו עובדי עבודה זרה') ­ (מדרש שוחר טוב טו, ה), וכן הפרו ברית מילה [ילקוט (דברים תתכ"ח)]. אמנם הסייגים והגדרים שמרו ביתרון גדול, כמו שאמר במכילתא (דפסחא פרשה ה) שלא שינו שמם לא שינו לשונם שלא גילו מסתורין, יעוין שם. לא כן בגלות בבל, היו שומרים גופי תורה, אמנם הסייגים

והגדרים עברו, שבניהם היו מדברים אשדודית ושינו שמם והתחתנו עם גויי הארצות, כמו שנאמר בעזרא (נחמיה יג, כג ­ כד). והנה בימי היות ישראל בגולה העיקר הוא הסייגים והגדרים שלא יתערבו בין העמים…

At different points in Jewish history, and different periods of exile, the Jewish people excelled at

one but not the other. During the Babylonian exile, the Jewish people were observant, keeping

mitzvot scrupulously, but they were not careful about the boundarie and the fences around

mitzvah observance. They spoke the vernacular language, they changed their names to secular

ones and, ultimately, they intermarried among the surrounding communities. Echoes of this

reality reverberated throughout Jewish history and were the source of a great deal of fear and

suspicion, some of it justified. During the 19th century, leaders of the nascent Reform movement

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in Germany decided that the sermon in synagogue should be preached in the vernacular German,

a practice vehemently opposed by the traditional Rabbinic establishment in Hungary. Eschewing

the mama loshn was an unforgivable breach of the cultural boundaries that stood as a bulwark

against assimilation for centuries, the first step down a slippery slope of assimilation­ a

prediction that was not entirely wrong, but was perhaps the cause, rather than the effect. Indeed,

none other than Rav Hirsch, one of the staunchest opponents of the Reform movement, adopted

the practice of German sermons himself, as a way of fighting against that very same assimilation

his Hungarian counterparts predicted, through expressing traditional Torah thoughts in a more

accessible idiom. The Jews in Babylonia had Jewish learning, but not Jewish feeling. According

to Rav Meir Simcha, the Jews in Egypt had the opposite; when they were referred to as just

another nation, as goyish, it meant that you could not tell they were Jewish from their

observance, which was virtually nil when it came to the laws of the Torah. However, they were

acutely aware and keenly observant of the cultural barriers that separated them from their

captors. They didn’t change their names, they preserved their language and in some accounts,

they preserved a distinctive manner of dress. No matter where you were, you knew that the

person you were speaking to was a Jew. It brings to mind, lehavdil, Lenny Bruce’s famous

routine in which he describes the difference between being Jewish and being goyish. I include

here only the repeatable sections...

If you live in New York or any other big city, you are Jewish. It doesn't matter even if

you're Catholic; if you live in New York, you're Jewish. If you live in Butte, Montana,

you're going to be goyish even if you're Jewish...Celebrate is a goyish word. Observe is a

Jewish word. Mr. and Mrs. Walsh are celebrating Christmas with Major Thomas

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Moreland, USAF (ret.), while Mr. and Mrs. Bromberg observed Hanukkah with Goldie

and Arthur Schindler from Kiamesha, New York.

In many profound ways, the Jews at the time of the Exodus were exceedingly Jewish, and that’s

why they were redeemed after all. This is why we celebrate the redemption through a holiday

that is all about barriers and boundaries­ the prohibition of seeing chametz that you own is a built

in boundary against the primary prohibition of consuming it. The plague of the first born was

prefaced by the injunction against leaving the house, so that each person and each family could

be connected to their physical and spiritual boundaries.

The Rav

Rav Soloveitchik adopted a different approach in his monumental essay Kol Dodi Dofek, the

work in which he describes his philosophy of the modern state of Israel as the manifestation of

divine providence and a divine imperative. For Rav Soloveitchik, a prerequisite to being

considered part of the Jewish people is attaching ourselves to a shared destiny, and to common

suffering.

Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik­Fate and Destiny (Kol Dodi Dofek) pgs. 46, 47

“First, the consciousness of a shared fate manifests itself as a consciousness of shared

circumstances. We all find ourselves in the realm of a common fate which binds together

all of the people’s different strata, its various units and groups, a fate which does not

discriminate between one group and and another group or between one person and his

fellow...Second, the consciousness of shared historical circumstances results in the

experience of shared suffering. The feeling of sympathy is a fundamental feature of of the

consciousness of the unifying fate of the Jewish people.

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Rav Soloveitchik elsewhere marshalled proof for his assertion from a passage in the Talmud in

Tractate Yevamos describing the way we should relate to prospective converts. The Talmud tells

us that we should be in the practice of dissuading those who want to convert to Judaism; a person

can live a moral, fulfilled life with ample eternal reward without being Jewish, whereas there are

numerous pitfalls when one is a Jew, opportunities to make mistakes for which one who is not

Jewish is not culpable. Furthermore, being Jewish isn’t easy. Quite apart from the cost of a frum

life, about which we spoke on Shabbos Shuvah, being Jewish means being linked with the

endless narrative of Jewish suffering and anti­Semitism:

יבמות מז ע"א

ת"ר גר שבא להתגייר בזמן הזה...אומרים לו מה ראית שבאת להתגייר אי אתה יודע שישראל בזמן הזה דוויים דחופים סחופים ומטורפין ויסורין באין עליהם, אם אומר יודע אני ואיני כדאי מקבלים אותו מיד, ומודיעין אותו מקצת מצוות

,קלות ומקצת מצוות חמורות

It means that you are a target wherever you go from the political and religious right and left; it

means there are countries and country clubs in which you are not welcome, and college

campuses where simply being Jewish calls your allegiance and loyalty into question, as

happened several weeks ago in UCLA when Rachel Beyda was questioned whether she could be

objective about university policies because she is Jewish. Indeed, it is college campuses that

have become hotbeds of anti Semitism, and anti­Israel and pro­terrorist activism, where Israeli

faculty are discriminated against and pro Israel protests are repeatedly shut down violently.

Being Jewish means that your place of eternal repose could be desecrated, or that that you could

be in shul davening when a mob of thugs comes by and ransacks the shul, but the constabulary

declares that it was an “anti­social” rather than anti semitic incident. That happened in Hungary

in the former case and London in the latter, and both of those incidents happened this week; I had

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originally chosen other ones but replaced them with more contemporary examples­ that, too, is

what being Jewish means. It means watching with horror as the relations between the United

States and Israel deteriorate precipitously and wondering what this means for the Jewish people.

So when a person chooses to convert, we explain to them that this is a burden they will have to

assume alongside their brethren who were born into it. What if the person says she wants to

accept that burden? That Judaism fills her life and instills it with purpose and meaning? The

Talmud says we accept her immediately­ not that we convert her immediately, but that we no

longer dissuade her and call their sincerity into question, instead proceeding immediately with

the process of instruction. Per the Rav’s explanation, it is the act of identification with the Jewish

fate and destiny, and the act of linking oneself with the Jewish story and with other Jews, that is

a prerequisite for joining our people.

Uncomfortable Questions

Each of these explanations­ the Netziv, the Meshech Chochmah and the Rav, highlights some

other aspect of Jewish life this wicked son has forsaken, that is crucial for redemption. For the

Netziv, it was a person’s connection to the Jewish future as a progenitor of future righteous Jews.

Regardless of how wicked he or she was, there was still a belief and a hope that something or

someone good could emerge in the future from him. For the Meshech Chochmah, it is

identification with the defining cultural benchmarks of a Jewish life that is a defining factor, and

for the Rav, it is a connection to the eternal fate and destiny of the Jews that marks one as an

integral member of the Jewish community.

The explanations of the Netziv, the Rav and the Meshech Chochmah shed light on the child

whose impudent remarks are so difficult to listen to, the ones we reject categorically at the Seder.

