Jerusalem – Mishpacha Symposium Takes on Charedi (kana’us) Zealotry

Jerusalem – As the topic of mandatory segregation on busses has passions running high both in Israel and around the world, Mishpacha Magazine hosts an explosive symposium on the topic of zealotry, with three noted authorities speaking out on the topic of kanaus. Are drastic and heavy handed actions the proper way to sanctify the name of G-d in the face of behavior that some might deem inappropriate? Or is it simply misplaced fanaticism that gives Chareidi Jews a bad name?

The Mishpacha article features fascinating insights by Rabbi Moshe Grylak, Editor in Chief of Mishpacha and founder and former Editor in Chief of Yated Neeman, Yonasan Rosenblum, founder, director and spokesperson for Jewish Media Resources, an organization the attempts to clarify Chareidi society for journalists and Eytan Kobre, a lawyer who has served as Associate General Counsel at Agudath Israel of America and writes about contemporary Jewish issues for numerous publications including Mishpacha, Aish.com and more.

The below article appears this week in a special Chanukkah section by Mishpacha Magazine, content provided as a courtesy exclusive to VIN News.

Rabbi Moshe Grylak:

Kana’us, zealotry, is dangerous territory, especially when it is backed by violence. Yet Pinchas ben Elazar, whom many modern-day zealots have unfortunately claimed as the role model for their violent acts, merited HaKadosh Baruch Hu’s bris shalom, His covenant of peace. The Netziv of Volozhin explains the meaning of this covenant in his commentary on the Torah HaAmek Davar: After Pinchas’s act of zealotry, HaKadosh Baruch Hu restored his neshamah to its original state of peace and wholeness; He healed the spiritual damage that Pinchas’s violent act had caused him. HaKadosh Baruch Hu, Who fathoms the full depth of human motives, knew that Pinchas’s act stemmed from tremendous love of Klal Yisrael.

Knowing that Pinchas’s intention in slaying the Midianite woman and the Nasi of the Tribe of Shimon was purely to save the nation from sin and punishment and that he gained no personal satisfaction whatsoever from it, HaKadosh Baruch Hu deemed Pinchas worthy of this special consideration. For the damage was inevitable, despite the truth of Pinchas’s judgment and the necessity of his act, and only the Creator could repair it.

Can the same be said for the self-styled kano’im of our times? Has HaKadosh Baruch Hu announced a bris shalom with them? Or do they possess some kind of magical formula that can cleanse their hearts of the stains left by their violence? What about the zealot in Bnei Brak who decided to fight for tzniyus by hurling a burnt-out lightbulb plucked from a nearby garbage bin at a pair of women who stood talking on the street? One of the women was not dressed in accordance with the laws of modesty; the other was a chareidi woman with a baby carriage in tow. The shattered glass fell on the baby, who was certainly innocent of wrongdoing. Was this zealous tzniyus-fighter’s heart free of impure motives, of anger or other bad middos? Yet he saw himself as a Pinchas, fighting G-dly battles.

The first time I wrote about the lightbulb incident, which I had heard about from an eyewitness on the street, I was rewarded with a barrage of angry phone calls from people declaring they couldn’t forgive me for robbing that man of his zealot’s halo, and promising to settle accounts with me.

DURING MY TENURE at Yated Ne’eman, where I served as founding editor and continued several years after, I once asked Rav Shach ztz”l what approach to take in writing about the demonstrations that were taking place in Yerushalayim every Shabbos on Bar Ilan Street and on the Ramot road, typically featuring stones thrown at passing cars. Rav Shach’s answer to me, quoted from memory, was, “It’s quite possible that the real mechallelei Shabbos here are the demonstrators. First of all, throwing stones is absolutely assur in and of itself, in addition to the risk of killing someone. But aside from the stone-throwing, they’re causing Shabbos desecration through the demonstrations. Instead, they could vote in the municipal elections and shift the balance of power in the local government. With a religious majority, a lot of this chillul Shabbos could be prevented. But they won’t listen to us.…”

While I was speaking with Rav Shach, I took the opportunity to tell him about a Yerushalmi Jew who was living in Ezras Torah, which borders on the Ramot road, the scene of those weekly demonstrations. One Shabbos, when the atmosphere was heating up, a sudden intuition made him cross the road and stand among the nonreligious Jews looking on from the opposite side. Noticing one particular car that had just been hit by a large stone, he memorized its license plate number. On Sunday morning he called the licensing bureau and asked for the name and address of the car’s owner. He received the information and headed straight for the man’s house in Ramot. He knocked on the door, and the child who opened it called out to his father, “Abba! There’s some religious guy at the door.”

