Hot-Tikva – Parshat Vayeishev Chanuka Edition 2022 5783
Insights and Inspiration from the Holy Land
from Rabbi Ephraim Schwartz
“Your friend in Karmiel”
December 16th 2022 -Volume 12 Issue 9 22nd of Kislev 5783
Thursday, December 15, 2022
Parshat Vayeishev Chanuka I
Hot-Tikva
(What a great title!)
We were in the car having one of those typical Rabbi Schwartz you-really-should- move- to Israel discussions. They were Chasidim. They really loved Israel, or Eretz Yisrael as they preferred to call it. I was in one of my moods as it was the end of a full summer of touring and I wasn’t polite about it anymore. The politically correct Rabbi Schwartz had exited a few weeks before. I was annoyed at people just not getting the fact that it was really that time in history when everyone should be coming home already. There really is nothing left in America to stick around for besides… concentration camps at worst, but certainly expulsion, persecution and decrees are around the corner. The writing was on the wall. What were they hanging around there for? I was just frustrated, that they didn’t see it.
Yoily, then tells me that he really wanted to move to Israel. He loves it here. He said last time he was here even a few years ago, he even came very close to buying an apartment here. But at the end he backed it out. “It’s tzee heisss” in Eretz Yisrael. It’s too hot for him and his wife here. The temperature is too high and its very humid. It’s nisht far meer. It wasn’t for him. It was at that point that I lost it.
I told him that I had a young man a few months ago that was raised frum, but his father told me that he was having trouble with him. It seems his son decided that he didn’t want to wear tzitzis anymore. It’s too hot, he complained. There’s no obligation in fact to wear tzitzis. It’s only an obligation if one is wearing a four cornered garment. But there’s no obligation to wear one in the first place. I asked Yoily if I should tell the young boy that he was correct. Tzee heis is a good excuse. After-all living in Eretz Yisrael according to many is not an obligation. You “just” get a mitzva if you live here, kind of like when you wear tzitzis (although settling the land is probably a lot more comprehensive and central of a mitzva-as the Torah repeatedly tells us it is the essence of all the mitzvos that can only properly be fulfilled here).
On the other hand, I could tell him how a little shvitz for a mitzva is good. I could remind him of the gemara that tells us about eventually the goyim will complain that they never had any opporotunities to do mitzvos and Hashem give them the chance to fufill the mitzva of sukkos. When they step in it though Hashem yanks out the sun and they start to shivtz and run out and say in their goyisheh Yiddish “It’s tzee heis!”. And then a I ratch it up a notch.
I ask them if they know why they are wearing those big long hot caftans and frocks and wool tzitzis. After-all there is certainly clothing like my shorts and T- Shirt which is a lot more comfortable. The answer I explained was that when their Zadyies and Bubbies came to America or the New World, or even perhaps centuries before in Europe, the great Chasidic leaders felt that it was important that the Chasidim wear these clothing so that they feel that they stand out. That they will always remember that they are not like the goyim around them. So that they won’t easily forget who they are and assimilate. That they will remember that the country that they are in, isn’t really where they are supposed to be or feel comfortable. It’s not their home. It’s not their people. We’re in galus and only there temporarily.
The problem though, I rudely pointed out, is that they are more comfortable in their shtreimal and beketcheh in the Diamond district in 5th Avenue or even in the halls of congress than they are when they come home to the land that is the inheritance of our forefathers. The land Hashem told us He gave us to live in. The land that is unquestionably the best, most natural and only place where we should ever feel at home. The land that should never feel tzu heiss… and even if it is, who moves out of their home when the air conditioning is busted? Out of their father’s home? Out of our Father in heaven’s home. I suggested that it would be much better if they tool off their shtreimal and beketcheh and put on a short sleeve shirt, shorts and even cotton tzitizis and it will be much cooler for them here. After-all I don’t think anyone will wear argue that living in Eretz Yisrael is less of a mitzva then the shtreimal, then the black hat and jacket? I think they made Aliyah since then… they certainly never said tzi heiss in my car.
As I read back what I just wrote, I realize that my mother will probably yell at me. I don’t usually pull punches in this E-Mail. I feel it’s why some of you still come here and read it each week and haven’t unsubscribed. You can handle my never really humble opinion, even though you may disagree with me. Or maybe it’s just the jokes at the end. But this time I think I got a bit carried away. I got aggressive. Obnoxious, perhaps. Certainly annoyingly Israeli-holier-than-thou because I live in Israel and you don’t attitude, that’s just a turn-off. But I just got frustrated that they don’t see the contradiction. You’re wearing a hot woolen pair of tzitzis, a lonf wool frock, a black fur hat… and your complaining that Israel is too hot. Really? Are you that blind? I just don’t get it.