Q:
How do we free ourselves from the gentile attitudes that are all around us?
A:
To free oneself from gentile slavery, number one is to learn what are true ideals. Because when you learn Torah ideals, you begin to look down on the gentile world.
I’ll give you an example. Here’s a yeshiva man. He was four years in Mesivta high school. So in the early part of the day, his rebbes tried to do a good job on him. But in the afternoons, the English teachers did a good job on him too. And they taught him among other things that there’s such a thing as ‘music appreciation’, to appreciate music. There’s a course in college called ‘music appreciation’.
Now if there was a course in playing the trombone, banging a drum, I understand that. It’s fun to bang it. It’s fun to blow. It’s fun even to bang a tom-tom. But do I have to go to take a course and to learn how much fun it is to bang a tom-tom?
Mimanafshach, if I enjoy it, so I’ll do it. If I don’t enjoy it, I don’t. Do I need a course to teach me how to eat Limburger cheese if I don’t like it? A course in appreciation of Limburger cheese?
It’s like caviar. Now, caviar doesn’t taste good. It’s only if you train yourself. If you have, let’s say, the attitude of being an upstart, you want to be a person who affects culture, so you force yourself at the beginning to eat caviar. The first few weeks you retch; it’s disgusting. But after a while you get a taste for caviar. It’s an expensive taste. Did it pay to acquire that taste?
And therefore, what’s music appreciation? It pays to acquire that taste?
But if you talk to this yeshiva boy now, he’s poisoned. He’s indoctrinated. He has a new ideal in life which to him is just as real as anything else.
Many people think that music is a true ideal. Music is nothing but irritation of the nerves; sound waves that irritate the nerves. So if it irritates you pleasantly, good. But do you have to learn how it should irritate you? If it doesn’t, it doesn’t.
Now included in this are a great many of the affectations of the gentile world. And after a while, you begin to see through the gentiles. You see how false the ideals are. But if you’re innocent, you’re a babe in the woods, so you’re walking down Kings Highway and you see a picture, a big billboard picture, and you see a man smoking Winstons and you get the idea if you smoke Winstons you’re going to be wearing a ten gallon hat and you’ll be sitting in the boat in the choppy sea or you’ll be in the windjammer holding a sail. Or you’ll be lying on a beach with a female immodestly dressed next to you. Or you’ll be riding on a horse into the Maisa Mara (a game reserve in Kenya) as the sun is going down. All these things, if you’re innocent, you’ll get into your head associated with the cigarette.
And therefore when you see a girl holding a cigarette like this, she’s imitating hundreds of pictures. She’s not thinking a cigarette is something good. She’s holding a cigarette like this because she’s thinking that at the same time she’s wearing a ten gallon hat and she’s sitting on a horse riding into the Maisah Mara. Or she’s in a boat in the choppy sea holding a windjammer, whatever that is.
They’re plain victims of the billboards.
Here is a poor colored fellow walking down Fulton Avenue, Fulton Street. A colored fellow; he doesn’t know a thing. There’s nothing in his head at all. But he stops off at a candy store to get a mug of beer. While he’s holding a mug of beer, he thinks that he is identified with that famous jazz artist, a brown chocolate jazz player who’s on the billboard. That jazz fellow is holding a woman around with one hand and in his other hand is a jug of beer. He thinks that’s what he is when he’s drinking a beer.
So if you live with gentile ideals and you read gentile books, you’ll think like a gentile. Why is it that fellows wear ragged pants? Because they think it’s romantic to wear ragged pants. They even buy pants with patches on it, readymade patches. America is so rich you can’t find patched pants. You have to buy specially made patched pants. And he thinks with patched pants he’s something noble.
Now if he’d get into his head that patched pants is ugly, that it’s associated with bad smells – because that’s what it is according to the emes. If he would learn Torah and get in the idea in his head that mankind is dignified, he couldn’t walk out half naked with a necklace on his chest. He’d be ashamed because he learned what the truth is.
But this half naked fellow, as he walks out, he thinks that he is somebody noble who has been described in plays. He sees in plays people like that.
Or, I once had a yeshiva man, a frum yeshiva man, he married a girl from a not-religious family. So he put a sheitel on her. Whenever he used to visit his in-laws they ridiculed his wife for wearing a sheitel. So one day he took up and he struck his father-in-law in the jaw and knocked him down. He knocked his father-in-law down.
So I spoke to him and I said, “Do you know why you knocked your father-in-law down? Because you’re an American. You read so many books. You’ve seen so many movies and so many comics in which the hero punches the other fellow in the jaw. He punches him in the jaw and that’s the last of the pictures. And there’s a big star, a flash around the jaw. So you got in your head that’s a noble thing to do. You’re not a ben Torah yet. If you were a ben Torah, you’d realize how disgusting that is.”
He didn’t understand me because he’s the victim of prejudices.
So unless you learn Torah, you have all kinds of gentile prejudices in your head. And don’t think you have free will. Don’t think it’s the Torah that’s robbing you of your free will. The Torah is giving you free will. It’s opening your eyes to see how you, up till now, you’ve been walking in darkness. And now you see the light and now for the first time, you’ll become able to exercise your free will.
TAPE # 32 (May 1973)
