Hillel said: Be from the students of Aharon: love peace pursue peace love humanity and bring them close to Torah (Pirkei Avos 1:12). 

The injunction to draw others closer to Torah is highly relevant to Rosh HaShanah. Every year the Alter of Kelm hung a yellowing poster in the beis medrash of the Talmud Torah of Kelm that concluded with the following words: “We for our part are called upon to crown the L-rd as King of kings. With what shall we crown him? With love for others and charitable acts as Moshe said in his parting blessing: ‘There will be a King in Yeshurun when the leaders of the people gather together with the tribes of Israel as one’ (Devarim 33:5).” 

Hillel teaches us that there can be no greater act of love for our fellow Jew than to draw him close to Torah. And nothing is more essential to the unity of the Jewish People which the Alter saw as fundamental to Hashem’s Malchus (Kingship) than recognition of our shared receipt of the Torah.

Yet any honest evaluation of the efforts of the Torah community to draw other Jews close would conclude that we are falling far short of our potential. Worse too often certain elements of the community seem to be engaged in a conscious effort to drive away Jews thirsting for dvar Hashem. 

At the individual level it is clear enough what must be done. We must instill in ourselves and our children as Rav Elyashiv has repeatedly said a constant awareness of the imperative “that the Name of Heaven should become beloved through you.” That means viewing every contact with a non-religious Jew as an opportunity at the very least to change perceptions. Nothing more is required than displaying the middos that we are taught to exemplify starting with ahavas habriyos. 

Part of our problem is that we fail to appreciate our own potential to have a positive impact. In my experience almost every contact between Torah Jews and non-religious Jews changes perceptions in a positive direction as long as the Torah Jew acknowledges the existence of his fellow Jew. 

When Jews are exposed to Torah wisdom in a non-threatening environment many respond strongly. For instance premarital counseling on Jewish family life for every Jewish couple helped change the face of South African Jewry. Religious councils of many cities in Israel now offer such individualized teaching in an attractive setting. The responses have been overwhelmingly enthusiastic. 

Even before the positive comes the “sur meira” (turning from evil). Burning garbage cans uprooting traffic lights randomly stoning cars in Ramat Beit Shemesh to express displeasure with the Jerusalem pride parade or threatening to break the living room TV of one’s neighbors have surprisingly not proven to be effective kiruv tools — and don’t even work notably well with the national religious community. 

But once we get past the individual level — act like a mentsch and not the opposite — matters become a great deal more complicated. To what extent should concern about the perceptions of the non-observant world affect our communal course of action? Should we for instance continue to place our hopes for some solution to the housing crunch on the government’s creation of new all-chareidi cities or should young couples be looking toward more mixed communities where they would inevitably have more contact with non-religious Jews? Have we entered into a Faustian bargain with the government: We’ll give you Kiryat Sefer but you must stay out of Modiin? 

Here are just a few examples of quandaries to which I do not claim to have the answer: 

The massive rally endorsed by all the Gedolim in support of the Emmanuel parents sentenced to jail for contempt of the Supreme Court was an inspiring demonstration of unity and a great kiddush Hashem. But let’s consider the secular reaction — and here I’m relying not only on the secular press but also on the testimony of campus kiruv workers — to the rally. Many secular Jews viewed the mass demonstration as a total rejection of Israeli democracy. And the size of the demonstration terrified them with the prospect of an imminent chareidi takeover and the imposition of a theocracy. 

How important is it for us to respond l’taamam (according to their premises) to show them that their fears are unfounded as I did over a period of weeks in the Jerusalem Post? Should secular fears ever be taken into account in planning our communal response? 

The controversy over the building of an underground emergency room for Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon resulted in three weeks of nonstop attacks on the chareidi public. We were accused of a skewed value system that places ancient (and perhaps pagan) bones over the preservation of Jewish lives today. The hypocrisy of some of those charges was revealed when the construction of the new emergency room was halted because it would require the destruction of a very old olive tree on the site. 

Still the Barzilai parshah raised very difficult questions. Should we spend our time anticipating how our actions will be portrayed and the impact of those portrayals on the image of Torah? Would it have made a difference if there was a 99 percent likelihood that the bones uncovered were from an ancient pagan burial ground? Ninety percent? Eighty percent? 

