Mean Hippies and Mamlachto-Nazis
Carlebach Meets Caligula
The French essayist Montaigne was no Torah sage, and we don’ t come today to render him praise, chas v’chalila.
Yet, in his jottings, one uncovers here and there a turn of phrase that bespeaks what chazal termed the “wisdom of the goyim.”
One such instance of that wisdom was encountered by a bright-eyed, truth-seeking college student some four decades ago and has remained as a lamp unto his feet ever since.
And it goes like this —
“There are two things I have always known to be in singular accord — supercelestial thoughts and subterranean conduct.”
Now, the value of pearls like these is that, when acquired young, they can actually save you a great deal of time and energy, not to mention mental anguish.
And in this particular case, I'm pleased to report that this pithy little maxim spared me communing excessively with individuals whose company I most assuredly would have come to regret.
Hindsight also informs me with crystalline clarity that my then barely 20 years on the planet would not have afforded me sufficient experience or intellect to arrive at the same conclusion that Monsieur Montaigne handed me in but a few seconds.
How long it might have taken me to acquire a sagacity equal to the Frenchman's is anyone's guess.
Perhaps decades.
Perhaps never.
And so, of course, I'm thankful to Hashem for sending me that nugget at such an early juncture.
Well, after returning to the Jewish fold many years later — and even unto this day — the relevance and usefulness of this bon mot is still proving itself.
Because amongst our kin and nation this dreaded “accord” still persists — supercelestial thoughts and subterranean conduct.
To our great chagrin.
WHERE?
You may have encountered it, too, as it can be found among frum Jews — mostly those of a chasidishe/kabbalistic bent, though not exclusively. And it involves a sort of free-floating, groovy misapprehension of how the world works.
It’s an approach that’s grounded to some extent in authentic sources, but, in my view, has been taken to such an extreme as to constitute a genuine danger to us all.
If we could boil it down to a single declarative statement, it would look like this:
Either —
Evil does not exist,
Or —
Evil deeds or words must be understood as being just the hand of Hashem — so there's really nothing to be said or done in response, because in essence one cannot and should not fight the will of G-d.
Hmm…
What it amounts to, essentially, is passivity in the face of evil.
The contextualizing of pernicious behavior is just another way of condoning it, regardless the invocation of theological principles. It's just bad practice.
Ask one of these people how they justify such a stance, and they’ll tell you unequivocally — “Hakol Eloki”, it's all G-dly, as in: everything comes from Hashem.
Fine.
So, I asked one of them — a local, kabbalistically-inclined hilltop dweller — if it would be permissible for him to spit in my face and then claim “Hakol Eloki”.
He responded negatively.
But when I pressed him to answer why?, he refused, and just stared at me as if I were a blind miskein who was lacking in basic faith.
My guess is that he preferred not to admit that such an action would be categorically evil — a designation he's unwilling to entertain even as a possibility. But who can say?
In any event, what proceeds from such an outlook, in my observation, is a very cool acceptance of nearly every form of bad behavior one can imagine, including neglect of children, bullying of neighbors, and a generally derisive and unwelcoming attitude toward “outsiders” — those without the same penchant for flowing clothes and a similar laissez-faire tolerance for nastiness.
And while these actions might not rise to the enormities of Shabtai Tzvi or Jacob Frank, yimach shemam vzichram, or the peace-at-any-cost zionist lefties — who can know what these people do behind closed doors…?
The term “mean hippies” was once applied to the group by a shabbat guest of ours who had been mistreated by the clique during a stay in Nachlaot.
MEAN HIPPIES
We found that apt.
Just to wrap this section before moving on, it seems their behavior stems from the very hip notion that Hashem sends us both good and bad via good and bad shlichim (a genuinely Jewish concept). But then they take the idea a further (non-Jewish) step by deducing that there can be no evil (!) because everything ultimately issues from Hashem, a G-d who is altogether good.
WRONG.
Evil exists, and it must be fought.
But now we're moving beyond the parameters of today's scratch-in-the-sand, so let's pull it back on topic.
There's another group in which a ridiculous high-mindedness leads directly to the most loathsome behavior.
Religious zionists, to be more precise.
Religious zionists support the state of Israel in nearly every possible way. They may have questions or misgivings about the extent or reasons for their support, but they offer it nonetheless.
Many also believe it to be a temporary necessity, until such time as they can seize the levers of power and steer the zionist ship of state toward more spiritual waters.
