A heartfelt cry for Teshuva in light of recent events: It’s Time to Throw out the Garbage!
Secular influence is making our Nation unrecognizable. We must wake up before it’s too late.
BS”D
Chazal tell us that when an earthquake occurs, it is a message to Klal Yisrael to do introspection and improve ourselves. This directive seems all the more applicable in light of all the tzaros that have befallen our nation recently, may Hashem have mercy and call an end to tragedy.
We do not have nevi’im nowadays, so it is impossible to know the exact point that Hashem wants us to do teshuva for in any given situation. Yet, we can look at the Torah and see where we as a nation are lacking, and use this as a starting point.
We just read the Parshiyos of Yetzias Mitzrayim. We learned that we had sunk into Mem Tes Sha’arei Tuma – the 49th level of impurity, mixed in almost every way with the surrounding culture. Hashem rushed us out, Chazal tell us, because with one more second in that depraved land, we would have fallen into the 50th level, from which there is no return.
Surely most frum Yidden imagine that today, we are very, very far from the 49th level which Chazal speak of. We cannot even imagine what it means. Sadly, I am afraid we are wrong.
I speak here not out of a desire to be mekatreig, chas veshalom, or to simply find fault, but out of deep belief that Klal Yisrael has a pure and holy essence, and that we are capable of returning to it – and that Hashem is waiting for us to come back to what we are supposed to be. “Shuvi shuvi hashulamis.”
Thinking honestly about the state of our people, we cannot escape the realization that we are indeed enmeshed in secular culture, norms, and beliefs. When we read how the Nevi’im castigated our nation for worshipping idols, we may shake our heads in disbelief at the stubborn foolishness of a people who blindly continued on their path of self-destruction, no matter the bitter results. Yet maybe we are not so different than they were.
Do we imagine that “Shalom Alai Nafshi,” that all is well in our camp? We have to think a bit deeper.
If we had a Rav Shamshon Refael Hirsh, a Malbim, or a Chasam Sofer today, what would they be telling us?
My great-great-grandfather, Rav Yoel Yitzchok Margaretten, who was niftar in 1909, was a Dayan in Erlau and fought against the Reform movement of his times. Do you think that the Reform movement has no equivalent nowadays, that there are no forces fighting against Hashem and dragging us away from the Torah, or that these forces have not already entered our communities in the most noble guise and wreaked havoc? Think again.
We have become so “fargoyisht” in just about every aspect of our lives that we may not even realize it anymore. Our lifestyles are, more and more, mimicking the cultures around us, and we are losing our unique stamp as we fall into the age-old trap, the same trap as the Misyavnim did, as the modernized Jews in Roman times, as the Jews in 14th and 15thcentury Spain who were lost to us, and as those who fell prey to the Haskala.
Here are the sad examples which come to my mind. Perhaps you know of others. I am sorry to be so blunt, but these issues weigh heavily on my heart. I beg Hashem to open the eyes of our people to recognize the truth and return to serve Him be’emes.
Our Focus
What is the focus of our lives, thoughts, and ambitions? It should be to serve Hashem and bring Him nachas by learning His Torah, fulfilling His directives, building a family, etc. This may sound lofty, but as apparent from the Shema and from the Nevi’im, this wholehearted focus on Hashem and on the true, spiritual reality is simply what Hashem requires of us.
Yet, as we go about our day, aren’t most of our thoughts focused on material desires? Even when we are engaged in a mitzva, such as davening, learning, or preparing for Yom Tov, are we actually thinking about Hashem, connecting with Him, and doing it “for Him,” as He wants it to be done and because He said so, or are we going about the motions without giving Him much thought at all? How much of it is purely for our own enjoyment or status? For example, is a chumra which causes stress and friction, or an elaborate Mishloach Manos at the expense of the family, really for the sake of Hashem, or is it for ourselves, to “feel holy” or to impress our friends?
Gashmiyus
Has gashmiyus not taken over our lives? The more we focus on a beautiful home, car, clothes, accessories, vacations, and food, the less room there is in our thoughts and lives to focus on what is eternal. Emphasis on gashmiyus automatically robs one of ruchniyus. The G-dless pursuit of materialism of the secular world has silently crept, to a greater or lesser degree, into almost every one of our communities.
College and the Workplace
Women are made to believe that they must “earn a degree” in order to properly “support their husband in learning.” After months or years of learning from the secular professors, what is the effect on the neshama of the future mother in Klal Yisrael? Subsequently, these young women often go to work in various highly questionable environments, sometimes in non-religious settings, or together with men.