Clearly if we were to place drawing our fellow Jews closer to Torah at the center of our communal agenda it would require addressing many difficult sheilos — sheilos only capable of being resolved by the great men of the generation.

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The selection process for the next chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces has come to an end with the choice of OC Southern Command Yoav Galant but the damage to Israeli society from that process will long linger. Israel’s citizens enter into an implicit agreement with the government: We will give you our sons for three years of IDF service and you in turn will do everything possible to ensure that their lives are never put needlessly in danger. 

That bond of trust can only be maintained if the citizenry is confident that when it comes to decisions of war and peace that no personal considerations enter into the judgment of national and military leaders. That assumption however is ever harder to maintain. I can still remember Rav Aharon Feldman over thirty years ago bemoaning the fact that the lives of Jewish boys had been entrusted to the hands of a defense minister for whom appropriating archaeological treasures for his personal collection was hardly the most egregious of his personal foibles. 

Three hours after the onset of the Second Lebanon War the hapless chief of staff Dan Halutz still found time to sell off part of his stock portfolio. The outbreak of war had not yet fully absorbed his attention. (Halutz’s incompetent conduct during the war would result in his forced resignation shortly after the cessation of hostilities.) 

At the end of the same war former Chief of Staff Moshe (Boogie) Ya’alon leveled the most devastating charge ever at an Israeli prime minister when he accused Ehud Olmert of having sought to save face by ordering a pointless major ground operation in the last two days of the war. Thirty Jewish soldiers — one-quarter of the fallen in the entire war — fell in that operation which commenced after the UN Security Council was already poised to pass a cease-fire resolution.

The image of those charged with making life and death decisions affecting the entire country has been further tarnished in recent weeks. On August 6 Channel Two reported receipt of a document allegedly prepared by Arad Communications on behalf of General Galant outlining a strategy to besmirch his rivals for the post of chief of staff. That document has now been exposed as a forgery likely concocted by someone who preferred one of the other leading contenders for the post in order to put a spoke in the wheels of Galant’s candidacy. The leaker has been identified as a top assistant to one of the other principal candidates on the general staff. 

The depth of the rivalries among the top members of the general staff and the extent of how far certain leading commanders were willing to go to advance their own ambitions and to stymie their rivals has left Israel’s friends and foes alike wondering whether such a bitterly divided general staff is up to the military challenges facing Israel. And Israeli parents who entrust their sons to the IDF must again wonder whether that trust is justified. 

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Barry Rubin of the GLORIA Center places the most recent comments by Rav Ovadia Yosef at his Motzaei Shabbos shiur in context. Rav Ovadia expressed the hope that Mahmoud Abbas “and all the other evil people should perish from the world.... G-d should strike them with a plague — them and all these Palestinians who hate Jews.” The comments were immediately seized upon by the international press to demonstrate that just as there is incitement against Israel on the Palestinian side so is there incitement from the Israeli side. State Department spokesman Michael Crowley condemned Rabbi Yosef’s words as “deeply offensive” adding “incitement such as this hurts the cause of peace.” 

Rubin notes that Rabbi Yosef “uttered a curse; he did not enunciate a political program. [He] called for G-d to act not for humans to commit terrorism.” 

He might also have pointed out that Rabbi Yosef does not speak for the Israeli government. By contrast the Palestinian Authority last week provided a state funeral attended by PA chairman Abbas and prime minister Salam Fayyad for Amin al-Hindi one of the masterminds of the 1972 Munich massacre of eleven Israeli athletes at Munich. The official PA daily described al-Hindi as a national hero and one of the “shining stars on the field at Munich.” There was no State Department condemnation of the Palestinian Authority or its leaders. 

Against every statement like Rabbi Yosef’s writes Rubin one could place a veritable tsunami of nonstop incitement against Israel and Jews by the PA leadership and official media. He adds that it would be almost impossible to find a single statement by any PA or PLO or Fatah official in Arabic since 1993 calling for peace reconciliation recognition or empathy with Israel.