Old sizes no longer fit for purpose

By Harav Y. Reuven Rubin Shlita

For some, buying a new suit is a mundane activity with nothing more at stake than the colour or style. For me it is a bit more complex. I take such experiences very seriously and find myself somewhat intimidated by the whole shopping exercise. I generally avoid having to enter clothing shops. I just know I will get it wrong and end up buying something I never thought I needed.

Just last week I gave in; I needed a suit and nothing I said could change that. We were attending a family simcha and being in close proximity to the country’s largest emporium of Chassidic clothing, it made sense for me to pay a visit.

“We learn ever more, but our connection to Hashem, the core illumination that glimmers from within each soul, has become dimmer, and our kids see this”

Walking into these places is always scary for me. Long rows of hanging clothing, all black of course, with only small numbers that indicate the sizes. As I walked in a friendly face came out of the forest of cloth with a hearty “Sholom Aleichem. What is the Rav looking for?” he asked. I thought I should answer that I am looking to get out of the shop pronto, but realised that would be counterproductive. “A new weekday suit, black please.” That last phrase seemed superfluous, but I was nervous. How nervous soon became obvious. “What size?” At this point I suffered from brain freeze. I just blurted out the first thing that came to mind: “Forty, if you don’t mind”. The salesman smiled, with understanding. For those who may never have seen me, size forty was what I wore some fifty years ago at my chasunah. I have grown a tad bigger since then. Large quantities of rugelach, schnitzel and the like have come my way in the intervening years and size forty is just a distant memory. The young man in attendance shook his head and mumbled something about perhaps trying something a bit larger. Now I was feeling insulted. In my frozen state I just couldn’t understand why such a young man should try to intimate that I was larger than I admitted to. He started to walk down the aisle of suits and glaring mirrors towards the larger sizes. These seem to be herded in the back, out of everyone else’s line of vision. “I tell you I wear a forty”, I repeated. I am now vexed, wondering what possessed me to come here in the first place. Suddenly, the brain returned to normal operation. “Forty? You’re joking! Fifty!  That’s the size I meant the whole time.” Smiles all around, panic over, Rabbi Rubin is back in reality; fifty it is. The salesman handled the situation well, and in the end I bought two suits. As I said, the place can be intimidating.

As I wended my way home I had time to mull over what had happened. The temporary loss of reality could be put down to a senior moment, or sheer exhaustion. I had been travelling a lot last week and after Shabbos we were back on the road for another long trip.

Then another thought came to mind. Aren’t we all guilty of such mixed moments?  We say things that are embedded in our memories but do they reflect our current reality? When we say Boruch Hashem, is this felt with a full heart, or is this just a conversational device? We speak about bitochon and faith in Hashem. Our every conversation is laced with these admirable concepts. The difficulty comes when we think about what can be limp words and try to remove the facade of the mundane and reach into our hearts for our true beliefs.

Faith in Hashem, totally accepting that everything is in His plan and nothing happens without His Will is what it means to be a Yied. Everything else is just so much chatter. Sadly, achieving such total acceptance can sometimes be elusive, causing a gaping void in our inner hearts.

This lost-again relationship with our bitochon harms us, and even words create a belief deficit in our young. Our children are being brought up in a world where technology is all around, conjuring up a veneer of superficiality that tempts them to believe that they hold reality in their hands. We build filters and try to minimalize the exposure, but the air we breathe is different from the air of yesterday. We need to infuse them with true bitochon that will serve them in the future they will have to face.

Faith that Hashem is everything can never come from repeated phrases. It must be lived in the heart. Rebbes, teachers, and, most vitally, parents have to move up a gear and share these truths with our young. Many of our children aren’t learning these simple basics, and without them we are cheating them of their reason to be Yieden.

Often it seems many of us are just walking around thinking we wear clothing that may have fitted fifty years ago but is now too tight. It’s not true. We have had brilliant Rebbes, wondrous souls who rebuilt a broken world and gave us a Yiddishkeit dripping with Faith and Belief. Sadly we have become lazy. Yes, we learn ever more, but our connection to Hashem, the core illumination that glimmers from within each soul, has become dimmer, and our kids see this.

A fire must burn, our belief must be beyond mere words. The greatest filter that we can create is true faith and Ahavas Hashem.

When depicting the wondrous dream that Yaakov Ovinu had whilst running away from Eisav we are told that he saw angels going up and down a ladder to Heaven. Gutta Yieden ask: why did angels need a ladder? They had wings and could have just simply flown towards their destination. The Radziner Rebbe ztl explained that they were young angels that did not yet have strong wings.

Our children are the angels that we send up the ladder; they may be weak, but with our help they can grow. They are pure; we must make certain not to weigh them down with baggage of lazy mimicry that passes for frumkeit.

True, I had a frozen moment. I spoke of a size that has long become an impossible fit. However, who says today’s suit can’t fit? Yes, we need to change the cut, alter some length and width, but our children need a fresh understanding. They need unadulterated Yiddishkeit cut for the challenges of today.

Let us not fear the obstacles, but rather embrace their challenges and work on the basics of who we are to overcome them.