It is impossible to conceive of our nevi’im approving of much of what currently goes on. Even if no overt sins are ever transgressed, what subtle changes are wrought in the hashkafa of those who spend every workday among those who do not share our values? For example, with the secular world placing a premium on child spacing, and with three children being the typical max, how does a frum woman feel coming in wearing maternity clothes yet again, and how does this impact her desire to continue to build her own Jewish home?
While I focused on the hazards to women, we all know the serious problems with kedusha that men face when earning a degree and subsequently in many work environments.
Why do we pretend that the “Jewish” colleges are “kosher” when they are not?
Marriage
Is marriage always a priority, as the Torah teaches, or are other considerations, which are not Ratzon Hashem, taking precedence?
And, are we marrying in order to continue Klal Yisrael? I thought it was a given that a Jewish couple wants to hurry and build a family, but to my horror, I recently discovered that the “new trend” - even in some communities considered to be extremely frum - is to use birth control for a year or so after the wedding. I can hardly think of something that spells “secular influence” more than that.
In Mitzrayim, Jewish women went to great lengths to entice their exhausted husbands, who were toiling under unbearable slave labor, to bring children into the world – even though they knew they might just see those children tossed into the river or cemented into a wall. But still, they kept doing it, and that is why we are here today! Not only for physical reasons – that the generations were continued – but because the zechus of not doing abortions, and DAVKA DOING EVERYTHING POSSIBLE to bring MORE children into the world - was one of the merits that brought the geula from Mitzrayim, according to the Zohar Hakadosh. How is it that in our time of comfort and plenty, couples cannot trouble themselves to get busy building KlalYisrael?
The cavalier attitude about birth control, and the lack of chashivus regarding bringing more neshamos into the world is getting worse and worse, to the point that it is considered so normal and acceptable that one who speaks against it is the “fanatic.”
Let it therefore be recorded here the words of Rav Avraham Shimon Halevi Horowitz (known as Rav Shimon Gelichover), the Mashgiach of Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin, who was one of the greatest Gaonim before WWII, versed in the entire Torah. Rav Shimon was the Rebbe of Rav Hirshshprung of Montreal, Rav Vosner (the Sheivet Halevi), Rav Kreiswirth of Antwerp, and of other Gedolim.
On 19 Kislev 5699 (in 1938), just months prior to the start of WWII, Rav Shimon Gelichover locked himself into a room and wrote “with the blood of his heart,” a pleading letter of warning regarding the Holocaust that he knew was coming. He begged Klal Yisrael to do teshuva and avert the slaughter. His letter was printed and distributed throughout Europe by his students. Rav Shimon’s cry was titled “Kol Korei Shuva Yisrael.” It was later printed in a sefer of his collected writings, called Naharei Aish, as Maamer Shuva Yisrael, Maamer Bais.
Rav Shimon writes searing words of rebuke about the Jewish people having reached such a terribly low point, by following the secular culture and expensive lifestyle, that, he says, it is like the time of Achav with their worship of avoda zara. When he decries the Jewish enmeshment in European culture and luxuries, he explains that this is what avoda zara means. Tremblingly, he relates that in order to be able to keep up with the expensive lifestyle, people copy the non-Jews, using birth control, “in the Parisian style,” which our ancestors would never would have dreamed of doing.
Rav Shimon quotes the Zohar, warning that if a person uses birth control, keeping neshamos from coming down, or is not osek in P’ru U’rvu, then Hashem withdraws from the world, tragedies happen, and Hashem does not hear our voice, chas veshalom, when we cry out to Him.
Rav Shimon Gelichover cried with everything he had, trying to warn Klal Yisrael that it was such a shrekliche thing that Klal Yisrael were following goyishe culture - in various ways, including that birth control had become widespread in the Jewish community - that it would lead to the Holocaust, which he foresaw, in which Hashem would need to reveal His Malchus with misos meshunos, as He warned about in the Torah. He ended off by saying that if they would change and do teshuva, and return to the way of Hashem, they would be saved, but if not, they would be killed by the sword as warned in Parshas Ha’azinu.
We know what ended up happening, Hashem yeracheim.
