Dei'ah veDibur - Information & Insight
  

A Window into the Chareidi World

18 Sivan 5759, June 2 1999 | Mordecai Plaut, director Published Weekly
NEWS

OPINION
& COMMENT

HOME
& FAMILY

IN-DEPTH
FEATURES

VAAD HORABBONIM HAOLAMI LEINYONEI GIYUR

TOPICS IN THE NEWS

HOMEPAGE

 

Sponsored by
Shema Yisrael Torah Network
Shema Yisrael Torah Network

Produced and housed by
Jencom

Opinion & Comment
Six Comments About the Israeli Elections
by Rabbi Chaim Walder

1

The old political blocs have broken apart. The extreme Right is worth 8 Knesset seats while the extreme Left is worth 10. The Likud, Labor, Central Party, and Shinui are all in the middle. You can watch the battlefield switching suddenly, with soldiers shifting from the Right to the Left and back again. It is conceivable that Arik Sharon will even agree to support a Palestinian state, while Ehud Barak will oppose it. At the end you will no doubt see them forming new lines, altogether mixed up. No more Right and Left, but top and bottom.

On one side will be those who want to see the country run according to Jewish values, while on the other side you will see those who want Israel to be a "generic" country -- like all others. All those who have been captivated by the Rightists' charm will then suddenly understand that anti- religious extreme Rightists, such as Tommy Lapid, are even more dangerous for Judaism than Leftists. They have a fast trigger finger. Yesterday you heard Tommy say that he wants to place ten booby-trapped cars in a Palestinian refugee camp, and tomorrow you will hear where else he wants to put cars like that.

2

You surely have at some time asked yourselves about the contribution of individuals in changing history. Without a man called Bogdan Khmelnitsky, would cruel pogroms have been carried out on European Jewry in the middle of the seventeenth century? Without Vladimir Lenin, would the Communist ideology have materialized at all? Without Mikhail Gorbachev, who introduced the glasnost policy in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, would there have been even a slight hope for Communism to break down?

We must ask ourselves all of these questions in order to answer the question whether in Eretz Yisroel, which is after all a democracy, such a grave danger could emerge to the lives of chareidi Jews, just because they are Torah- observant, without Tommy Lapid? Could any other meisis who is not called Tommy Lapid give a hechsher and legalization to such overt racism and instigation against Jews?

Ask yourselves what would have happened if Avrohom Poraz had led Shinui using the same ideological message and declarations. In such a case, would Shinui have received even two thousand votes? The answer to this question answers the previous questions too. In other words, we must make every legal effort to remove this "new Kahane," Tommy Lapid, from politics before, chas vesholom, there is a second Holocaust. I again emphasize, every legal effort.

3

On Election Day I served as an observer for the United Torah Jewry Party in the Gan Chaim cooperative settlement. The chairman of the polling committee was a member of Barak's One Israel Party. He began talking to me, of course, about chareidi draft dodgers. I agreed with him that one should not dodge his obligations, but I argued that those who do not serve the country by studying Torah are the real dodgers. The result was that instead of my needing to justify why chareidim do not go to the army, he had to exert himself to explain why his people are not studying Torah and fulfilling mitzvos. Despite this being an argument, the man seemed to like the topic, and when there were no voters around he sat himself near me with his two assistants, in the area allocated for observers.

A considerable discussion evolved, around the difference between being a Jew and an Israeli, including questions such as "Why are we here?" and "What significance does our life have?" From the argument's content I learned that there is a thirst among the Leftists, especially a thirst to find significance in life. When you talk to them about this topic they take an interest in it, they ask questions and want to know more.

Contact between kibbutzniks and chareidim will eventually cause an enormous revolution, one that you will some day hear about. Suddenly these kibbutz members had a chance to see close-up a chareidi. Believe me, that was the first time they had been so close to a chareidi. Such contacts came about in more than a hundred polls on kibbutzim. The next stage will be Shabbosim on kibbutzim and Shabbosim in Bnei Brak. You were a little worried about supervision of our polls by kibbutzniks? Look how HaKodosh Boruch Hu turns each thing around so it will be beneficial.

4

Almost everyone who pushed hard for early elections found himself outside the Knesset. This teaches us an important lesson: Never believe the good things people say about you. For security's sake, distance yourself a little from what your friends tell you. You must realize that all they mean to do is to make you feel good. Don't believe your ego. Develop within yourself an anti-ego program. Remember you are only flesh and blood. Cultivate, along with your self-confidence, the capability to see a balanced picture of yourself. You must visualize your weaknesses and especially your mortality. For additional details please contact: Avigdor Kahalani, Benny Begin, Itzik Mordechai, Chanan Porat, Alex Lubotzky, Roni Milo, Dan Meridor and other proud politicians who thought they were about to conquer the whole world.

These principles are not only true in politics. They also pertain to abandoning any paying job and still more to breaking up a family unit. We must take into consideration the other scenario, not the one facing you. We must primarily try to reduce our self-image just a bit. This always helps, even for a person who is really worth something. When you want to get a raise by the usual threat of "If not, I will quit," always, always remember that the answer might easily be "So quit!" Caution and modesty contribute to stability in life. In short, even if you are talented, successful, and popular, you should make sure to pound into your skull daily that you are not the biggest bargain in the world!

5

The resignation of Binyamin Netanyahu and Benny Begin after their failure in the elections has brought a new and constructive standard to Israeli politics and Israeli society in general. Don't continue stubbornly holding on to your previous position. Don't be pitiable and pathetic. Go when the times comes and don't cause embarrassment for yourself, your friends, and your party.

The truth is that many would do the same, but they have an astonishingly simple problem. They don't have a livelihood. Many politicians have no other qualifications for anything else besides politics. If they give up politics they will be unemployed. They will be utterly devastated if they leave politics.

It would be best if only those who have somewhere else to go if they leave politics to engage in it in the first place. If not, it could happen that some people will make certain decisions only so they will not lose their livelihood, and as a result lose their self-respect, and so embarrass those they are representing and their own families. Actually this very thing happens all the time. It would be appropriate for only those who don't have any problem with forsaking politics to get mixed up in it.

6

There is a question that bothers many people: Why does the United Torah Judaism (UTJ) list grow so slowly? Why does it not grow so fast as other parties? I can answer that question with a story my friend, a Gerrer Chossid and a shrewd businessman, once told me.

"In the eighties, when the stock market in Israel was soaring by tens of percent daily, and sometimes even hundreds of percent, I went over to my father and told him: `Today I made in the stock market more than you made in your whole life.'

"My father was not moved. He raised his eyes from the gemora and answered: `Don't tell me about your moments of happiness, so that later you will not have to tell me about your mourning. The difference between you and me is that the salary I received during my life was mine, and therefore the money remained mine. But you . . ..'

"Two months later the stock market plummeted. I naturally did not tell my father about my losses, but ever since then I prefer money that is really mine," concluded the businessman.

Those five Knesset seats belong to us and only to us. They are entirely ours. That is the whole story.


All material on this site is copyrighted and its use is restricted.
Click here for conditions of use.