“Tell him I gave at the office,” the father replied.

But the Yerushalmi wouldn’t be deterred. “I really need to speak to your father,” he insisted.

The father came to the door, looking decidedly hostile.

The Yerushalmi took the plunge and said, “On Shabbat, I saw you driving on the road near my home. That pains me, but what I came for is to apologize to you for the stone that was thrown at your car. I apologize to you in the name of the people of my neighborhood, and I want you to know that the stone-throwers aren’t from our neighborhood; they come from elsewhere. You just moved here recently, I understand, so I’d also like to wish you a yishuv tov.”

They parted on good terms.

The following Friday, the Jew from Ramot phoned the Yerushalmi and told him, “My wife and I talked things over, and we decided that this Shabbos we won’t drive on the road by your house; we’ll take another route.”

A week later, he called again. “K’vod harav, the fact is that we are a bit traditional,” he said this time. “We keep kosher in our house. As you know, we’re new in the area. Could you tell us where we can buy kosher meat?”

Of course, the Yerushalmi directed him to the appropriate store. Together with his wife, the man went to the butcher shop his new friend had recommended and thanked him warmly.
Not more than a few months later, there was another phone call from Ramot. “K’vod harav,” the caller said, “in another half-year, our son will be bar mitzvah. I’d like to get him a pair of tefillin, and I’d also like him to learn something about Judaism…” Naturally, “k’vod harav” kindly acquiesced. He took the father to a reliable sofer for the tefillin, and he found a suitable tutor to prepare the boy for his bar mitzvah and give him a basic crash course in Judaism. Eventually the boy was enrolled in a yeshivah.

I told this story to Rav Shach ztz”l, and he was moved to tears.

ALLOW ME TO ADD two more stories here. At one of the Arachim seminars I had the privilege of addressing, one of the attendees confessed to me that he almost hadn’t come. He had made up his mind to explore Judaism and see what it had to offer him, and he’d signed up for the seminar. But then, while driving one Shabbos with his wife and their five-year-old son in the car, they’d been attacked by a gang of young chareidim. The little boy screamed in terror as shouting, black-clad assailants pummeled his father with their fists. Somehow he’d managed to escape, and he was on the verge of canceling his plans to attend the seminar. But logic prevailed. He realized that the bad experience he’d had couldn’t exactly be called Judaism, and he came to the seminar in spite of it. His little son, though, was still in therapy for the trauma he’d suffered that Shabbos….

A final story: One Shabbos I stayed at the Tamir Hotel, located right off the Ramot road. In the afternoon, I walked out to have a look at the demonstrators, and I met a prominent mechanech there from the Eidah HaChareidis. Shaking his head sadly as he gazed at the youngsters — some of them mere children — excitedly throwing stones onto the road, he said, “My heart sinks when I look at these hooligans of the next generation. growing up here on the road.”

Yet I continue to be inspired by my friend the Yerushalmi and the not-yet-observant Ramot resident who became his protégé. From him I learned what genuine zealotry is, the kind of zealotry that stems from ahavas Yisrael. He taught me how we are meant to fulfill the obligation of reproving our fellow Jew in a positive way. And after all, in a generation like ours, this is the only way that can possibly work. And it works without leaving irreparable damage, because HaKadosh Baruch Hu has no bris shalom with those who relish violence.

Yonoson Rosenblum:

During Chanukah we will retell the story of Mattisyahu and his five sons, whose rebellion against the mighty Seleucid Greeks began with Mattisyahu killing a Hellenized Jew bowing down to an idol. And it was the kana’us (zealousness) of Pinchas that turned Hashem’s wrath from the Jewish people after Zimri and Kozbi defiled the Mishkan. So there is a form of kana’us that is not just permissible but praiseworthy in the extreme.

