Getting to Know One Another

By Yonoson Rosenblum

This essay is part of a continuing series featuring distinguished writers on the bond and shared responsibility between chareidi Jews in the Diaspora and those living in Eretz Yisrael. Through personal experience, reflection, and thoughtful perspective, the series seeks to deepen the conversation and highlight meaningful points of connection. Readers are invited to share their thoughts at [email protected].
THE MAHARAL EXPLAINS that the korban Pesach must be a lamb or a goat – i.e., a smaller animal – because it represents the essential unity of the Jewish people. If one strikes a lamb or a goat, the pain reverberates through the body, whereas with a larger animal, the pain felt from a blow will be localized. Similarly, whenever Jews are under threat or attack anywhere in the world, every Jew, wherever he or she is, feels it.

Knowing about one another, and that each of us is part of a larger Jewish people, is an essential component of Jewish unity. And in times of crisis – a war in Israel, for instance – Jews around the world have historically followed the news closely and responded generously to the needs of the hour.

But those historic ties are waning. Less than half of American Jews have ever visited Israel; only a small percentage of Jewish philanthropy goes to Jewish causes of any kind; and one-third of New York City Jews voted for a mayor who has made clear he would rejoice were the state of Israel cease to exist.

In general, Jewish unity today is far more frequently spoken about than acted upon. One notable exception to that rule was Rabbi Moshe Hauer, zt”l, the late executive director of the Orthodox Union, about whom I’m currently writing a biography. Early in the second intafada, he gave an impassioned Rosh Hashanah drashah in the Baltimore shul he led for 26 years focused on the centrality of Yerushalayim to Jews, as the place to which we direct all our prayers. The passion with which he spoke led one congregant to approach him and offer to organize a shul trip to Israel.
Those trips, sometimes for entire families and sometimes for men only, became a regular feature of the shul schedule. Some members traveled with him to Israel ten times or more, and all those who came described those non-stop tours as transformational in shaping their attachment to Eretz Yisroel.

Rabbi Hauer’s mother grew up in Israel, and his parents made Aliyah in 1989. So, his connections around the country were wide. He sought to show his congregants the panoply of Israel’s religious community, with a particular emphasis on those who did not fit traditional categories: Rav Asher Weiss, a Chassidic gadol, who gives weekly shiurim in the hesder yeshivah of Sderot; the late Rav Simcha Hakohen Kook of Rechovot, an honored presence both in the home of the posek hador Rav Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, zt”l, and also in national religious circles.
Rabbi Hauer’s shul became the American base for Mrs. Miriam Adani, the founder of Kever Rochel Heritage Fund, and a major support of the various causes of Rabbi Yosef Zvi Rimon, Rosh Kollel of Machon Lev and active in aiding those expelled from Gush Katif in 2005. Visits to the Mirrer Yeshiva and Rav Asher Arieli and Rav Yosef Elefant were interspersed with visits to secular moshavim where Rabbi Shlomo Ranaan’s Ayelet Hashachar organization has placed religious couples.

Building Understanding

WHEN HE ASSUMED leadership of the Orthodox Union, Rabbi Hauer set out to build a Klal Yisroel platform of mutual respect and understanding among different groups of Jews. Disagreement, he knew, was inevitable. But machlokes (strife) was not. The latter was the only thing that ever put a damper on his optimism.

He had an unshakeable belief in his fellow Jews, and was confident that any time Jews get together, and listen to one another with genuine respect, something positive will come out of that encounter and each will go away understanding the other better.

Over his five years at the helm of the OU, he was in Israel frequently. On those trips, much of his time was devoted to resolution of the issue of drafting yeshivah bochurim, and, in particular, to reducing the animosity between various religious communities.