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In Talmudic jurisprudence, the term rasha is a technical one, bestowed upon a person for a

specific action or a pattern or anti social behavior. It usually does not occur unless a person is

found guilty in Beit Din as a result of principled legal proceedings. What is so egregious about

the wicked son, that he is forever associated with this otherwise legal appellation? It is that he

committed the ultimate Jewish sin­ he was מוציא עצמו מן הכלל, he has taken himself out of the

community. Through his actions and his attitude, he has shown that he cares about nothing and

no one beyond himself and his own, circumscribed world. He has no sense of historical destiny

and his role in it, no sense of broader external identification with a people and a community and

no sense of his ability to establish and perpetuate the Jewish future.

I believe that these interpretations of the wicked son represent a serious challenge for us as we

chart the course of the future of committed Modern Orthodoxy. We must be mindful of the

pitfalls of our lifestyle, making certain there are no parallels between the way we in the Modern

Orthodox community conduct our Jewish lives, and these explanations of the attitude of the

wicked son. What is the wicked son really asking with his antagonistic statement? He is issuing a

critical cultural and educational challenge: “Why are you doing what you are doing? Is what you

are doing­ why are these carefully choreographed identification markers­ of any value to me?

Why should I care about Jewish life, and a Jewish future?” It is difficult to provide an answer to

the question of a child who asks “of what value is what you are doing” when we have no idea

ourselves, especially if the common language and culture we formulate is completely

unequipped to provide those answers. Listen to the powerful words of Lord Rabbi Dr. Sir

Jonathan Sacks in his Haggadah.

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Lord Rabbi Dr. Jonathan Sacks, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’s Haggadah, pp. 113­114

“What is the child whom others see as wicked­ the adolescent, the rebel, the breakaway­ really

signalling by his conduct? We know what he says. But what is the question beneath the words,

the inarticulate cry? ‘Father, mother, what does Judaism mean to you? You sent me to Hebrew

school, you gave me a Bar Mitzvah. You hired teachers for me. I know what Judaism is supposed

to mean. I listened to the messages. I read the books. But all the time I was growing up, you were

sending mixed messages. When I neglected my secular education, you were angry, but when I

neglected my Hebrew studies, you never seemed to mind. I learned about the laws of Jewish life

but you did not seem to keep them, and if you did, you did so selectively. What you said was that

Judaism mattered, but what you did seemed to show that it did not matter very much. At my Bar

Mitzvah, you were more concerned about the catering than about how much I understood the

words I said in synagogue. As I grew older, you seemed more concerned about which college I

went to and which career I pursued than whether I was continuing to practice and study

Judaism. You wanted me to marry a Jewish girl, but you never gave me a reason why. I know

what Judaism is supposed to mean to me, but you are my parents. I am Jewish only because you

are. So I ask you from the depths of my soul, what does Judaism mean to you?

This is a deep question, and it brooks no evasion. The only answer one can give­ the existential

response which alone is capable of reaching from soul to soul­ is to say what Judaism means to

me­ not to him… What prompts such honesty? The knowledge that without it, ‘Had he been

there, he would not have been redeemed.’ No parent can leave a child unredeemed. Therefore to

be a parent is to be willing to take one’s child and walk, hand in hand, part­way on the Jewish

journey, showing we are prepared to live by the faith we want him or her to continue.”

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Lord Sacks’s indictment is one that should ring true to us, for the wicked son’s question is a

challenge for us to engage in soul searching about the way we educate our children. Per the

comment of the Netziv, it is not necessary for us to be the most righteous Jew to be the forbears

of righteous generations, so long as our actions comport with our values­ and so long as the

educational product we are offering is a compelling one. In order to do that, we are challenged to

create the kind of culture that is valuable for our children, providing the kind of knowledge base

to allow our children to be competent, thoughtful Jews. That way, we can answer ourselves and

others should they challenge us on why we do what we do, and we can speak the kind of

language that can articulately impart our values to the world around us. Listen to the words of the

late Rabbi Dr. David Hartman, dean of the Shalom Hartman Institute and a revered professor of

Jewish thought at Hebrew University for over two decades, in an essay called “Halakah as a

ground for creating a shared spiritual language,” (interesting in its own right as he later

renounced his belief in the value of a halachic lifestyle).