Yet the Torah clearly recognized the dangers of kana’us. The din of kano’im pog’im bo is a halachah that is not taught — if you need to ask, you are not the one to act. The Torah specifically relates Pinchas’s descent from Aharon HaKohein, writes Rav Chaim Shmulevitz, to teach us that only one filled with Aharon’s quality of pursuing peace and overwhelming love for every Jew can fill the role of the kanoi. Anyone who does not act out of that closeness to Hashem or lacks the quality of being a rodef shalom is a murderer, pure and simple.

My guess is that the ratio of acts of true kana’us to those that deserve the most forceful condemnation is about one in a thousand. One clue: the overwhelming preponderance of teenagers — including, unfortunately, American yeshivah bochurim — joining in the “action,” whenever violence breaks out. I doubt that a 15-year-old ordering an 80-year-old great-grandmother to move to the back of the bus is primarily moved by his care for shmiras einayim, or that those chasing religious little girls down the street while calling them filthy names are filled with the requisite ahavas Yisrael.

Second clue: the refusal of the self-styled kano’im to listen to daas Torah. Even Rav Elyashiv has been assaulted in Meah Shearim. Rav Aharon Feldman, rosh yeshivah of Ner Israel, once told me how he and a group of other distinguished rabbanim were laughed at and ignored by a group of kids throwing rocks at cars on the Ramot road on Shabbos.

That lack of deference constitutes one of the two greatest dangers of contemporary-style kana’us: Those who view themselves as the sole protectors of the “Truth” make it harder for our Torah leaders to fulfill their role as the einei hador. Even Rav Shach ztz”l used to say, “I’m afraid of the stone-throwers.” Those stones can be real, or can take the form of pashkevillen, or even editorial pages. We have witnessed manhigei hador disparaged or given the “silent treatment” by certain organs.

A few years ago, I asked a gadol whether he had addressed certain socioeconomic problems in a new work on contemporary issues. He told me that he could not do so, because if he did, the kano’im would marginalize the influence he could have on Klal Yisrael by denouncing him in public. In other words, he could not address pressing issues because if he did he would become so discredited that no one would listen to him anyway. And then we complain that there is no leadership.

THE SECOND GREAT DAMAGE wrought by the kano’im is that they distort the Torah and make it ugly in the eyes of those far removed from Torah observance. Rav Shlomo Pappenhein of the Eidah HaChareidis, an outspoken and brave opponent of the kano’im, frequently quotes his own rebbe, Rav Yosef Dushinsky ztz”l, to the effect that those who make the Torah ugly push off the Geulah. And he notes that Rav Amram Blau, the founder of Neturei Karta, modeled all his protests on Mohandas Gandhi’s nonviolent approach.

Often when I’m struggling with a particular middah, Hashem seems to send me little hints as to how off-putting is the behavior I’m trying to correct by exposing me to others in need of the same behavior modification. If as a community we want to understand the negative impact of kana’us, we have to look no further than the reaction this week to the attack on an army base (however exaggerated by the media) by a group of hilltop youth. The media talked about nothing else all week, and leading politicians and former IDF generals took to the airwaves to say that the IDF should have shot to kill. Spokesmen for the residents of Judea and Samaria spent the entire week condemning the hilltop youth in the sharpest possible terms in order to mitigate the damage to their cause.

The backlash in Europe against Muslim immigrants, who have turned areas in which they are the majority into no-go zones for government officials, provides another example from which we can learn. Islam is a territorial religion that divides territory between that which is under Islamic sovereignty and that which is not yet under Islamic sovereignty. Judaism is not territorial in the same sense. Frankly, however, a lot of contemporary Israeli kana’us — attempts to impose standards, often by force, in what we view as “our neighborhoods” — smacks of a similar territorial impulse. The resulting secular fear of being under chareidi control constitutes one of the greatest barriers to chareidim seeking to purchase housing in non-chareidi neighborhoods.