His final project – one that did not come to fruition until after his sudden petirah – was to bring a group of Roshei Yeshivah, Dayanim and Rabbonim from the national religious world in Israel to America, where they met, inter alia, with the Skverer Rebbe, Lakewood Rosh Yeshiva, Rav Malkiel Kotler, and the Rosh Yeshiva of Ner Yisrael, Rav Aharon Feldman.
Those meetings did not overcome all differences in perspectives; Rabbi Hauer never thought they would. But they did give both sides a better understanding of one another and a deepened respect. The heads of hesder yeshivos, for instance, assured Rav Feldman that it was simply not true that most, or even many, of their students ceased to be mitzvah observant in the army; had that been the case, they too would not have sent their students into the IDF. That meeting ended with Rav Yaakov Shapiro, Rosh Yeshiva of Mercaz HaRav, asking Rav Feldman for a brachah. A conclusion that would have delighted Rabbi Hauer.
Why American Jews Need to Know Israel
BEYOND THE IMPERATIVE of building Jewish unity around a vision of Klal Yisroel, which was the necessary condition of the receipt of the Torah, there are many practical reasons for American Jews to know more about Israel.

The most immediate is that they or their children may well find themselves living in Israel one day, as anti-Semitism escalates in an unprecedented fashion. Western Europe has already become, in the words of one wry commentator, the world’s largest theme park, as mass immigration has dramatically changed European culture. Increasingly, Europe’s Jews are heading for the exits.

And America is following suit. The Democratic Party has more or less cut ties with Israel, and many young Republicans, even young evangelicals, are moving in the same direction. The Overton window for what may be said openly about Jews has expanded to the point where every historic blood libel, from the bubonic plague to making matzah with Christian blood, can be heard on Candace Owens’s popular podcast and in the rants of rabble-rousing political candidates. In Florida, congressional candidate Dan Bilzerian’s campaign site boasts that he is running against “the fat Jew, Randy Fine,” while gubernatorial candidate James Fishback rails against the “goyslop” served in school cafeterias. In Michigan, a senatorial candidate now running neck-and-neck with his opponent campaigns with Hassan Piker, who has described Israel as “one thousand times worse than Hamas.”

In public schools across the country, children are taught, under the guise of Ethnic Studies requirements, that Israel is an ethno-state built on lands stolen from Palestinians. The latter are portrayed as the oppressed of the earth, despite having rejected every effort at territorial compromise since 1936.

Criticism of the state of Jews has become a permission slip for attacks on Jews everywhere, with anti-Zionism as the entry-level drug for anti-Semitism. Twenty percent of U.S. college students say they would not want a Jewish roommate. Over one-third of Jewish college students say that they hide their religious identity out of fear.

The student body at the New School recently voted to defund the campus Hillel, while at UCLA, student leaders moved to bar Jews who had traveled to Israel from participation in student government. Physical, occasionally lethal, attacks on Jews and Jewish places of worship have increased precipitously.

Even for Jews who continue to feel safe in America and are sure “it can’t happen here,” there is good reason to know a great deal more about Israel, if one does not want their children to grow up ashamed of being Jewish and feeling the need to hide their identity. A campus culture in which Jewish students feel it is safer to hide their identity, lest they be accused of complicity in genocide or apartheid, is hardly one that will deepen their attachment to the Jewish people.
While the threat of becoming ashamed of one’s identity obviously affects those raised without a strong Jewish identity and who have never, or rarely, been to Israel, I have encountered plenty of Jewish students who attended day schools and were raised Orthodox and yet who have been convinced by their professors that their fellow Jews in Israel are the cruelest, most vicious people on the face of the earth.

Preparing for Aliyah

FOR AMERICAN Jews already contemplating Aliyah, it is crucial to understand the differences between Orthodox life in America and in Israel. Doing so can both ease adjustment and make clear to new olim the ways they can contribute to life in Eretz Yisroel.
The ideal, at least in the Israeli chareidi community, remains that of long-term learning into the indefinite future for men. Spiritual life for men tends to center around their kollel and rebbeim. As a consequence, the American model of shuls as the center of communal life and as a place of learning for men who are in the workforce is still in its infancy. That model, however, is developing in communities with large numbers of olim, like Ramat Beit Shemesh, and it will certainly spread as economic necessity forces more and more men into the workforce post-yeshivah.

