Went to a vort tonight with a book in hand, but when two men
sat across from me I felt obligated to speak to them. Usually that’s trouble.
One didn’t speak English so that was over fast, but the other did. Where are
you from, I asked. I do that to start the conversation, nearly always complementing
the man’s city and hoping he’ll talk about it. But what usually happens,
happened. Montreal he said. Oh, that’s a nice place, I said. He grimaced and
said, I’m glad I’m here now. Because the rule seems to be with frum people, at
least yeshivish ones, that you aren’t allowed to say anything nice about the
gentile world. And then if you live in Israel, you have to praise it. He said,
all Jews should live here. I said, are you a Zionist? Oh no, it’s not that he
said, but it’s the place for Jews. So since he’s in the yeshiva world he's
obligated to deny being a Zionist, even though he’s a Zionist. I countered with
something about strong Jewish communities in chutz also being good and that
most Jews shouldn’t come here, blah, blah, blah. Where are you from he said?
New York City. Where? Queens. Where? Flushing. The non-stop questions are also
a feature of the frum world. What do you do, he asked. Another obligatory
question that I really don’t like being asked by yeshiva people since the
yeshivas don’t let the students get any job training. You won’t let me train
for parnassah, so why are you asking me what I do? I mentioned that the man
across from us spoke Russian and asked if he learned French in Montreal. Of
course, he said. Feeling foolish, like I generally do when somebody says of
course, I asked if he learned it well enough to speak. Yes, he said. I said something in
French and said it’s a lovely language. He said, the French in Canada is low
class. I’m thinking, it’s French, couldn’t be too bad. I said, is it like
American English vs. British? He said, more like Tennessee, where he taught for
a while. Again, he made a face showing disdain. So he doesn’t like Montreal,
doesn’t like Tennessee, doesn’t like their accent, doesn’t like chutzeh l’aretz.
I asked if met the Tosher Rebbe. He made another face, and said maybe once. I’m
a Litvack he said, even though I come from Chassidim. Again, he made a face. So
he doesn’t like Chassidim either. He told me he saw the Belzer rebbe in NY. I
asked if he ever saw the Lubavitcher Rebbe. He made a face again. He said he
lived in a Chabad neighborhood in Montreal but with a look of disdain and pride
said didn’t go to shul there. Then he said that he went to a Lubavitch camp as a
kid. I said, oh, did you learn any nigunim. He said, there’s one I remember.
You might not want to hear it. I didn’t know what to say, but I was guessing
that he was about to say something else negative. And sure enough, when he sang
it to me it was a song about Moshiach being the Rebbe. He scowled again. Somehow
he felt it was acceptable to condemn Lubavitch to me. It’s like a white guy
looking around the bar and seeing no blacks feeling its OK to utter the n-word to the white guy next to him. Maybe he sensed my tiring of his
complaining so he went to say something nice about Lubavitch which was that
there were Chabad talmidei chochamim in Montreal. That’s the only possible
complement with these people. I told him Rabbi Avigdor Miller studied with a
Chabad Rosh Yeshiva, Rabbi Axelrod, in Baltimore, and that Rabbi Axelrod taught
him for free an entire mesechta over the course of a year. The man nodded his approval.
I said Rabbi Miller said that Rabbi Axelrod’s bentching took longer than his
eating. At this point my dinner companion seemed to get the point that for his
every condemnation I was going to say something positive. And from there the
conversation died down because we were talking two different languages. I am
not the world’s most positive person, but around these characters I’m Mr.
Sunshine. They think it’s their job to hate everything that doesn’t take place
in a Litvish yeshiva and assume that anybody who looks like them will go along with that.
So after the interaction, I open up my Cheyenu and here’s what I saw. The Rebbe notes that parshas Kedoshim which gives a general call of mitzvos to the Jews starts with a positive message: be holy. You might think that it would give a warning about violating commandments. However, the fear approach generally doesn’t work as well as giving people something positive to do. So what about Tehillim: turn from evil and do good? Says the Rebbe, read that as turn from evil by first doing good.
What a contrast.