WE OBJECT
Three years ago this week, I wrote the following paragraphs in the wake of the US Supreme Court decision in Obergefell:
In all matters, whether in our own lives or in affairs of the world at large, it’s important to try to view things from the perspective of the Ribbono shel Olam. Last week, three Jewish justices formed the bulk of the majority that, over the strenuous objections of four Catholic justices, issued a diktat celebrating same-gender coupling and enshrining it as the law of a land where millions of devout Christian citizens consider it anathema.
Can we begin to imagine the depth of the chillul Hashem — meaning, literally, the void of G-d-liness — that has been created? Can we even begin to identify with the tzaar haShechinah, over what has happened?
If a Jew is not viscerally troubled by an event with such grave moral implications as this one, that would seem to bespeak an absence of a kind of kirvas Elokim that ought naturally to lead to a feeling of imo anochi b’tzarah toward our Creator. Perhaps it sounds strange, but a ruling like this one can be an opportunity for drawing nearer to Hashem even as the world pulls away from Him.
As a result of the court’s flagrant rebellion against G-d’s law and the chillul Hashem it engendered, it would seem that from a vantage point of spiritual truth, America is now a more dangerous, or endangered, place than it was just days ago.
But three weeks ago, something happened, not in majority-gentile America, but in Arzteinu Hakedoshah, about which I don’t even have the heart to compose my own words. I’ll just excerpt from news reports:
A quarter of a million people from around the world gathered in Tel Aviv today to march in the largest ever pride parade in the Middle East [the city’s 20th annual one, attracting 50,000 more people than last year’s].
Voted the world’s “Best [***] City” for [attendees of the parade], Tel Aviv’s Pride Parade is widely recognized as one of the world’s leading [***] events [of its kind], attracting thousands of visitors from around the globe. The parade marked the end of a two-week-long festival…. Celebrations are expected to continue throughout the weekend, with massive after-parties attracting tens of thousands of partygoers.
Two days after the parade, Benjamin Netanyahu told a gathering of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) to applause, “There’s only one state in the Middle East that welcomes [these people] … where [they] walk proudly on a Tel Aviv beach and participate here, in our Knesset deliberations, in our government.” Tel Aviv-Yafo Mayor Ron Huldai [whose municipality helped fund the events] said: “Tel Aviv, which has already been acknowledged as the world’s ‘most [***] friendly city’… will continue to… act as a welcoming destination for the International [***] community.” *US ambassador to Israel David Friedman tweeted, “I am proud of everyone who is marching in the Parade in support of diversity and equality.”
Writing a weekly column read by many Jews has its advantages. But it also imposes, at times, a very great responsibility, which I, and anyone similarly situated, dare not shirk.
Hashem is described at times as being the greatest of ilmim, mutes, for He stands silently by, even as the unthinkable takes place, whether during the Churban Beis Hamikdash (Gittin 56b) or during an event like this one. But just as in Nishmas, we say that Hashem is meisiach ilmim, giving verbal expression to those mortals who cannot speak, so too are we given the opportunity and responsibility to say on His behalf that which, given the nature of This World, He does not.
I believe that at this moment in time, this is the responsibility: It cannot be that in all of the vast expanse of the contemporary frum media, not a word is written and not one voice is raised, even softly, even for a fleeting moment, to object in the Name of G-d and His People. For Him, for us, if for no one else.
We object.
Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 716. Eytan Kobre may be contacted directly at kobre@mishpacha.com
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* Did the Ambassador have to be “proud”? Did he have to say anything at all?
Rabbi Mizrachi shlit”a said "those who stood with Korach, went down with Korach" and 'those who stood by and clapped at the incident of the Golden Calf even though they didn’t dance and frolic received what they deserved via the Leviim' (what he said in my words).
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