The necessity for a much higher percentage of men to enter the workforce to support their families will also require that they attain skills and knowledge. And as the chareidi community becomes an ever-larger percentage of the general Israeli population – currently over one-fourth of entering schoolchildren are in chareidi frameworks – chareidim will inevitably have to take a larger public role in running the country. And many of those tasks will require some secular education.

While some combination of limudei kodesh and secular studies during the high school years for men is standard in chutz l’aretz, the models for such a chinuch are in their infancy in Israel. In the past, the near absence of any post-elementary school secular education for men has deterred many families from making Aliyah. But with an influx of chareidi olim to Israel, there will almost certainly be an expansion of the available educational alternatives, as has already happened in Ramat Beit Shemesh. Alternative models will benefit the larger chareidi community, not just new olim.

A Bright Jewish Future

Finally, I would like to point to one exciting difference between Jews in Israel and those in the United States. There is no comparison between so-called “secular or traditional” Jews in Israel and secular, Reform, and even Conservative Jews in America. Jewish identity and levels of mitzvah observance are far higher among the former than the latter. And since October 7, there has been a measurable move towards religiosity in Israel, and especially among the younger generation.
The signs are all around: Ten thousand soldiers committing to laying tefillin and receiving kosher l’mehadrin tefillin, army units reciting Shema before entering combat, and widespread attendance by the young at late-night Selichos services in some of the most upscale and secular neighborhoods in the country.
In a recent survey, seventy percent of Israeli Jewish parents said they would like more emphasis on Jewish identity in their children’s schools, and a full quarter expressed a desire for a curriculum divided equally between Jewish and secular subjects.

I have been closely involved with an organization called Kesher Yehudi for years. Since October 7, Kesher Yehudi has been working closely with the families of hostages in Gaza and separately, with survivors of the Nova Festival.

The stories of the emunah of the hostages and their observance of important mitzvos in the most difficult circumstances transfixed the country: refusing to work on Shabbos, fasting on Yom Kippur, avoiding chametz on Pesach, reciting Kiddush on leil Shabbos over a few drops of carefully preserved grape juice, reciting Shema, singing Lecha Dodi, reading the parashah.
Imagine a comparable group of young Jews in America: It is doubtful that most would have even been familiar with these mitzvos, much less that they would have seen them as the route to being rescued.
Among the Nova survivors, who were attending a rave concert on Shemini Atzeres, sixty have taken on full Shabbos observance, thirty-nine participate in a weekly shiur on hilchos Shabbos with the chief rabbi of Hadera, and many have taken on other aspects of mitzvah observance.

Nearly half of the world’s Jews currently live in Israel, and that percentage will only increase. Given the near universal military service, young Israeli Jews are forced to confront a basic question: Why does the collective existence of the Jewish people matter, and why should I be willing to sacrifice three years, and perhaps my life itself, to ensuring its survival?
They know, instinctively or consciously, that the answer to that question is connected to the Torah. That is why Israeli Jews, especially the youth, are so much more open to Torah learning than Jews anywhere else in the world.

The Jewish future in Israel is bright. And Jews everywhere should know that and seek to become part of that movement.

About the Author
Over the past 30 years, Yonoson Rosenblum has published approximately 2,500 columns and essays in a wide range of secular and religious publications, including a weekly column in Mishpacha Magazine for the past 20 years. He has also written seven biographies of major Torah leaders and other important works, including the most recent: Ordinary Greatness: 100 Songs of Praise. A graduate of the University of Chicago and Yale Law School, he learned under Rav Tzvi Kushelevsky, zt”l, for a decade. He and his wife have lived in Yerushalayim for 47 years.