kiruv

Winnie – I agree with you, that there is a lot of “kiruv” that average lay-people can “do” in their every day lives… but as others said, I’m not sure that necessarily has to be by pushing Torah upon people that haven’t expressed interest… I’ve found that the most powerful impact normal frum people can have on their secular neighbors and colleagues is simply by living their lives the way they are supposed to… The impact unwavering honesty, spectacular middos, simchas hachaim, not speaking loshon hara, being mekabal KOL ADAM b’seiver panim yafos, etc can have on people around you… I’ve often thought that if every frum Jew would just focus on making a Kiddush HaShem in every way during the course of each day, the world would realize the emes of Torah and we would change the world… It’s not as exciting as giving over a geshmak d’var Torah that you recently heard, but it might just be more effective…

ZD you are right about proselytizing. That’s not what I had in mind. I have been around many non-Frum Jews long ago in school, now at work. I knew that people at work were very wary of the presence of a chareidi among them, because they thought I would want to forcibly “covert” them. But I also got many questions over the years, which I tried to answer and although no one became frum, at least I hope that I decreased the negative anti-Torah attitudes that they had before they met me. One story always makes me feel good. I was once trying to find a place to go for shabbos, it was Thursday and had run out of my usual options. In the end one of my regulars set me up by her married kids, who I didn’t really know. My co-workers, when hearing the details, were floored that someone would agree to host a stranger, and that I considered it perfectly normal. So that was a kiddush Hashem! Still, I always wished that I could have done more.