Mayhem - Part I

"Those who toil in Torah for altruistic reasons, merit many things." So says the first Mishnah in the Sixth Chapter of Ethics of Our Fathers. Why doesn't that always work?

I will make it clear to begin with that I point the finger at myself as much as at any other individual or group. I only raise the issue now because of the many things I have heard and seen over the past week that are really beginning to get to me about this issue.

As I said, I will point the finger at myself first. Although I have spent many years of my life focused on Torah study, and have had the merit to study and teach much Torah, there have been many occasions on which I have been less than a perfect example of what the Torah is meant to produce. What has been wrong with my Torah study that it has failed to bring out in me all the wonderful things it should have?

Perhaps it is me, you might argue. But someone mentioned to me about the violence he suffered at the hands of his fifth-grade rebbe and showed me the physical scars, and shared a bit of the emotional ones. I had the same rebbe. He was violent and brutal. Why didn't his Torah study refine him as it "should have?"

I read of the violent protests going on in Jerusalem and quite frankly am filled with shame and embarrassment. I don't begrudge the protesters the right to protest. But have they stopped to think about the way they are beginning to look to the rest of the world? Is their motive truly altruistic and born of a righteous indignation, or are they using the parking lot and other issues as an excuse to vent their own anger at who-knows-what. These people all look like they are serious students of Torah and I certainly don't question that. But why hasn't their Torah study refined their character?

I read on various frum news sites of the health and building code violations of various chassidic camps in the Catskills and the camp proprietors refusal to heed the government officials. I feel the same shame and embarrassment. Where is the refinement from Torah study there?

My point here is not to bash the charedi world. My point is to encourage all of those of us who feel that we are part of the world, or somehow related to it, to stop and take pause.

Why are we how we are? Are we what we should or could be? Do we realize what we are doing half the time?