Tens of thousands of Torah scholars in most of the chareidi enclaves throughout the country participated this past Sunday in a massive event of the Siyum Maseches Eruvin and a memorial gathering commemorating the upcoming yahrtzeit of HaRav Yosef Shalom Eliashiv. Those who read the Monday edition of Yated Ne'eman saw the main headline commemorating this historic event, while other news events, which usually occupy that front page slot, were shunted aside.
The television has a program where the headlines of the various national newspapers are read out. Undoubtedly, the newscaster who was supposed to read these headlines had no inkling of what it was all about. There was no mention of the event, not even marginal, in any of the secular newspapers, but the fact that tens of thousands of people took part in it, either in the Congress Hall itself in Jerusalem or in the many localities where it was broadcast live, did not seem to arouse any interest on the part of a secular newspaper editor, not as far as giving it a passing mention. So long as we do not demonstrate or burn garbage bins, such an event arouses no interest in the daily secular reportage, whereas a negligible demonstration of a few dozen people against one or another government decision gains prime coverage and discussion, a thousandfold more that an event attended by tens of thousands of chareidim.
Not that we have any complaints! On the contrary, that's the way it should be. There is no place for an exalted Torah happening amidst the polluted pages of those media which are rather filled with reports of events which should disgust any refined soul. There is no place for an impressive gathering which was attended by the vanguard of rabbonim and Torah leaders, as well as tens of thousands of loyal participants — among the refuse and garbage of those media vehicles.
This fact only comes to prove that two separate nations exist in the State of Israel, as distant from one another as East from West. If one were to tell an average secular citizen that a community of hundreds of thousands of Jews from all the strata of religious society, including the various communities and circles, young and old, with all kinds of different headcoverings perched on their heads, and including participants from abroad, concluded at the end of the week a study of Maseches Eruvin, commemorating this in a series of celebrations throughout the country and the world — he wouldn't have the faintest notion of what you were talking about. He is unfamiliar with `Eruvin' and the only `Maseches' he knows is the so-called Maseches Yissurim, the Book of Suffering, and certainly has no inkling of the nature of such a celebration or of its significance.
So go and try to explain to this benighted sector why there is no place for Torah scholars in the `Israeli melting pot' [read: army]. Go explain to them the significance of Torah study to those who pursue it - the tens of thousands of bnei yeshiva and kollel avreichim.
The walls of Jerusalem were breached by enemy armies thousands of years ago, but only after the walls of purity and sanctity were breached from within the camp. The Power of Evil stems completely from any inner weakness of the Power of Good. The way to combat it is by fortifying the bastions of the inner camp. When the battle is pitched against Torah, the eternal answer is: strengthening the camp from within.
A momentous event of Kiddush Hashem as took place this past Sunday, when the masses of Jewry declared "Hadran aloch — we will return to you, Maseches Eruvin," and immediately launched into "Ohr le'arbo'oh ossor - On the eve of the fourteenth one searches for the chometz," was, indeed, our eternal rebuttal to all those who persecute Torah scholars, and all their ilk, a declaration that so long as we cleave to Torah, no one can overcome us, not even the Netanyahu-Benet-Lapid squad. They can threaten, pass harsh laws and try to strike at us, but if our walls are reinforced, then `No weapon that is turned against you will succeed."