Chinuch
Government money has “bought” a say in our children’s chinuch. Free PreK programs receive government funding only if they comply with the non-Jewish agenda of how our children ought to be educated. While it may seem that most of their demands are innocuous and that we can manage to work together with them, it really is not true. There IS a secular influence which automatically creeps in with their requirements – I have witnessed it myself. The Board of Education is not a friend of religion, and giving them a foothold in our yeshivas has been a big mistake. Tailoring the holy chinuch of our precious children to meet the demands of heretical people cannot be the right thing to do. How could we have ever thought that it is OK? (Of course, the acceptance by schools of government money, in general, is why stand where we do today – under threat of impossible-to-bear government intrusion into our yeshivos.)
We have acquired for ourselves a “new master,”in addition to Hashem, just as we were warned in Parshas Mishpatim not to do. This Pharaoh expects obedience in exchange for the lunch and textbook money he has doled out.
Speaking of textbooks, the books used in our schools are replete with negative, anti-religious influences. Make no mistake, those influences were put their purposely. For example, children speaking and acting disrespectfully to parents are included in order to further the aim of distancing children from parents and teaching them to disobey traditional authority figures. Small families are shown to normalize that in our children’s eyes.
The whole Common Core which we unwittingly swallowed originates from people steeped in the deepest tuma, who wish to bring the tuma to us – which is an entire subject unto itself.
Now as the government prepares to require teaching to’eiva, what will our schools do? Some more modern ones have already started to “get with the program,” unbelievably.
The “Limudei Kodesh” department was unfortunately not spared. The “Chumash” Pshuto Shel Mikra has infiltrated everywhere, leaching Emuna out of the Torah, Rachmana Litzlan, with an effect a million times worse than Mendelson’s “Biur,” which destroyed much of Klal Yisrael two centuries ago.
Emuna
What are the 13 Ikarim? How many of us know them, recite them daily, feel them with every fiber of fiber of being, and truly live by them? Unfortunately, it is apparent that living with the Ikarim burned into our hearts is not the norm, because if it was, our well-known problems would not exist.
To put it another way, are we learning and keeping the Torah l’sheim shamayim, or is Yiddishkeit a social club, with chumros (subconsciously) a means to impress our friends, and the company we keep, the yeshivos our children attend, and the spouse they marry, a statement of social status?
Would that help to explain why newcomers sometimes feel unwelcome in some communities, why families sometimes cannot get their children into schools, or why shidduchim are so hard?
Dress
Do we seek to look Jewish? Some of us do, Baruch Hashem. But what about ultra-natural shaitels? Yarmulkas that are not visible from the front, and payos that one has to double check to see? These are supposed to be signs that we are proud of. When “the style” is short, how does anyone justify wearing skirts that do not cover the knee, when the halacha clearly states that this is a grave sin? And why are our leaders largely unable to speak up about this travesty?
Magazines
Every grocery store carries an assortment of “frum” magazines, but how many of us critically evaluate whether the contents are truly Torah-oriented, or whether they are “kashered” secularism? Sadly, the truth is that it’s mostly the latter – with a smattering of Divrei Torah to give an appearance of Kedusha. These magazines influence everything about our lives, ranging from what we think about current events, politics, and medical issues, to whom we believe are the Chashuve Talmidei Chachomim whom we should be following, to what our Shabbos meals contain. In fact, these magazines have such a powerful effect on the Jewish family, that a graduate of the most dangerous Reform-sponsored organization which seeks to tear down Yiddishkeit, Machon Mandel, is behind the most popular English-language “frum” magazine in the Jewish world.
Of course, they take pains to appear frum, but they have an agenda. This magazine very purposefully lowers our standards, a tiny, unnoticeable increment at a time, through their ads, serialized novels, articles, and more. Consider the column “Fork in the Road,” in which a different restaurant is reviewed each week. We read about an array of “kosher” food, each dish and its flavors covered in great detail, sometimes with the (female) author excitedly describing her “schmooze” with the (male) chef. Does the hyperfocus on food as a goal unto itself, the extreme gashmiyus, and the lack of tznius, not make you uncomfortable? That is just one example. The magazines play a large role in setting the norms in our communities.
Ads
Despite having been warned, the above magazine continues to accept advertisements from JOWMA, an organization who appears frum but who is actually pro-to’eiva, pro-whatever-the-government-says, pro-“normalizing”-our-family-lives-to-be-like-the-nations-of-the-world, and who accepts government funds to push harmful anti-Torah agendas in our communities.
JOWMA is NOT the only such organization.
