Do
you see this fine thing? Do you admire the humanity of it? Because the Human
Beings, my son, they believe everything is alive. Not only man and animals, but
also water, earth, stone. And also the things from them, like that hair. The
man from whom this hair came, he's bald on the other side, because I now own
his scalp. That is the way things are. But the white men, they believe everything
is dead stone, earth, animals, and people, even their own people. If things
keep trying to live, white men will rub them out. That is the difference.
These
words are from the movie Little Big Man, where the old Indian chief reflects on
the massacre of his people by the white man. The white man views everything as
dead so what’s the harm in killing something, even people? It’s dead anyway. By
contrast, the Human Beings (Native Americans to us) believe there’s life in
everything.
His
words make me think of the neo-Litvacks and the Chassidim. I distinguish neo-Litvacks
from the original Litivacks, the Vilna Gaon for example. He valued mitzvos,
musar, kabbalah, broad and pleasant learning of Torah, and middos. To the
neo-Litvacks, only one thing matters, pipulistic-lomdus on a few select perakim
of Gemara. Everything and everyone else (unless they fund such study) can drop
dead for all they care. Even the handful of kiruv schools that they finally got
around to establishing (long after Chabad paved the way) brainwash the young
baalei teshuvah also to despise everything but Gemara lomdus and the men who specialize
in it. They call those men gadolim and all but worship them like idols.
The
Rebbe Rayatz of Lubavitch helps us to understand:
This service-attaining the
predominance of form over matter, 1 leading away from the material towards the
spiritual-is difficult indeed. It is a three-fold task for which great skill is
necessary: 1) breaking away from the material, 2) coming closer to the
spiritual, and 3) effecting the superiority of form over matter. It involves
three ascending types of endeavor: 1) subjugation and rejection of matter, 2)
cognizance of the virtue of the spiritual, and an inclination toward it, and 3)
mastery of form over matter.
These three types of endeavor
correspond with three disciplines: 1) concentrating on the subjugation of
matter and exposing its unworthiness; 2) recognition of the qualities of the
spiritual, and understanding that the spiritual is the basis of all physical
existence; and 3) cultivation of the mastery of form over matter, which in turn
is sub-divided into two categories: a) sublimation and purification of matter
to render it compatible with form, and b) emphasis on the quality of form as
embodied in matter.
These three schools are hallowed
philosophies that lead to the recognition of the Creator and His service
through Torah study and the fulfillment of His mitzvot. Nevertheless, they are distinct schools and
stand on different levels. Each is a rung in the soul-ladder standing on earth
whose top reaches Heaven. 2
The first of these schools is
predicated on the subjugation of the material and demonstrating its unworthy
crassness. This includes any improper propensities one might possess, such as
overindulging in eating and other physical delights in common with animals.
When a human conducts himself like an animal, he debases himself even more than
a brute creature. For lacking the power of reason, an animal is unable to
desire anything loftier than its own physical gratification. A human, however,
is endowed with intelligence enabling him to aspire to something higher, to
moral virtue, to intellectual values. When he prefers physical pleasures he is
more degenerate than an animal. This school, which rejects the material by
depicting the baseness of physical pleasures and passions, and by describing
their dire consequences, is the school of Musar.
The second school stresses the
qualities of the spiritual, of morality and intellect. It teaches the means of
attaining these higher goals, exalting them as the basis of perfection and the
aim of Creation, making this world a fitting fulfillment of His desire for an
abode in the lower 1 worlds. This is the
school of Chakira, religious
philosophy.
The highest school expounds the
superiority of form over matter. It emphasizes the value of purified matter
(physical matter that is consecrated to a higher, spiritual purpose, and that
thus ceases to be merely physical); and of form when embodied in matter (the
spiritual that influences and elevates physical matter, and itself is no longer
merely ethereal), in an inseparable and harmonious union. In this union there
is no beginning or ending, no superior or inferior; each is essential to the
other; each is implanted within the other. One G‑d created them both for
the identical purpose of revealing His Holy Light, and only in perfect unity do
they achieve the perfection He desired. This is the approach of Chasidus.
The three schools-Musar, Chakira, and Chasidus-are
mutually dependent. The first is a basis and step toward the second; the second
complements the first and becomes the basis and step toward the third. The
third completes the other two in that it brings into rational perspective the
basic principle of creation: The foundation of foundations and pillar of
wisdoms, [is] to know that there is a First Existence Who brings into being
every existence, and all that exist in heaven and earth and between them, exist
only by virtue of His existence (Maimonides1). (On the
Teachings of Chassidus)
I believe that the Litvacks got stuck in the
first phase and then like a lion in a cage tore it apart. The neo-Litvacks don’t
even do musar anymore. They just hate everything. They perverted the musar and
became like the “White man” in the Little Big Man scene.
The problem started a long time ago, a few centuries.
They started small and got worse. And Chassidus came to rectify the problems. Only,
many Litvacks doubled down on the right-brained, uptight, rigid, narrow, and
egotistical weltanschauung. The problems got worse and worse. Then Zionism came
along to militarize it, turning it into a truly vicious enterprise. Today, we
have a freak show that on a psycho-spiritual level is well described by the grandfather
Indian chief.
Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet is a student of Rav Joseph
Soloveitchik, zt’l who while Litvish by family tradition was influenced by
Chabad and went against the grain of most of the neo-Litvish world. Rakeffet
says he once went to a Chabad shulchim convention and an Agudah convention in
the same week. At the Agudah, they raged about Open Orthodoxy, feminism, the
Internet, the Israeli government, and other topics of fear for them. At Chabad,
they talked about opening new kiruv centers and other projects in the works.
Said Rakeffet, I went to a wedding and a funeral.
The white man – so to speak – is very caught up
in death. Funerals follow him around.