Chasing Shadows

Chasing Shadows

By Harav Y R Rubin Shlita

The setting is amazing: two young children stand in a forest clearing holding hands. Your eye is drawn to how they are dressed alike, the clothing “over the top” stylish and perfectly fitted. The young girl’s eyes sparkle, ringlets of red hair cascading out from under a unique (and pricey) woollen cap. The boy is dressed in a way that you just know that he has never worn such fancy togs in real life. The whole scene is just too perfect: there they stand, every part of their bodies positioned in a pose that isn’t natural. They straddle what looks to be a rural train track. The trees are redolent in the radiance of early winter foliage; the whole idyllic picture is just that, a picture, one created to conjure up an unreal place where kids don’t get dirty, and life is made for the exclusive purpose of spending gelt.

This bit of marketing extravagance featured in a glossy pre Yom Tov magazine that is widely read by and exclusively geared for the Torah community. Its message was clear: buy this merchandise and life will be wondrous. Your kids will be a cut above just cute, and they will love you even more for dressing them up in designer gear at the tender age of five. I just have a few reservations about this. Since when do heimishe kinderlach need over the top schmatters to give them chein? What’s more, what message are we giving our young if they see that some frum media outlets idolize such excess?

Allow me a few observations: Using the train tracks as a prop is certainly appropriate, because with such crazed slavishness to what’s new and trendy we as a community are certainly headed for a train crash. Then, the featured article in that particular magazine was about the crises of “entitlement”, and if this advertisement isn’t part of what is fueling said crises I don’t know what is.

For the uninitiated, permit me to explain in a few words what the entitlement issue is. For a large swath of our community, especially so amongst the young, there seems to be a sense that everything that can be bought – indeed should be – and that everybody deserves all the gear they want. “Se kumpt mere” “it’s coming to me”, is a mantra heard in all too many homes. “What do you mean I can’t have the shiniest new gadget, Tatty? Everyone has it” – meaning at least one other spoiled brat. The mother of all temper tantrums usually comes from denying a youngster something “everyone else” has, no matter the cost or the need. This goes deeper than just childish fits. How about the young girl who has been taught that she deserves a top learner, one who comes with a hefty price tag? Tell her you can’t afford such a match and she very well may stamp her foot and cry out: “I hate you”!

I touch not even the tip of the iceberg that is this problem, but I am sure you all catch the drift of my thinking. Torah homes have become the target of mass media marketing, creating more and more dissatisfaction with what one has and creating dissent at many levels.

Walter Dill Scott published a book on advertising in 1903 called The Theory and Practice of Advertising. Interestingly, he asserted that people were highly suggestible and obedient. Scott wrote “Man has been called the reasoning animal but he could with greater truthfulness be called the creature of suggestion. He is reasonable, but he is to a greater extent suggestible”. 1903 was a long time ago, and already they knew. Dangle something before the public eye, and sooner or later the hapless soul will feel deprived without it. It is this over the top consumerism that drives so many young couples to fall foul of all financial constraints and overextend themselves with massive credit card debts that can never conceivably be paid back.

Worse is the insipid rot that creates a void within one’s soul. More and more rubbish needed, so much stuff to buy; who has time for Hashem? Great tzaddikim of previous generations warned of the effects we are now witnessing. They warned of a time where externally we would be seeing Yiddishkeit become commercialized, whilst internally we would be empty.

Rav Yonoson Gefen explains that the parsha of Noach ends with a very short account of the early life of Avrohom Ovinu. It outlines his family, including his brother, Haran, and how he met an untimely death. The Torah briefly tells us that Haran died in front of his father. The Medrash provides the background of this tragedy. It discusses how Avrohom rejected the rampant idol worship of his time and came to believe in Hashem. He destroyed the idols in his father, Terach’s store, and as a result, Terach handed him over to King Nimrod. Nimrod tried to force him to worship idols and when he refused, Nimrod had him thrown into a fire. Haran was an onlooker to all this and knew that he would be forced to side either with Avrohom or Nimrod. Before Avrohom was thrown into the fire, Haran took a very practical approach: if Avrohom would survive, then Haran would join him, but if he would die, then he would side with Nimrod. When Avrohom emerged unscathed from the fire, Haran accordingly declared his support for Avrohom. As a result, he was thrown into the fire and was killed.

The Medrash points out that his death was somewhat unusual in that only his internal organs were destroyed, implying that his external body was left undamaged. What is the significance of this unusual death?

The answer given is that on an external level Haran was righteous, in that he made himself out to be of the same ilk as Avrohom. However, internally he did not believe with complete sincerity.

Accordingly, his internal organs were destroyed because they were lacking merit. However, his exterior was unharmed because it appeared righteous.

This explanation provides us with an example of the principle that it is possible to observe the Torah on two different levels: internally or externally. Internal observance means that a person imbues himself with the attitudes espoused by the Torah; his outlook and life goals are solely defined by the Torah. External observance means that a person may observe all the mitzvos.

However, his deep-seated desires and aspirations are not in tune with doing Hashem’s will. Instead, other factors drive him. All this “glossinisation” ( a new word I have just invented that hopefully speaks for itself) of our lives plays into the hands of the Yetzer Hora. His job is to cause us to become corroded from within. It matters little to his agenda if you want to be glatt kosher on your mad dash towards material excess, as long as you keep running and not thinking. He can allow us to pretend we are frum in our attire and our shtick, as long as our minds are awash with the dangling trinkets of the material world.

Entitlement is just another tool in his arsenal of weapons, suggesting to our vulnerable neshomas that we are lacking. The emess is we lack only one thing: the solid realization that everything is in Hashem’s hands and nothing is missing.

Perhaps it is time to organise an assifa -communal gathering- that will address some of these urgent matters.  Let’s bring back the eternal truths of trust in Hashem’s ways now! Our young (and the not so young) need to be sensitized to what’s going on around them and be given the ability to see Hashem’s illumination beyond the glittering prizes of this material world.