Q:
The frum community has little real association with the 90% of other Jews. How can people be brought back if we avoid them out of fear of their influence?
A:
That’s a good and legitimate question.
But first let me explain something. In case, if you’re not a good swimmer, you’re advised never to try to save somebody who is drowning. Because he’s sure to pull you down. If you’re a good swimmer, then you can swim over to him and give him a good punch and knock him out so he won’t struggle anymore and drag him to dry land.
Now, what does that mean for today’s talk? You don’t punch anybody to make him a baal teshuva. But there’s a different way you knock him out. I’ll give you a mashal. If you can drag him, let’s say, to a Lubavitcher farbreng – a thousand people are standing on their feet; there’s no place to sit down. A thousand are standing on their feet and they’re all singing together, it’s a punch in the head! You’re knocked out. You don’t think anymore. The emotions are so violent and so beautiful that people are picked up and carried by the wave of the ocean of feeling. And many people have been brought back to Judaism just by that.
I remember almost sixty years ago a boy came from the west into the yeshiva. And one of my chaveirim wanted to influence him so he started from the beginning, to prove that there’s Hashem, briyas ha’olam yesh meayin, all the yesodos haemunah.
I said, “That’s not the way to do it. If you’re going to start from the beginning with him, he’ll challenge you at every step. No. He’s been brought up the other way. He wasn’t brought up to be a maamin. You’ll start teaching him emunah? No. Start teaching him the Gemara.”
Right away. Get him involved in Gemara. Once he gets into the spirit of the Gemara, there’s a kashe and he feels he is accomplishing, he’s learning well, then he becomes identified with the Gemara and even without thinking, he becomes already a defender of the Torah. That’s the way to do it. If you mean business, that’s how you achieve things.
You don’t achieve teshuva by teaching people, “Believe in Hashem. He created the world out of nothing. The world was nothing at the beginning. In the beginning even energy particles didn’t exist. And Hashem said, ‘Yehi – let it be,’ and energy came into existence and the particles came together at Hashem’s command and created this and created that” – which is the truth; that’s the way the Chumash talks.
But if you want to win over a baal teshuva, how do you win him over? With music, frum music. With melave malkas. With emotions, with happiness and simcha and friendship. Give him a good Shabbos meal. Let him sing zemiros together. That’s the way to win people in.
How are people taken away from Judaism? Is it by logic? When you see these boys come out of the subways, twenty boys with saffron robes and long pigtails; who are these monks? Jews. Not a single Italian or Irishmen among them. How did that happen? Did they sit down and study the Torah and reject the Torah? They didn’t study anything. It’s emotions. So many are going lost only because of emotions.
So let us, let us use emotions to bring them back again! Friendship; certainly.
Now the question is this. According to what you heard here, that you should isolate yourself, then how can we go out and show friendship to other people?
You must know, חייך וחיי חברך – if it’s a question of your life and your friend’s life, your life comes first. Your life comes first. If you’re going to bring into your house somebody who has non-Jewish behavior, and you have children in the house, forget about it. You can’t afford to do that.
You must go out to them in an organized way. And I’ll tell you how to do it. If you yourself try to contact people on the street, you can do that. You can hand them literature. Find out where they live. Send them subscriptions to Orthodox newspapers. Send them Orthodox pamphlets. Little by little, the message comes in every week by the mailman instead of you coming personally.
Now, after a while, if you want you can call up and find out how things are going and on an individual one-to-one basis you can be mekarev them. Or, you bring them in groups. Not in your home. In groups outside the home. And you teach them. It’s being done. Many places are doing it. It’s not being done enough. You can bring in Jews by the thousands if you really intend to do it. Most people, however, are not interested. And therefore, it’s not being done.
But don’t try to bring them in. Here; here’s a case of a young man who tried to convert an Italian girl. Well he converted her, but she converted him too. I don’t want to say what happened subsequently. She ruined him.
Like it says in the Gemara, אברהם מגייר את האנשים ושרה מגיירת את הנשים – Avraham was converting men, not women (Bereishis Rabbah 39:14). Don’t convert women! Keep away from women! And women, don’t try to convert men! Women should convert women. Otherwise, who knows what’s going to happen? They might drag you down into the ocean together and drown together.
And therefore it’s possible to save Jews without sacrificing your family, but it doesn’t mean you have to become an associate of irreligious people. If you see a sincere young man or you’re a woman and you see a sincere young woman and they have an interest for Judaism, you can be friendly with them. You can invite them sometimes to your home if they’ll cooperate and behave properly and dress properly. And little by little, that’s how many have been drawn in.
But just to give up all principles and let him associate with you and you associate with them, no, it’s impossible to do that because your life is number one of the agenda. חייך קודמין.
February 1989
