here’s what seems so sad about this thread –
on simchas Torah we are a nation rejoicing in the Torah. Not in our own personal learning, or our husbands learning, or our son’s. We rejoice in the Torah and in another completion of the cycle and start of the new cycle in prayer that we will always be “in the midst of” and never “done with” the Torah.
For generations, this happiness was tangible. People were so happy that they would dance. They danced for the torah they learned, that their children learned, and they danced for the very existance and privelidge of the Torah. We danced from joy.
As a women, we are included in that joy just as we are included in Hashem’s klal. it is our nations joy, every member.
Now we have a generation of people who are not as connected to that joy. not nearly as connected to the Torah as we were back then. We are lacking that ability to connect to the Torah in such a personal state that it makes us feel happy enough to dance as they did in past generations.
That, I believe is all of us. some more so, some less so. So now we reach the CR discussion where some believe that it doesn’t matter if you feel joy or not, you have to dance because it’s tradition. And you have others who say that it’s more important to feel joy, so lets find some way to do that.
But I really believe you are both wrong. Our job is not to walk around in circles fulfilling a tradition. Our job is to dance with joy. To love the Torah and celebrate KLAL YISROEL’s completion and beginning. But some people’s adherence to traditions without admitting to, or accommodating the desperate need for our kids to feel joy is turning people away. Even the frummest yeshivos have that lacking, more are turning to alcohol to “help them be bisimcha”. It needs to be dealt with, boosted, worked on.
But the “other side” is overstepping in the other direction. They are losing that connection to tradition and trying to establish their own. I am not so sure that dancing (without a torah) is not traditional, and I have no comment in this post on the particulars. But just as we cannot whip people into performing traditions while lacking emotional connection to Hashem without repercussions (WE made them dry thru yeridas doros, they are not dry of themselves ch”v), we also cannot write our own ticket to closeness with Hashem. we need to follow the guidelines He has laid out for us in the Torah.
I know that nobody from the old school of thought wants to admit that things aren’t going well, but they aren’t. And if we don’t work harder to infuse joy, connection, emotion and love into the established holy, sacred, traditional motions we go thru, more and more young people will keep looking for their own ways. the baby is certainly being thrown out with the bathwater.
And before you start accusing me of sick liberalism and other hurtful things, try absorbing some of this because our own desperate attempt to believe all is well is directly responsible for the search in other directions. Just to be sure I don’t get misquoted and twisted (haha)
I DO NOT advocate changing a SINGLE ONE of our traditions. I advocate for understanding that the traditions alone are not infusing our new generation with a connection to Hashem, and in order to prevent them from looking elsewhere for meaning and depth, we need to admit it is an issue, and work on putting the emotion, love, chashivus and divaikus back into our observance of Hashem’s mitzvos, and try selling that to people instead of just answering their needs with a door slam. See these newfangled ways as the cry for spiritual and cognitive connection that many believe it really is.