n this past decade, Beit Shemesh has become a major city of immigration from the U.S. Thousands of American bnei Torah families from Lakewood and Baltimore, New York and Chicago, have built their homes there and their communities proliferate from year to year. Spoken English is commonly heard on the streets of Ramat Beit Shemesh and the shuls of these communities, each one totaling very significant numbers, replete with gabboim and ongoing shiurim, add up to figures of many thousands.
We asked the HaRav Kornfeld to expand about the principle of the issue.
One who grew up in America is used to choosing a candidate: who he is, what are his views, what is his record. Here we tell him: Vote for the list which the gedolim are backing.
What is the difference? How does the Rav explain this to a family which immigrated three years ago?
"The majority of those who made aliya are aspiring to a spiritual ascent but even if they are coming with good intentions, not everything works out smoothly in reality. The mentality here is different and this often leads to frustration and confusion: what, indeed, is the true goal? These very misconceptions thwart the very reason why they came.
"However, one who has learned to recognize the spiritual advantages of Eretz Yisroel and proceeds to do everything in order to dig himself in accordingly, will find his place here.
"The underlying principle is to bond with the Torah world under the leadership of our Torah leaders. Many believe that elections are far more subordinate to the building of our spiritual growth but after our Torah leaders determined that our voting is crucial to the existence of the Torah world and is the very connection to that world and its leadership, the reality becomes more focused.
Those who grew up in the American democratic atmosphere, approach elections with very different concepts than Israelis. Back 'home', they voted for a candidate; here they vote for a mission, a goal. There, voting is a citizenship right which a person exercises according to his personal views whereas here, it is a decisive act upon which rests the very fate of the Torah and its exponents. Many of the members of those communities did not grow up in the public systems in Eretz Yisroel and are altogether unaware of the crucial and pivotal significance of their vote.
"The vote for the chareidi parties is based on the trust that our Torah leaders know more than we with regard to the continued existence of the religiously devoted public in the country," HaRav Kornfeld said.
"In every generation there were people who thought that the rabbonim knew nothing of politics. As far back as Shushan, some thought that Mordechai was also ignorant in this area when he forbade the Jews from attending Achashverosh's festivities, and to bow down before Haman as well, and for many years, there were people who still felt he was mistaken. But we know the end of the story!"
And he added, "The Chazon Ish, HaRav Shach and all the succeeding Torah leaders determined that voting is an essential qualitative issue for the existence and continuation of chareidi Judaism, as do our present Torah leaders believe. Those who understand, and those who do not understand, those who esteem our Knesset representatives, as well as those who do not — it makes no difference. Those who do not obey the clear-cut directive of our gedolei Yisroel are declaring, as it were, that they are smarter than they, and in the past seventy years it has been shown to which depths those descendants descended. Everyone desires his offspring to remain devout and wholesome and this issue is a matter of the future of our families."
