“Beyond Words” is a newly-published seven
volume collection of Rabbi Meir Kahane’s writings from 1960 – 1990 that
originally appeared in The Jewish Press, other serial publications, and his
privately-published works.
“Beyond Words” also includes
a number of extra features:
Chronology of Rabbi Kahane's
life.
“Beyond Words” now can be
bought at Amazon.com. On the search
line, type… Beyond Words Kahane.
Beyond Words
Selected Writings of Rabbi Meir Kahane,
1960-1990
Volume 7
Yearning for the Land
Written July 27, 1990
The kilpa, the callus, that slowly and imperceptibly
covers the burgeoning adult, immutably desensitizes us and forever loses for us
the emotion and value that is the heart and nucleus of the mitzvah cell or
ritual. And so, as if suddenly – but really
as part of the slow and ongoing process – there is created a human being, a
community, almost a people that elevates the ritual to the heights reserved for
the concept, and we become practitioners of Jewish ritual, rather than emotional
and living embracers of the concept.
So it is with Tisha B’Av and the three weeks that precede
it. Not a few can emote all the laws and
customs emanating from them. Not an
Orthodox Jew will violate the rituals that make up the three weeks and
certainly not the nine days. And yet, as
with too many Jewish concepts that were meant to be living, thriving, real
things that grip the heart and soul – ha’ikar chaser min hasefer. (A Hebrew idiom, literally meaning, “the
principle is lacking from the book,” referring to the fact that the main concept
has been forgotten)
For I put it to all honest people that, of all who practice
the rituals of the three weeks and Tisha B’Av, few – all too few – mourn for Jerusalem
and the Land. I put it that most find
the three weeks an excruciating thing that prevents them from enjoying the
summer; that most look forward to its passing as quickly as possible so that
vacation and enjoyment can continue in the Catskills and all the other places
that make up the Galut enjoyment; that few, all too few, feel the stab of
pain in their heart for the Temple that is not there; for the Moslem jackals
who walk and control the Mount; for the lack of holiness and sanctity that
Jerusalem and the Temple mean.
What happens because of this is a shallow and terrible
corrosion of Judaism and a slow and terrible corruption of the Jewish
soul. Mitzvot become things to be done
with and finished; the soul becomes a hard and callous thing feeling nothing,
and, worse, mitzvot become meaningless and fraudulent as we weep for a land we
could be living in – if we wish to; as we speak of a return to a land of which
we do not wish, as we grab ourselves in emotions we do not feel.
We do not wish to leave America; we do not feel any pain in
an “exile” that the ritual has us mouthing as a thing of tragedy and pain. We enjoy the luxury of Galut and mouth
quickly the kinot, the lamentations, most of whose words we do not understand
anyhow. We sit on the floor in the Ninth
of Av and look forward to the 10th.
And enjoyment.
That is the death of Judaism, no matter how many synagogues
and shtiblech have grown. This is the
destruction of Torah as a real and vibrant “thing,” no matter how many yeshivas
have sprung up. For all of them will
produce scholars of callous soul unable to feel the pain and joy and honesty of
a mitzvah as it was meant when given by G-d at Sinai.
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