Food
The food we eat is increasingly elaborate and expensive. It no longer seems to be for the sake of sustaining us, but for purely gashmiyus purposes - perhaps covered with a thin veneer of “L’sheim-whatever-mitzva you can come up with as an excuse for indulgence.” This is driven, of course, by the above-mentioned magazines.
Medical
How have the doctors become the “gods,” to whom the Rabbonim feel they must bow? Isn’t the Torah the ultimate authority? Since when do doctors override it? Again, we took another master for ourselves, instead of Hashem, Rachmana litzlan.
This usurpation of authority would be bad enough even if the opinions the doctors offered were based on information that was rock solid truth, but unfortunately this is not the case.
Medical “opinions” are now created by the interests of the government and the interests of the pharmaceutical companies. The government dictates what medical information may and may not be publicized, as the recent Twitter files Congressional hearing showed.
Much of what doctors believe to be true comes from medical journals, and all the major journals are heavily funded by drug companies. Since around the year 2000, articles in medical journals have become more and more untrustworthy, as the business of running clinical trials has increasingly been taken over by private research labs hired by pharmaceutical companies.
With the advent of their newfound control of clinical trials, the companies are able to manipulate them to show the results they wish. Trials are rigged, unfavorable data is hidden even from scientists involved in running the trials, and when the results still aren’t favorable to the drug being evaluated, articles are often written for submission to the medical journals with positive conclusions that do not even match the data presented in the body of the article.
Therefore, much of the information in medical journals currently is “unsupported,” to put it charitably.
It’s information that is promulgated by pharmaceutical companies with billions of dollars of negiyus bedovor, companies which have been shown in court to have cheated, lied, and killed over and over and over again. And THIS is the information that is heavily influencing unsuspecting doctors. (You can find all this documented in the book “Overdosed America” by Dr. John Abramson MD, published in 2004.)
Yet, “whatever the doctor says” is considered by many to be Halacha L’Moshe Misinai, even if it contradicts Torah principles.
One example is the closing of shuls and yeshivas worldwide, which had never occurred in Klal Yisrael before, on the basis of nothing except the government and their agents convincing leaders that it was necessary. It the end, it turned out to have been completely false. The countries which “locked down,” shutting schools and places of worship, did not fare better than those who stayed open. The shuls which I am aware of which stayed open throughout Spring 2020 did not lose any members. How was it al pi Torah to close in the first place? Or to turn women away from the mikva? It was not, but because of the non-Torah influence that has invaded, we forgot that Torah leaders are supposed to lead, NOT the government, and NOT doctors who are doing the government bidding to influence the Jewish community.
Another example is the shocking craze for BRCA testing and women’s “preventative” organ removal, which destroys many marriages and puts women at much higher risk of heart disease, while it lines the pockets of genetic testing companies, genetic counselors, surgeons and hospitals. But the medical profession rules, and who will contradict them to speak the truth and stand for Hashem? Truly, “the emperor has no clothes.” Is this Ratzon Hashem?
A similar, very disturbing point is the recent announcement of pre-marital genetic testing for genes that can cause hearing loss. How many shidduchim will be prevented, and how many children will not be born, because of an issue which poses no danger to life or health? Are the scientists trying to play the role of Hashem? There is no end to what can be tested for, and the further we go with the “derech hateva,” the more marriages we prevent, and the less we trust in Hashem, the more we ch”v invite outcomes that are worse, not better, Rachmana Litzlan.
Our leaders are precluded from speaking up. They know that if they try, they will get “shot down.” The people have become the leaders – so we have no leaders, in essence.
Here is a tiny illustration. Recently, when looking for a Posek who would join in speaking out about an issue critical to Klal Yisrael, someone asked if a certain Rav who has risen to a position of great importance within his group would sign. The answer was that “you can ask him the Halacha if a milchig spoon falls into a fleishig pot, but that’s about it.” Meaning, due to his high position, he cannot lead – he cannot make any pronouncements on anything which may be deemed “political,” as important to the kedusha, Emuna, and kiyum of our nation as it may be.
Hashem yeracheim – what will become of us?
While we are a nation of chesed, and have a record-breaking amount of Torah learning going on, are we serving Hashem as He wants to be served, for His sake, with a pure heart? When we say Ani Ma’amin, do we mean it, or is it just a nice song?
Are we ready for Mashiach – or NOT?
Please, let us wake up in time.