There are few sentences in the English language that convey as complex a set of emotions as the words “I told you so.”
On the surface of those four simple words is absolutely vindication. They taste so sweet as they role off our tongues. But beneath them is the pain of someone else's failure, and the harsh truth that we were powerless to help before the failure occurred.
The South African Jewish community where was I privileged to grow up was overwhelmingly non-observant. Most people drove to shul on Shabbos. It was a large, Orthodox shul with barely a minyan of observant families. In the US, we would have been called Conservative or Reform, but everyone identified as Orthodox.
I have often joked that if a South African Jew would drive to shul on shabbos morning and see that there was no mechitza, they would get back into the car and drive to another shul. And they would have bristled noticeably if told that they were Conservative or Reform.
This orientation might seem ludicrous to a modern American mindset. The hypocrisy is obvious. If you're orthodox, don't drive! And if you drive, why care about a mechitza?
The State of Israel is not nice to the Palestinians. There is no way around this incredibly obvious reality.
If the State of Israel was nice to the Palestinians, there would be no bombs dropped on Gaza. No children dead children. No reason for Hamas to fire rockets at Israeli schools, shuls and towns.
If Israel was nice to the Palestinians there would be no unrest. No war. No violence. No looting in the street. No Sifrei Torah desecrated. If Israel was nice to the Palestinians there would be no BDS movement. And certainly no international condemnation.
Of course, if Israel was nice to the Palestinians, it is quite likely that there would also be no State of Israel. This too, is an incredibly obvious reality. At least to us, the Jewish people, who have had a front row seat to the centuries of destruction of our people, and the deafening silence of the world.
This week we have all been scolded.
Fights about masks, vaccines, inside versus outside? It all seems so trivial when Hamas is firing rockets at our parents, children, brothers and sisters. When rioters are looting Shul in Israel. It feels silly. We feel silly.
And of course it's silly in comparison. When faced with the ancient question of Jewish survival or even existence, everything else is trivial.
In the eery calm before the storm, or perhaps it's the quiet in the center of the hurricane, Hashem gave us the the great blessing and curse of living with cognitive dissonance.
A young father once came to the Beis Yisroel of Ger and asked him for a bracha for his son. The Rebbe replied “I give you a bracha that your son should be like all the other boys.”
The young man was taken aback. “Rebbe!”, he exclaimed, “that's not a bracha at all! I want him to be a talmid chacham, a Chassid and a tzadik!”
The Rebbe replied: “If you would only know what life is like when your child is not like the other children, you would understand the importance of my bracha.”
Much like any other year, as Shavuos approaches, students begin to realize that finals are coming. But this year is not like any other year. This year, there have been a myriad of interruptions to the course of study. And despite everyones best attempt, nothing has been normal.
All of this coalesced into a singular, anguished cry from a group of students last week:
“But Rebbe, you can't possibly expect us to review all that?! It's COVID?!”
Not a day has gone by in the past few weeks without some conversation about COVID policy. In many ways, we know so much more than we did a year ago. We have a far better understanding of how this virus spreads. Our doctors, baruch Hashem, know far better how to treat COVID patients. With the greatest of thanks to the Ribbon Shel Olam, we have vaccines which have overwhelmingly staved off the worst effects of this disease. Right now, we know that we are somewhere between the horrors and tragedies of last March, and a safe and maskless future.
But where exactly are we on that journey? It's hard to say. Because after all we have learned in the past 18 months, there is so much we still don't know.
When I was in middle school, there was a program to promote zionist education. Students were given a book and curriculum to study the history of zionism and at the end of a few months, there would be a test on the material. The top three students would win a free trip to Israel to participate in an International Zionism quiz.
I had never yet been to Israel. And while the commitment to studying copious amounts of detailed history was unappealing, the possibility of visiting Israel was too tempting to pass up.
So I signed up. Along with me were the most academically motivated Jewish kids from schools across South Africa. For months, I studied, until the day of the test arrived.
With sweating palms I completed the test, unsure of a number of my answers, but ultimately, pleased with my effort. And we waited for the scores.
(Some of these ideas were shared during the drasha in shul on the first day of Pesach.)
A few days before Pesach, I wrote an article in defense of my grandmother and yours. The basic idea that I wanted to convey is that our grandparents understood that there is a deep value in commitment, dedication and hard work. Especially, in the performance of mitzvos. It's a value that has fallen out of fashion in Yiddishkeit as we have endeavored to find more frictionless avenues for mitzvah observance (many for good halachik and hashkafik reason.)
In that article, the example I gave was of the voluntary acceptance of chumros in preparing for Pesach on the part of our grandmothers. The reason for this example was in part because of the timeliness of it. But also because this subset of the Jewish people – our maternal ancestors – are often robbed of any agency in our retrospective of history. This is true on the right and left.
On the extreme right, our mothers are often portrayed as saintly: Accepting the challenges of poverty and pain with unimaginable grace from which we could only hope to be inspired. They are rarely given the credit for struggling with their challenges.
On the extreme left, these same women are viewed as ignorant victims of a patriarchal society that intentionally sidelined female voices.
Over the past few weeks, in shiurim, on social media, and in polite conversations, I have noticed a significant uptick in trash talking our grandmothers.
Specifically, we seem to be maligning that our grandmothers would spend weeks and months with palpable anxiety over the upcoming Chag HaPesach, and the crumbs they would need to find and destroy.
As we all now know, none of that was necessary. Our generation, with our unparalleled access to information, knowledge and wisdom, can safely assure our matriarchal ancestors that their efforts were in vain. Bedikas Chametz is simply not the same as spring cleaning. It never was.
And if only they would have been as wise, knowledgable and educated as we are, they too could have entered the Chag with more sleep and less stress.