THE MORE FREQUENT MANIFESTATIONS of kana’us in Israel have less to do with the spiritual elevation of Eretz Yisrael than with certain historical and sociological factors.
From the pre-State days, there has been a certain strain of lawlessness in Israel and an admiration of those who establish facts on the ground without undue attention to legalities. Violence has often proven effective in various political struggles, and that success has encouraged further resort to violence.

Most of the kana’us nowadays comes from the community centered in Meah Shearim — those who have been waging a hundred-year war with Zionism, and who are in perpetual battle mode.

But as the Brisker Rav once pointed out to Rav Amram Blau, even the fiercest anti-Zionists often act as though they are living in a Jewish state in which they need not worry about the harsh responses they would receive for similar acts in chutz l’Aretz. Satmar Chassidim in Williamsburg do not try to impose their standards of modesty on the gentiles with whom they share elevators in high-rise apartment buildings because doing so could prove life-threatening.

Kana’us that does not derive from an inner closeness to Hashem, like that of Pinchas, damages not only the chareidi community but the kano’im themselves. In a certain baal teshuvah yeshivah, students are absolutely forbidden to wear hats, lest they confuse donning an external garb with having achieved a certain internal spiritual level. That is a profound insight.

Kana’us that does not come from a deep connection to Hashem is by definition a purely external action. The Chovos HaLevavos writes that such external actions designed for their impression on others are in some ways worse than avodah zarah. A worshipper of avodah zarah serves only one false god; a person who acts out of a concern for the impression of others serves thousands.

Of course, we anti-kano’im have the opposite challenge: We have to worry that we are overly sensitive to what those far removed from Torah and mitzvos will say, and that as a consequence we become cold to the sight of Hashem’s mitzvos being trampled underfoot. Combating that danger requires eternal vigilance. For that reason, Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach ztz”l, the gentlest of souls, used to cry out “Shabbos” to himself when he would see people driving on Shabbos.

Eytan Kobre

In thinking about kana’us — zealotry for the sake of sanctifying G-d’s name — two seemingly polar opposites come to mind. One is the Brisker Rav’s explanation for why Iyov was punished with physical torment for remaining silent when Pharaoh asked his advice on dealing with the Jews. Iyov, the Rav explained, could readily have justified his silence with the claim that a defense of the Jews would have fallen on deaf ears. Hence the parallelism of the punishment, with its implicit message for Iyov: When one suffers from pain, crying out helps not a whit to remove the source of the pain, but one cries out nonetheless, because “az s’tut vay, shreit mehn” (when it hurts, one screams).

Across the apparent spectrum stands the story of Rav Aryeh Levin donning his Shabbos finery and entering a Jew’s shop in Yerushalayim a half hour before candlelighting, taking a seat and observing the flow of customers, which, each Friday afternoon, would unfortunately continue on long into Shabbos. After the shopkeeper had endured several anxious minutes of Rav Aryeh’s presence, he worked up the courage to ask him what he was doing there. Clasping the fellow’s hands in his, Rav Aryeh responded: “For some time now, I’ve wanted to give you tochachah for chillul Shabbos, but I said to myself, ‘How can I do so, without understanding the magnitude of the nisayon that forgoing your Shabbos customers must present to you. These last few minutes showed me that it is indeed no small matter for you to close up shop before sundown … but, mein teiere, what can I say? Shabbos is Shabbos …”

But in essence, while poles they may be, there is no conceptual dissonance between them. The Torah’s concept of kana’us presupposes a deep-seated ahavas Yisrael, and an oheiv Yisrael of Rav Aryeh’s caliber was surely deeply pained by the Shabbos desecration witnessed. Indeed, one might say he opened his mouth to scream, but being Rav Aryeh, what emerged were soft albeit pain-filled words. Or perhaps, the Brisker Rav’s dictum applies where all avenues of effective action have been exhausted and all that remains is to shrei, whereas Rav Aryeh found a way to do something that had a chance of effecting change.

Rav Mattisyahu Salomon shlita once observed that the Rambam in Hilchos Matanos Aniyim (10:2) sources the concept of Jewish brotherhood in the verse, “You are children of Hashem your G-d,” rather than in any of the many psukim that directly refer to all Jews as brothers. The reason, said the Lakewood mashgiach, is that the kinship we all share is not something independent of our relationship with the Divine, but instead stems from it. It is our common Father Who makes us brothers; by extension, the love of our brothers and the love of our Father that we call kana’us are inextricably linked.

