The Tactic That Subdued Antagonizing Secular Parents

Welcome to our weekly program, The Inside Story of Chabad in America, through the Mindel Archives. This week's parsha is a very unique parsha, a very important one. As the Torah says here, "Daber el kol adas bnei Yisrael" - usually the Torah says "daber el Aharon" or "tzav es bnei Yisrael," but here, very rarely, it says the words "kol adas." So Rashi explains why it says "kol adas" - "mipnei she'rov gufei Torah" - because most of the essentials of the Torah, the main mitzvos that all of Klal Yisrael had to hear, are in this parsha. That's why it says the words "kol adas" - it wanted to say that everybody should be there.

For example, this week we have mitzvos that a person should distance himself from forbidden relationships, fear your parents, keep Shabbos, don't steal, don't lie, don't swear falsely, don't curse the deaf, don't put a stumbling block in front of a blind person - these are things that are bein adam l'chaveiro, between man and his fellow - don't hate, and it goes into: don't stand idly by your neighbor's blood, and Rashi explains what that means, and love your neighbor. These types of mitzvos are very, very important, and therefore the Torah says "Daber el kol adas Yisrael" - more or less some of them are like what we're learning now in Pirkei Avos.

So here I want to mention a personal story. Even though I may have mentioned it a couple of years ago, I can mention it again for the people who didn't hear it. I used to teach in a yeshiva in Brooklyn, a [unclear] yeshiva, for many years. I was there in the afternoon - I taught Hebrew school to public school children, from four to six, Monday through Thursday, also Sunday school in the morning. These are children that have no frum background, not religious, and they just came there - 11, 12, 13 years old, some 14 - boys and girls, and I taught there. They came there to prepare for their bar mitzvah. They had no Yiddishkeit; they were not brought up religious. And I taught them about kashrus, I told them about the Yom Tovim, I told them about the mezuzah, about wearing tzitzis and tefillin.

A few parents came over to me and said they wanted to talk to me. They said, "Rabbi, you're a good man, you're a good teacher, but we probably have to take our children out of Hebrew school." I said, "Why?" They said, "We send them to Hebrew school to learn Jewish history, to become bar mitzvah - not to come home and tell us that we have to change the dishes, or we have to light candles, or we're not allowed to ride on Shabbos, and all those things. Some of us are Reform" - one of them said he's not religious at all; I don't know what's better, to be Reform or not religious at all, I don't know - "but anyway, we're sorry, we'll have to take our children out of Hebrew school."

So what should I do? I didn't know what to do, so I went to Rabbi Dr. Nissan Mindel, and I asked him, "I have this problem, what should I do?" So he tells me, he says, "Go to Rabbi Hodakov, ask him." He said Rabbi Hodakov - the Rebbe called him - he said he was a principal par excellence, the Rebbe used that word - he was a principal in Riga, he had a thousand talmidim, he was an excellent principal, he knew every student, where they were, even when they went on vacation, or even on Shabbos - he knew every single student. So he said he thought I should talk to him. He told me that this was his school, and Rabbi Mindel also went to that school - they both came from that school. This is from the yeshiva of [unclear].

So I went to Rabbi Hodakov and I told him, "What should I do?" Rabbi Hodakov told me - he was thinking - he says, "What do you teach them?" I said, "I teach them about kashrus, mezuzah, tzitzis." He says, "Who says you have to teach that? The same pasuk that says you have to wear tzitzis, and put on tefillin, and keep kosher - the same pasuk also says the things that are in this parsha: you have to be an honest person, and everything that it says there. Why don't you teach them that? What will happen," he tells me, "is when the children come home and the parents see a difference - that in public school they don't teach them those things, and here they will learn these things, how to be a nice person - the parents will realize that, and then they'll come back to you, they'll thank you, and then you can teach about Shabbos, and about kashrus, and about everything, and they'll accept it."

That's what he told me. So I did it - I stopped teaching about Shabbos, I mean I did mention it here and there, but the main thing was about not speaking loshon hora, and about being honest, like it says in the parsha - some things are pretty obvious. The end of the story is, those children - many of them whose parents had complained - they married religious girls, religious boys; some of them live in Israel now. So I got this from Rabbi Hodakov, and this was connected to the lesson of the parsha. I thought how important it is when it says "kol adas Yisrael" - how much we can learn from that, and how important that is.

Now I wanted to say more things, but I want to tell you something very special, so I'm going to do this now. Everybody now is speaking about the vaccine, questioning what they should do. Some doctors say you should take it, some doctors say no; some rabbanim say you should take the vaccine, some rabbanim say no. I found a letter from the Rebbe - this letter is actually published - and the Rebbe says here... now there are more things that I found, but here the Rebbe writes about something else, about the Zim Line, the shipping line that was run by Jews - years ago, I don't know if they have it now - about whether you're allowed to go on board the ship on Shabbos. It was an Israeli [company] - whether you're allowed to go on it on Shabbos or not. So I'm just going to read two paragraphs from this - it's a long letter - but these two paragraphs that the Rebbe writes, and then I'll tell you what I found here.

"I mentioned this particularly in reference to your inquiry regarding the disgraceful Shabbos desecration which is perpetrated by the Jewish-owned ocean liners. The claim that everything is done automatically during the twenty-four hours of Shabbos is absurd. I state this with the fullest authority, being an engineer myself and having studied mechanics - for one thing, certain machinery cannot be operated automatically, especially that connected with the steering, radio, communications, services, and similar ones."

That's one thing about the ship - the Rebbe was explaining how the ship works. Another thing is that they check it every few hours, and that's a chillul Shabbos. And the third thing the Rebbe says is about the boiler - how the boiler works - it goes into detail that I don't want to go into; that's what the Rebbe says as far as the ship is concerned.

Then the Rebbe says, in another paragraph of the same letter: "Unfortunately, there have been rabbanim who have been misled, and have misled others, on this subject, in their ignorance of the technical aspects involved, and under the influence of the misleading statements by technicians who did not choose to reveal all the facts. These rabbanim have regularly been misled into thinking, or even declaring openly, that no Shabbos desecration was involved."

So those rabbanim said that you're allowed to go on the ship; the Rebbe says no, you can't go, and the reason those rabbanim were saying that is because they were misled. Rabbanim only pasken based on the facts that they are told - that's all they know. They're not engineers; they just say what some engineers tell them. Now, similarly for us, if rabbanim are supporting [a psak] based on some doctor's opinion and the health department, these facts might be misled or changed.

For example, I'll give you an example. There's another letter that the Rebbe writes - somebody asked the Rebbe why the Rebbe doesn't [say] anything about smoking cigarettes. We have a few letters on this in our book - one letter I don't know if I have it here yet - one letter the Rebbe writes: first of all, not every doctor says that smoking cigarettes is dangerous; second, what if a doctor comes out in a year, or two or three years, and says otherwise - all the doctors will come to this [new conclusion] - we don't know. How can a rav pasken on something - a rav can only pasken based on the facts that he hears, but otherwise he's not a doctor, he shouldn't answer about cigarettes - they're not professionals, they can only go to experts, and they might be misled.

This reminds me - I remember a few years ago there was a whole discussion about shatnez, whether wool that comes from India has shatnez in it. Many rabbanim said there's no problem, many rabbanim said there is a problem, and they found out later on that there's no problem - a lot of millions of dollars was spent for nothing on testing. And some of these rabbanim who paskened - their psak was not accurate - and then they found out differently. Why? It's not the rabbanim's fault; it's that according to what they were told, they were misled.

But this is what I wanted to share, so I think it's for everybody to decide what they have to do. B'ezras Hashem, next week we will continue our Thursday night program. Thank you.