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The Baal Teshuva Movement TAMUZ, 57 40 I JUNE, 19$0 VOLUME XIV, NUMBER 9 $1.25 ' ' The Baal Teshuva Movement Aish Hatorah • Bostoner Rebbe: Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Horowitz• CHABAD • Dvar Yerushalayim • Rabbi Shlomo · Freifeld • Gerrer Rebbe • Rabbi Baruch ·.. Horowitz • Jewish Education Progra . • Kosel Maarovi • Moreshet Avot/ El HaMekorot • NCSY • Neve Yerushalayim •Ohr Somayach . • P'eylim •Rabbi Nota Schiller• Sh' or Yashuv •Rabbi Meir Shuster • Horav Elazar Shach • Rabbi Mendel Weinbach •Rabbi Noach Weinberg ... and much much more. THE JEWISH BSERVER In this issue ... THE BAAL TESHUVA MOVEMENT Prologue . 1 4 Chassidic Insights: Understanding Others Through Ourselves, Rabbi Levi Yitzchok Horowitz. 5 A Time to Reach Out: "Those Days Have Come," Rabbi Baruch Horovitz 8 The First Step: The Teshuva Solicitors, Rabbi Hillel Goldberg 10 Teaching the Men: Studying Gemora-The Means and the Ends of the Teshuva Process, Rabbi Nola Schiller . 13 Teaching the Women: How to Handle a Hungry Heart, Hanoch Teller 16 THE JEWISH OBSERVER (ISSN Watching the Airplanes, Abraham ben Shmuel . 19 0(121-6615) is published monthly, Kiruv in Israel: except Ju!y and August. by the Bringing Them to our Planet, Ezriel Hildesheimer 20 Agudath Israel of America, 5 Beekman Street, New York, N.Y The Homecoming Ordeal: 10038. Second class postage paid Helping the Baal Teshuva in America, at New York, N.Y. Subscription Rabbi Mendel Weinbach . 25 $9.00 per year; two years. $17.50; three years, $25.00; outside of the The American Scene: United States, $10.00 per year. A Famine in the Land, Avrohom Y. HaCohen 27 Single copy, $1.25 Printed in the U.S.A. The American Scene: Reaching the Kids-The JEP Connection, RABBI NrsSON WOLPlN Eliezer Gevirtz . Editor 31 The American Scene: Editorial Board "A Time for Action" Revisited, DR ERNST BODENHEIMER Rabbi Chaim Friedman ..... 36 Chairman RABBI NATHAN BULMAN "Come to the Chasana" 38 RABBI JOSEPH ELIAS JOSEPH FR!EDENSON The Call to Action: RABBI MOSHE SHERER Shedding Our Blinders, Rabbi Noach Weinberg 39 Epilogue .......................... 41 THE JEWISH OBSERVER does not assume responsibility for the Books For Teshuva/Return Kashrus of any product or ser­ Reaching Out With Literature, a review article 43 vice advertised in its pages. To the File, Menachem Lubinsky .......... 54 JUNE 1980, VOL. XIV, NO. 9 TAMUZ 5740 •"•Y'<~ ~'<'>"' ~'"' ,___-• '''"""'"'" ._,,,,,- baum became a baal teshuva, and the entire world stood in awe. Today, thousands of young Jews­ intelligent, worldly, highly quali­ fied professionals among them­ THE BAAL TESHUVA MOVEMENT are searching for Tor1;1h, and UJe are in danger of ignoring them . ... R.ABBJ SHLOMO FREIFELD, Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivas Sh.or Yoshuv, Far Rockaway, NY Every time G-d grants Kial Yisroel some spark of inspiration and they fail to utilize it properly, its power is exploited by other forces. In the sixth century of the sixth milennia, a tremendous light of wisdom came to the world, just as the Zohar Hakadosh predicted it would. Since we did not fully utilize it for Torah, it was exploited by scientists to foster an industrial and tech­ nological revolution ... Kabbalistic trad;tion spoke qf the year 1948 as a time of heavenly inspiration for kib­ butz goluyos (ingathering the exiles). Once again we were not able to utilize the opportunity, and the secular Zionists exploited it to create a state, .. In our own times, there is a divine inspiration for teshuva. Once again the Torah comrnunity missed the opportunity to do teshuva, and only the non-religious have taken advantage of it. Gerrer Rebbe, Rabbi Simcha Bunim Alter N''~'71V How do you "return" to where you never were? Many people today speak of a return to Judaism. Teshuva is the word they use in Hebrew. But in any language, how can anyone who was always elsewhere come "back"? The sages say that the souls of all Jews- those who had been born, along with those not yet born-were present at Sinai. Thus one could speak of return in terms of a collective unconscious or deja vu. But there is a more immediate way of relating to the phenomenon of thousands of young Jews being awakened to Judaism. Teshuva means return, true. But it also means answer, or response . , . or, perhaps, echo. At one level, what we are witnessing today is the answer to two thousand years of persecution, forced assimilation and YlSHIVA DYAR YERUSHALAYlM seduction. But it is also the answering echo of a brit that has "For 25 years I in Leningrad, reverberated through the centMries; a covenant binding a never see Jewish wedding-until people and their G-d u1ith a law and a land. today, when my father and mother get married in Brooklyn, It is Mordeclwi Schiller in JERUSALEM ECHOES beautiful .. , beautiful!" THE TESHUVA