THIS MUCH, HOWEVER, IS CLEAR: acting with kana’us requires an almost unparalleled degree of intellectual self-honesty. Consider the subtle internal reckonings the authentic kanoi must engage in. He must have the self-knowledge that he’s not acting out of illegitimate animosity toward fellow Jews (see Tosafos, Pesachim 113b s.v. Shera’a); that, quite to the contrary, he’s motivated by a love of Hashem and the concomitant pain of witnessing His mitzvos being publicly trampled, which, together, impel him to action to restore His honor; and, assuming such altruistic motives are present, that the vehemence of his protests doesn’t release within him anger and egotism that, given human nature, can all too easily overwhelm those pure motives.

Is it any wonder, then, that the license for the kanoi to take matters into his own hands is a halachah v’ein morin kein, a law that no halachic authority can direct the kanoi to fulfill, requiring instead that he act upon his intentions unilaterally? No judge could possibly give such direction absent the absolute knowledge that the intentions of the kanoi are in fact noble; only the kanoi himself, exercising searching introspection, can determine that.

Although the Gemara records a dispute as to whether performance of mitzvos generally requires kavanah, regarding the actions of the kanoi it cannot be otherwise. The Mesilas Yesharim refers to kana’us as a subset of ahavas Hashem; such love, expressed by the kanoi through zealous defense of Hashem’s honor, is not merely a condition of, but the very definition of, kana’us.

Although sincerity of motive is a highly subjective matter, it’s reasonable to assume that a good litmus test in this area is the state of the personal spiritual level of the would-be kanoi. In Michtav MeEliyahu (3:117), Rav Eliyahu Dessler writes that the most basic level of Kiddush Hashem is that which a person creates in his own life. From there he can progress to actions that spread knowledge of and respect for Hashem to other Jews, and then to his highest sensitivity level, which is the desire for all of Creation to know and serve Hashem.

But someone who, for example, appears unfazed by the existence in his own life of the chillul Hashem that Chazal tell us occurs when one has the ability to study Torah but fails to do so, wouldn’t seem to be the likeliest candidate to be a kanoi worthy of fighting Hashem’s battles in the world at large. Rav Dessler himself wonders why it is that so many people seem to have the hierarchy he described backwards, being far more concerned with creating Kiddush Hashem and preventing its opposite in relation to non-Jews than in doing so in relation to their own selves. His blunt answer, quoting Rav Yisrael Salanter, is that such people are, in truth, pursuing “kiddush shmam,” the sanctification of their own name.

EVEN THE GENUINE KANOI faces yet another danger: that his actions will attract the attention of insincere others, spiritually immature individuals acting out of any of a host of improper motivations, who will seek to board the bandwagon of zealotry for what is for them nothing more than a religiously cloaked thrill ride.

Once, Rav Aharon Kotler ztz”l, whose indefatigable efforts to save his European brethren during World War II were legendary, became so frustrated with the foot-dragging of the American Jewish establishment that he summoned a talmid and told him to ready a car for a ride into Manhattan. The Rosh Yeshivah explained: “You’ll take me to the Fifth Avenue headquarters of Jewish organization X, whereupon I’ll take a stone I’ve readied for the occasion and hurl it through the office’s big plate-glass windows. A tumult will ensue, with police and reporters sure to gather quickly, and when they ask why an old, white-bearded rabbi is smashing windows, I’ll tell them that this organization, through its inaction, is an accessory to murder.” A group of boys who had crowded around as the Rosh Yeshivah shared his plan were flush with excitement, exclaiming, “Rebbi, we’re coming with you!”

Whereupon Rav Aharon looked at them sternly and ended the discussion with just eight words: “No, for our purposes, one stone is enough.”

Is kana’us, then, still possible in our times? Like all the rest of Torah, undoubtedly it is. But the shallowness of modern society and its emphasis on the external and the highly public, which the ongoing advances of technology have only exacerbated, have made their inroads into our community as well, making the attainment of true kana’us exceedingly difficult.