The educational implications of Maimonides' orientation to religious experience are of

utmost importance. Education in his spirit would not allow the student to revel in his

distinctiveness and separation from the world. He would be taught to discover ta' amez

hamitzvot which are grounded Ín values that can be understood by all men, Jew and

non­Jew alike. He would find it valuable and necessary to construct a teleology of his

own system that could be appreciated by others. He would be trained to speak intelligibly

without having to validate the significance of his actions solely by an appeal to faith.

The question is whether our education, and the culture we have created, is accomplishing these

goals. One of the cherished assumptions of Modern Orthodoxy is that it is possible to be fully

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integrated into the modern culture and the surrounding society, while retaining our observance

and our commitment to Judaism. But what has been the cost of this effort to be so integrated?

Recently, someone described to me a Talmud class he attended that caused him to develop an

enthusiasm for the teaching of a certain Modern Orthodox Rabbi. He spoke with great

excitement about how the Rabbi made reference­ in the same Talmud class­ to Bach, the Beatles

and Joni Mitchell. I know the Rabbi of which he speaks, a man who is a first rate Torah scholar.

I’m certain he also quoted Rashi, Tosfos and the Rambam in the same Gemara shiur, but that

was not what left the impression on my interlocutor. For him, this Talmud class validated his

secular interests, or at the very least his diverse musical preferences. It is hard to fault him; at

least was going to a Talmud class. It used to be that you could find Jews who were completely

irreligious, but were extremely Jewish. Rabbi Shlomo Riskin was fond of telling of an older

European man who had, in his youth, been a brilliant student in yeshiva, an iluy, as such people

are often known. Later in life, he left observance completely, and indeed, no longer believed in

God. Despite all that, he regularly attended services at Lincoln Square Synagogue, coming each

week. He would sit there and read a book; he couldn’t pray because he didn’t believe in a God to

whom one prays. One day, Vicki Riskin asked him why he did this. Why, if he believed in

nothing, did he sacrifice his Shabbos mornings to come to shul, an experience he should have

found, by definition, to be pointless? He replied, “Yinge Rebbetzin, young Rebbetzin, an

apikoros bin ich yo, ober a goy bin ich nit.” I may be a heretic, but I’m not a non­Jew! Maybe

they weren’t all heretics; most of them didn’t know enough to be. Nevertheless, that generation

of older Jews likely spoke the mamaloshn, and even if they didn’t, they used Yiddish words, they

told Jewish jokes, they sang Bai mir bist du shein and they had a certain vocabulary, a certain

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Jewish way of looking at the world. Encountering cultural Jews like this is one of the reasons I

love going to AIPAC. Jews who love Israel from all 50 states come and lend their support­ and

for many of them, support of Israel is the extent of their expression of Judaism. They eat treif,

they come to shul maybe twice a year and probably cannot read any Hebrew save perhaps for

what they read at their Bar or Bat Mitzvah. But they are extremely Jewish; they have created a

Jewish culture and worldview for themselves even if there is no observance behind it. That

generation is rapidly aging and difficult to find nowadays­ and indeed, it is unsustainable as the

second and third generation marries out, and there is nothing behind it is the sky is not falling (as

unfortunately it is now). But that kind of culture was critical for sustaining engagement at that

time. For us, we have certain cultural benchmarks that identify us as being “part of the group. We

send our kids to the right schools, we make certain they go to the right camps and have the same

general experiences­ the year in Israel, followed by college education at the same array of

colleges, hopefully with a vibrant Jewish community in which they will stay committed. Our

shared experiences can be identified in shorthand with key words and phrases known to insiders,

as well as behaviors that identify us as being part of an Orthodox social construct. It’s not that

we don’t care about the Jewish future, or about the world around us­ it’s that our view of the

world comes from the perspective that it is a threatening place we should mimic internally, but

with which we try and avoid actively engaging. The challenge we have is the reverse of the

challenge of the Jews in Egypt. Yes, we are observant, but we are living a frum lifestyle that

mimics surrounding culture, or creates a version of it so narrow as to be functionally irrelevant to

those living outside it and scarcely compelling to those living inside it. Observance is more a

form of cultural identification than something we believe in and understand, and learning plays a