MOVEMENT Prologue Teshuva-it's as old as sin. In fact, it's older, for the discovering their Yiddishkeit, even a perjorative. Not Talmud tells us that it was created even before the world so: Consider the glory of being associated with the (Nedarim 38b) ... Is this confusing? Does it knock the status of constant awareness of one's shortcomings and props out from under your thinking? Indeed, it should continuously struggling to overcome them, forever provoke a multitude of questions that are not easy to striving for higher attainments .... Would we but all be answer. worthy of the title baa/ teshuva! On the other hand, the concept of teshuva preceed­ As the ranks of those returning to Torah grew, so ing creation of the world also answers a host of ques­ have efforts proliferated, which are specifically geared tions-questions regarding the little boy, who, out of to their needs. Some of these efforts are part of world­ the blue comes home from a JEP Shabbaton to his Phila­ wide movements, like the Lubavitch network of shli­ delphia-suburb ranch house and announces to his chim and Chabad houses that circle the globe; or the parents that as of then and there he refuses to eat any­ Union of Orthodox Congregations of America's NCSY thing but kosher ... the NCSY veteran who says No to movement that serves American high school-age Barnard, and packs up for Neve Yerushalayim in Israel youth; Agudath Israel's Jewish Education Program; instead ... the stock broker who walks into a Lubavitch and the Pe'ylim volunteers. Some are exerted by mitzva tank to put on tefillin on a lark, and now puts schools, yeshivas, seminaries. And some are the efforts them on daily, as a matter of course . .. the Israeli movie of individuals-people who defy convenient labels; actor studying bechavruso in a baa[ teshuva yeshiva people who work with and around existing schools, but with a former kibbutznik ... the erstwhile drug peddler by virtue of legendary devotion and successes have pulling kids off the street in a Gali! town-to study become institutions unto themselves. Torah ... the metallurgical engineer who threw away a Their work should be a source of interest and successful career in the USSR to live "an honest life;· inspiration to us; and indeed, there is a fascination with and now is Shomer Shabbos in Boro Park ... the para­ every facet of the teshuva phenomenon: Just exactly trooper ... the tichonist ... the Jew-for J-- recruiter what is the climate of the times that has produced this now in a kollel. ... How does this happen? How do situation? What are its implications? . .. How are people, so deeply involved in late 20th Century mores potential baalei teshuva reached? How are they received and values-so sunk in the quagmire of its lifestyles­ and accommodated in various schools and institutions? how do they overcome all the elements of human nature What happens when they leave? ... Can the Israeli and change so radically? It must be by the power of success be duplicated in America? What, indeed is something older than nature-older than the world being done here? What more can-and must-be done? itself: teshuva. We have invited some of the people involved in the Teshuva is indeed a supernatural act. As Teshuva Movement, including several pioneers in the Rabbi Yeruchem Levovitz, the Mirrer Mashgiach field, to comment on these topics for The Jewish 7"?1 explained: Yaakov prepared for his encounter Observer. with his brother Eisav in three ways-tefilla, gifts, By no means do the articles in these pages pretend and warfare. The Ramban points out that Yaakov to exhaust the topic; in fact, there are some glaring needed to resort to the other avenues; he could omissions among the people and institutions repre­ not depend on tefilla alone to overcome his sented here. For a more complete picture, we ask the brother, for one may not rely on a miracle . ... To reader to investigate on his own-in back issues of The this Reb Yeruchem added, Yaakov also could not Jewish Observer*, and perhaps in his own backyard. expect Eisav to yield to his entreaties, for that And then we ask the reader to join us in some soul­ would have called for Eisav to overcome his searching of our own. ... nature-and human nature is also teva, nature ... Those who overcome their natural inclinations perform miraculous deeds. thus teshuva, *"Russian Conversations," Shneur Za!man Yudkin and Shimon Grilius (Jan. '76), "Two Sides of the Teshuva Movement," Ellen overcoming one's nature, is a supernatural act. Wills/Rabbi Noach Weinberg (June '77), "The Israeli Baal Teshuva The past ten years have witnessed a remarkable Movement,'' Rabbi Mendel Weinbach (Mar. '78). "Now That increase in the phenomenon now known as The They're Here," Regina Presser (Sept. '79), "Helping Others Make it," Teshuva Movement.
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