It is hard to speak about something that is clear and
obvious to everyone. The truth however is, that it is
precisely about the obvious things that one must speak,
because people [tend to] rely upon old, accepted attitudes,
forgetting the main point and drifting far away from the
purpose. Everything one does needs to have a purpose . . .
If one doesn't have any other, specific purpose in mind, one
will only do what is easy and what one wishes to do.
One must have this ultimate purpose in mind at the outset.
If even Hakodosh Boruch Hu had a "plan" before
creating the world, a person certainly needs to deliberate
before everything he does, about his aim and purpose -- only
then proceeding with action, which is the finishing touch to
his plan and the point of no return, making the formation of
a clear purpose as to what he wishes to achieve necessary
right at the beginning . . .
We ourselves have suffered greatly from our lack of specific
aims. We could have done much more with the time which we
were given in our yeshivos. We could have left yeshiva with
greater attainments than those with which we will in fact be
leaving the kollel.
We were always satisfied to meet the limited demands of our
present situation and dismissed thoughts of the future,
without making any reckoning of how soon that future would
actually arrive. Now we find ourselves in the final period.
If we utilize it properly we can make up for the lost time,
but if we waste it, we will lose everything.
We need to know what we want, to have our aim clear and to
follow the course that will lead us to the desired end. "The
end of one's deeds should be in mind at the outset." One
cannot hold on to the same set of premises all the time;
every new deed, every new beginning, needs direction as to
its end.
The kollel was founded, and all of us here are its
members. What does the kollel want to achieve? And
what do we want from the kollel? The reason for the
kollel's foundation has been written about in Beis
Yisroel, where . . . it says . . . that a kollel
is
a beis hamedrash that cultivates gedolim. In
past years, the geonim found it necessary to found a
kollel; nowadays the necessity is even greater. Then,
the purpose was to support Torah; today the purpose is to
sustain Yiddishkeit.
Then, a godol was able to emerge without a
kollel, from the Jewish environment. The conditions of
life in general were not detrimental to this happening and
were perhaps even beneficial. Then, a kollel was
simply a help, to facilitate this development. Today, when
life, the general environment and our situation, are all far
from Torah, if there is no beis hamedrash to promote
such growth, all hope of gedolei Yisroel emerging is
lost.
The question therefore is, whether there will be
gedolim, or, chas vesholom, not. However, we
have not defined what we mean by a godol, and why such
men are so vital particularly nowadays -- surely we have
always needed them.
Once, Torah [itself] was our rov. There were many Jews of
mediocre or of short spiritual stature and what was the
godol needed for? Perhaps he wasn't; perhaps the need
wasn't so apparent. From the small people, emerged mediocre
ones and from the mediocre ones, several gedolim
emerged. The godol grew by himself. He emerged from
those around him.
Things are different today. [Exactly the opposite:] A
godol is required to make the small and the mediocre
people. That function of the godol is not being
fulfilled -- the [spiritual] devastation and desolation is
because there is no godol. Once, an entire spectrum of
spiritual levels could be found in Klal Yisroel; now,
all those levels have gone. It needs a godol to bring
them back.
The question is, whether, without gedolim, Klal
Yisroel will have Torah at all. The question used to only
concern Torah [i.e. how much and where?] but not
Yiddishkeit in general. Maybe it concerned
Yiddishkeit's future but not its present. That was
never contingent on the existence of a godol.
Now, Yiddishkeit itself is in danger. Right now, not
in the future. To our chagrin, we are witnesses to Torah's
destruction. The very meaning of the word Torah has been
forgotten. It has come to symbolize the study of
Chumash and Kitzur Shulchan Oruch. Gemora study
is scant among Jewish communities at large, while Torah
discussion and debate has been forgotten utterly. The whole
idea of greatness in Torah and its discussion has been
forgotten.
The general destruction of Yiddishkeit is in the
balance today. Jewry sinks lower from day to day and we must
consider how to halt the spiritual malaise. If we lack
gedolei Torah and great men who can reverse the trend,
the very foundations of our religion are unsteady. From
where shall we take that godol, who will feel that he
is obliged to act and who will act . . .?
We need such gedolim, and a beis hamedrash to
grow such gedolim -- such a beis hamedrash has
not yet existed. To be the godol we need, greatness in
Torah is not enough. He himself must be a great man. He must
have a sense of his greatness and recognize the obligation
that rests upon him. He must rise to fulfill it, with an
independent spirit, battling the sea of denial on the one
hand and the underminers [from within the camp] on the
other.
It is incorrect to explain that the kollel aims to
produce maggidei shiur or rabbonim -- though we need a
hundred such -- because the kollel is not limited to
this. Such a view of the program makes the kollel
smaller. Rabbonim and ramim may well be necessary --
but we need to produce great men who will fight for Torah
and for our religion.
The means by which they will later wage this fight, whether
through a prominent rabbinic position or by heading a
yeshiva, is a matter for later consideration and is far from
being the kollel's purpose. The main thing is that
each member should be ready to abandon personal ambition and
career, even if his Torah would entitle him to such . . .
and not scale himself down to ends that serve his career. If
this is not a member's intention, then there is deceit in
the [current] reckoning too.
A correct grasp of current [Jewish] life shows that it is
highly unlikely that even someone versed in Shas and
poskim will attain a prominent rabbinic position from
today's generation, which neither seeks Torah, nor
understands Torah's value. Such hopes are mere fantasy. We
have to understand clearly that nobody can build a career on
Torah today and this is not what we ought to be looking
for.
What Hakodosh Boruch Hu seeks is greatness of heart
and of feeling, [that qualify one] to lead, not [merely] to
occupy a position, and to do what is in one's power to
further the honor of Hashem and His Torah.
If we are speaking of such a beis hamedrash, it will
not be like the old type of kollel, where an
avreich learned for several years in order to amass
knowledge. Here, we are training towards greatness; not in
the amount of Torah but in its quality. Fluency in
Shas and chiddushei Torah are not the main
thing, so much as Torah and thought, mussar and
yiras Shomayim, together.
Mussar is not secondary; it is primary, because the
spirituality and the quality of the man are the main thing
here. This spirituality will give him the fear of Heaven and
the greatness to maintain himself like iron against life,
and to work against all the factors that threaten to sweep
Yiddishkeit away, to battle them with all his power,
to resist them and to fight for Hashem's honor. This
requires high quality, which Torah study will give him, and
spirituality of thought, which will give him the ability to
become this godol . . .