“Soon we'll take over,” they assure us, “and make everything kosher. Just look at the progress we've made in the last few decades! We have more MKs in the Knesset, more officers in the army, more doctors in the hospitals and bureaucrats in the glorious halls of zionist apparatchika!”
And yet…
They also make peace with the anti-Torah, zionist crimes against simple Jews that commenced well before the establishment of the state.
How so…?
They claim, again, in the most misguided fashion — "hakol Eloki”.
It's all G-d.
And they continue, by saying —
That Hashem gave us a state after 2000 years of miserable wandering (which He did), therefore the state must be a repository of holiness — of G-dliness, even — and must be treated with the utmost sanctity and reverence.
Oh…?
And didn't we just celebrate Chanuka?
A holiday that proves that assumption entirely wrong?
HOW?!
Ramban (on B’reishit 49:10) explains that the kingship of the Chashmonaim — who were Kohanim and not of the tribe of Yehuda, as kings are meant to be — was not at all to Hashem’s liking, and he punished them severely for assuming it.
Their kings were killed, their rulership was marred by constant discord and clashes between factions, and all the serving Kohanim G’dolim of the period barely lived out a single year of their service!
It was precisely this instability that paved the way for the Roman conquest and the subsequent gerush that we're still suffering today.
In short, if the Chashmonaim were found so hateful in Hashem’s eyes merely because they weren't from shevet Yehuda, then al achat kama v’kama, the irreligious, anti-Torah zionists of our own day.
No justification can be made by anyone for supporting such a regime.
The historical precedent is far too damning to ignore.
And yet all that’s lost on a great majority of knitted skullcaps ready to quote Rav Kook (of whose lyrical Torah they haven't the foggiest understanding, and whose own students HID and censored his writings in order to make the man after their own image) to the effect that the State of Israel represents the yad Hashem, and accepting it, therefore, is nothing short of a religious imperative.
Moreover, if it weren't for those meddling hilltop youth and crazy, stiff-necked chareidim they'd have already safely piloted the nation into a more secure, Jewish harbor.
…Apparently, we hilltoppers make it harder for them to ingratiate themselves with the ruling Hellenist establishment.
Good Religious vs Bad Religious
Yet, while they storm about raging that everything's Eloki, they'll also readily admit that Hashem doesn't like stolen Yemenite babies, irradiated sefaradi children, and the systematic torture of individuals who've been denuded of their rights in order to obtain confessions that have no legal standing whatsoever.
They’ll also tell you that He doesn't like the instituitionalized persecution of chareidim or the vaccination of citizens against their will and contrary to all standards of accepted medical ethics and public health.
He equally doesn't condone medical experiments done on newborns or the mentally ill, or those expressing opinions against the state suddenly disappearing or dying mysteriously in her jails.
He doesn't like young men being fed to a Gazan woodchopper when there are obviously more effective means of prosecuting the war, but “hey! we also have to consider what the goyim will say!”
In the end, any attempt to present them with the insanity of supporting such a hateful regime is invariably met with, “I prefer to work with what I have.”
As if that were a Torah principle.
As if it were a measure of ‘realism’.
As if rejection and hitnatkut were not also viable options (spoiler: they are — as you’ll see in an upcoming post).
“I prefer to work with what I have.”
And if all you have is Nazis?
Then at what point do you also become a Nazi…?
Or is it sufficient just to claim that you're trying to get them to do teshuva, these misguided Nazis…?
To conclude —
When a Jew aspires to a virtuousness that has nothing to do with honest Torah principles,
When he deigns to venture beyond pshat in simple matters of ben adam l'chaveiro and develop new, abstract theoretical hashkafot to bypass traditional notions of good and evil, then…
He’ll inevitably send his seven-year-old child to school day after day to be beaten and bullied by other children without ever raising the alarm or even once intervening with teachers, so that the child better learns “to manage” and comes to appreciate that everything is Eloki. (For real. We saw this.)
He'll also countenance and even support the destruction of an innocent and vigorous 20 year-old’s spirit via ceaseless weeks of torture, incomprehensible physical and mental torment — and all in the name of extracting a confession that might better discredit an altogether courageous, idealistic and worthy segment of society.
Shem hareshaim yirkav!
Our entire avodah in this world is to rid it of evil. When we distort reality to avoid that task, we merely perpetuate the suffering of our people indefinitely.
The mean hippies and mamlachto-nazis among us have lost their grounding. They no longer distinguish between ikkar and tafel.
And that threatens us all.
Dean Maughvet