העורך Editor

Uh huh.

We didn’t mention the regular Teshuvah Movement yesterday. This is not because it is unimportant, but because it’s not enough (most of the returnees become regular Charedim, for better and worse), and because it’s not the point of this site to bring people to general Torah observance, but to correct observance itself.

On the one hand, DV is meant to be super-accurate (although the introduction honestly warns against relying on anything in practice, of course). It wasn’t just written by Rabbi Meir Greinemann shlita, no insult intended, but by a team directed mostly by his brother, Rabbi Chaim (although you won’t find a hint of this), and Rabbi Chaim zatzal took full responsibility for the result. The items were reportedly narrowed down from approximately seven times the amount of material. And the introduction, written by Rabbi Yechezkel (Chatzkel) Brettler, is a gem.

And yet, for all the care taken, it’s not perfect (even in the second edition). First of all, the constipated “Ktiv Chaser” language, mimicked from the Chazon Ish is a barrier to those accustomed to kinder Hebrew. There are a few typos, I think.

Also, the reader is supposed to fill in some blanks with data he likely lacks:

For example, the Chazon Ish would often refer to his own de novo rulings as “The Minhag” reigning “here” (Bnei Brak? Israel?), because he wanted it to be so, and thought it would become so, and to give his opinions greater weight. A Minhag he disapproved of didn’t carry much weight in his eyes, anyway, even more so than by other Torah scholars. (This is assuming he even knew what it was. Recall well: the Chazon Ish didn’t know too much of the reid in Achronim.) He felt he was in charge of determining custom, not Chassidic Holocaust survivors. See, for instance, Shvi’is Siman 20 before the laws of non-Jewish fields, or his remarking the “custom” is to refrain from work on Erev Pesach, even before Chatzos (according to some book I read), etc. The same is true for Dinim Vehanhagos 18:11 re not shining shoes on Chol Hamoed.

This should be spelled out!

Also, “too many cooks” trying to be too careful can result in forgetting what you wanted to say. For instance, in chapter 11 #9, the source is Chiddushim Ubi’urim Kiddushin 33b who wrote: “כמדומה” (or: I am almost positive). This then somehow became “יש אומרים” (some say), which was not their intention at all (since it has the weaker connotation), which informs us by the way, the two terms are synonymous in their lexicon (כמדומה!). Comical, sure, but at the end of DV chapter 3, is “העידו” the same as “יש אומרים” or closer to “אמר”…? Some people have never taken to heart the Chazon Ish’s letter on “Lashon K’tzara”.

In other words, the unnamed writers’ haughty insistence on not adding any extra words leaves us playing the games readers must play to comprehend Charedi news rags (viz. “Why is X titled Y and not Z?”).

Sometimes the writers’ need for varying the language (so it doesn’t sound silly, like “אכל הודו” or boring) led them into error. For example, in DV 6:9 “לא הי’ מדקדק על רביעית במים אחרונים”, the truth is far stronger: the Chazon Ish thought the notion is ridiculous and didn’t believe “Ma’aseh Rav” the Gra said so.

(Of ideas and behavior, not blood in the streets!)

Mass teshuvah is nothing if not a revolution.

Rambam Teshuvah 7:5:

כל הנביאים כולן צוו על התשובה ואין ישראל נגאלין אלא בתשובה וכבר הבטיחה תורה שסוף ישראל לעשות תשובה בסוף גלותן ומיד הן נגאלין שנאמר והיה כי יבאו עליך כל הדברים וגו’ ושבת עד ה’ אלהיך ושב ה’ אלהיך וגו’.

Just the other day a friend told me of someone he once knew. The man lives in another city, dresses differently, and traveled a seemingly different path than me in some ways. And it wouldn’t be so simple to contact him. I don’t think he has internet access, either. But he, too, is studying and observing the Torah without blinders, and the results don’t match with modern, mainstream faux-Judaism.

I don’t agree exactly with everything I heard quoted in his name (“There are only two mitzvos Jews still observe as they were given: Lulav and Milah”), but it comes from the same place in the heart.

A handful of truth-seeking individuals is not yet a threat to the establishment, but it’s a start. And it’s genuine “grassroots”; nothing and nobody arranged and organized and led people to the same family of ideas but Divine Providence and independent thinking.

All revolutions start from the fringes; scientific (read Thomas Kuhn), political (read history), and ideological (same, deeply).

(And if you look carefully, even the middle is shifting in many ways, but that part is harder to demonstrate.)

May Hashem lead us all back to Him and the Torah!