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minimal role in our Jewish lives. Sadly, many young, talented men and women are not going into

Jewish communal service, for which they are suited. This is not just because of finances and

parental pressure to follow a certain profession, but because the communal culture for many

modern Orthodox communities is frustratingly devoid of spirituality, taking place in shuls where

the primary concerns are what kind of kiddush will be served, and where energies toward the

betterment of the community are often crushed by or channeled into shul politics. It shouldn’t be

the case that Modern Orthodox children either leave observance entirely or move far to the right,

finding options more intellectually, socially, emotionally and spiritually compelling, but that is

regularly the case. The challenge of the wicked son, per the interpretations of the Rav, the Netziv

and the Meshech Chochma is to ask ourselves whether the construct we is one that promotes

redemption; if the answer is no, we can and must do better. We are challenged to create a culture

that is based on learning that can answer the difficult questions posed to us, that has a unique

Jewish perspective on the issues in the world at large beyond anti Semitism and the State of

Israel, and that creates a distinctive Jewish culture that keeps us in the fold.

Our Redemption

Earlier, we read the Medrash that set the celestial scene, in which the angels accused God of

redeeming an unworthy people, a group of uncircumcised idol worshippers who bore no

distinctiveness against their evil captors. There is another Medrash, one that is even more

shocking. It describes the scene at the end of days, at the time of redemption.

מדרש תהלים (בובר) מזמור טו

[ה] ר' עזריה בשם ר' יהודה. לעתיד לבא באין אומות העולם לקטרג את ישראל, ואומרים לפני הקדוש ברוך הוא רבונו של עולם הללו עובדי עבודה זרה, והללו עובדי עבודה זרה, הללו מגלי עריות, והללו מגלי עריות, הללו שופכי דמים,

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והללו שופכי דמים, מפני מה הללו יורדין לגיהנם, והללו אין יורדין, וכי יש משא פנים לפניך, אמר להן הקדוש ברוך הוא אם יתן איש את כל הון ביתו באהבה בוז יבוזו לו (שה"ש =שיר השירים= ח ז), ועכשיו אני מבזה אותן,

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? And scary, too. There is a remarkable chassidic tale told about the

Chozeh of Lublin, Rav Yaakov Yitzchok Horowitz.

The tzaddik the Chozeh of Lublin passed and his son, the tzaddik Reb Yosef of Tortchin,

inherited the wall clock that had hung in his father's room. Once, while on his way back

to his hometown, a violent storm broke out. Reb Yosef had to stop his journey and find

shelter for three days in an inn owned by a simple Jew. When the storm passed and he

prepared to leave, he told his host that he had no money with which to pay him, so since

he had no alternative, he would give him the precious clock that had belonged to his

father A few years later, the tzaddik Reb Yissachar Ber of Rodoshitz stopped at this inn,

but couldn't sleep through the night. At every chime he woke up and burst into joyous

singing and dancing. The next morning he asked the innkeeper from where he had

received that clock. The innkeeper related how he had received it as payment, and when

he went on to describe the stranger's appearance, Reb Yissachar Ber exclaimed, "I could

feel that this was the clock of the Chozeh of Lublin! When other clocks chime, they

remind a person that he is one hour closer to the end of his life but when the Chozeh's

clock chimes, it tells us that we are one hour closer to Moshiach.

Our clock is chiming, and each second is one second closer to our redemption. Will it come as an

act of kindness, for we are otherwise too far gone, or will it come about as an act of justice,

because we deserve it? When it happens, will we have cared enough, will we be learned enough,

will we and our children be Jewish enough, to include ourselves in that number? The future of

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Modern Orthodoxy, if there is to be one, depends on our answer to these questions. The choice,

and the challenge, is ours.

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