TRUE SAFETY
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TRUE SAFETY
Harav Y. Reuven Rubin Shlita
“Have a nice day, and may you stay safe.” So the kind elderly stranger whispered to me. I was shopping with my daughter and somehow fell into conversation with a fellow shopper. Turns out the fellow was a retired policeman and worked in the Jewish community many years ago. I often find myself in conversations with total strangers. It must be something about my long coat and my New York twang that seems to attract interest in others. In the last months, the tone of these friendly shmoozes have definitely taken on a more cautionary tone. Older gentiles shaking my hand and offering encouragement and understanding has become the norm and it bespeaks a sense of disquiet in the rise of antisemitism we are all experiencing. Being of an older generation, this outbreak of open Jewish hate is something I was raised to believe was a relic of the ‘bad old times’ and that we would never understand nor have to experience it in our times. Well, as is often said, anti-Semitism is a light sleeper, and as the civilised western world has lulled itself to sleep, this dark reality has reawakened in all its ugliness.
As a youngster, I frolicked in suburban tranquillity; there may have been the rare harsh muttering of anti-Jewish feeling, but nothing that would strike any alarm bells. Today, serious discussions of fleeing abound; places of certified safety for the Jewish community need yellow-vested security guards. The tragedy of the Heaton Park Synagogue is very stark in our minds, and the fact that such a barbaric act could have happened in this green and pleasant land strikes fear into our communal consciousness.
Why now? What has caused this antipathy to gain so much force at this point in time? I am certain reams of paper are being printed with worthy studies that will endeavour to find suitable answers to this and other worthy questions. I am no professor of history nor current events, no, I’m just a yiedel born into a world that whispered of hope, and find myself now the object of sympathy from strangers in a shopping mall.
Having had the merit to serve in communities on three different continents has given me some small insight into a world that is rapidly being devoured by a creeping G-dlessness. This all threatens what was once the paradigm of civility amongst the nations of the West. Where does the Jewish world fit into this conflict of morality? Simple, it is the Torah and Klall Yisroel that are the only bastion of hope in the chaos. Simple and yes, clear, but muddied by our own inner conflicts. We, the ‘light unto the nations,’ have once again created fissures within ourselves that obscure the perfection of Hashem’s Will for mankind. We fight over matters that are imbued with the title Leshem Shomayim but quickly spin into chilul Hashem instead. Communities split, demonstrations held with unwieldy abandon of all derech eretz, this and so much more. Our last generations have been blessed with so much growth, Torah communities count their numbers in the tens of thousands, and yet, we fight amongst our own and split whatever is holy asunder. It is only Sholom within our ranks that will bring true peace and redemption, and yet tragically Hashem weeps in our golus as we blithely plan our next step into chaos. Sweet Yieden, I am hardly worthy of being one to tell others what they need to do.
I’m just a good friend who sees a lot of pain. We need to cure our fissures from within, only then will the world see the enormous light we have been given by the Eibishter. I fully realise I present here nothing we all don’t know, but, well, I’m saddened that total strangers have to bless me with safety when we all know that in the Torah we can bring just this safety to the entirety of Hashem’s creation.