The Sting
Not every baal teshuva perseveres. Nothing is so gratifying to Hashem as Jewish outreach, and nothing incurs such swift retribution as weakening a fellow human’s connection with Hashem…
Way back in university days, everybody was required to take English Composition 101 and American Literature 101. I remember reading a short story about an American infantryman that fought for three bloody years in World War II, and who miraculously emerged unscathed from the years of fighting. He returned Stateside at the end of the war in the summer of 1945.
The combat veteran received a well-earned furlough before his final discharge. He packed a back-pack, stuck out his thumb, and hitched a ride to the Pacific coast. He set up a tent on a stretch of deserted beach, with nothing but the rhythm of the waves in his ears and the warm sunlight in his face – absolute tranquility for his war-weary soul.
After a swim in the vigorous waves, the soldier was hungry. He spread some combat-ration canned jelly on a slice of bread. From nowhere, a nagging and buzzing little bee hovered in circles around the jelly can. The soldier shooed it away, and the bee apparently left the scene. It made a wide circle behind the soldier, landing softly on his neck and stinging him close to his jugular vein. Before the soldier knew what hit him, his neck swelled, his body temperature skyrocketed, and his blood pressure doubled. He lost consciousness, and within an hour, lay lifeless on the beach.
Three years of combat without a scratch, yet the soldier met his fate in less than a day on the beach during his first week home from the front. Thousand of bombs and bullets missed their mark, but one tiny sting extinguished the light of his eyes – the mere idea makes one’s hair stand up.
* * *
Almost forty years have transpired since I read that short story about the soldier and the sting. It reminded me of Rafi’s story:
Rafi worked as a senior computer engineer in a high-tech plant that was owned by fiercely anti-religious people. After Rafi decided to become an observant Jew, he began experiencing trouble at work. The longer his beard grew, the more his superiors and his subordinates did everything in their power to make life miserable for him. Work became a living purgatory, and he felt that he was quickly becoming a prime candidate for an ulcer or cardiac arrest, Heaven forbid. Rafi gave notice, and the bosses withheld his severance pay. Not only that, but they refused to give him a recommendation letter for his years of dedicated work with the company. On the contrary, they blackened his name to the point where no other company would hire him.
With no other alternative, Rafi took a job in construction, working on a wobbly scaffold forty feet above ground level. He had to feed his family!
No matter what, Rafi kept a smile on his face. He encouraged his wife and promised her better days.
One day, a stranger knocked on their door. He was looking for an apartment just like theirs, and was willing to pay well above the market price. Rafi saw this as a golden opportunity from Heaven to relocate to a religious neighborhood.
After seven years of tribulations and dedication in their uphill battle to become observant Jews, Rafi moved to a wonderful new apartment in a shomer Shabbat area. It was like Heaven on earth – the siren announcing the incoming of the Sabbath, families walking in the middle of “car-less” streets on Shabbat, synagogues, yeshiva, mikvahs, shmitta observant greengrocers – everything they needed. Contrary to the experience of others, Rafi had no problem finding a nursery, kindergarten, and cheder for his three little boys. With Hashem’s help, Rafi had a terrific job repairing neighbors’ computers in the afternoon, which enabled him to learn all morning in a local kollel (married men’s seminary) for Baalei Teshuva. What could be better? Until…
One day, an important-looking man approached Rafi in the synagogue after the morning prayers. He was the Dean of a local rabbinical seminary, a well-respected figure in the community. He asked Rafi to loan him two thousand dollars to pay for the expenses of his daughter’s wedding. Rafi gulped, and answered that he’d be willing to contribute two hundred shekels to the cause as outright charity, as sum that in itself was a sacrifice for him. The Dean began a rapid-fire lecture that distorted all the Torah’s laws, behooving Rafi (according to his twisted interpretations) to give him the shirt off his back.
In classic fast-taking emotional blackmail while injecting Rafi with an overdose of a guilty conscience, the Dean squeezed a commitment of a one-year loan of one thousand dollars out of Rafi. Rafi had ten one-hundred dollar bills stashed away for a rainy day; they now found their way into the money-grubbing Dean’s pocket. In his innocence, Rafi failed to make the Dean sign a promissory note as required by religious law. The Dean selectively “forgot” to inform Rafi of the latter’s privileges as a lender, exemplifying what Rebbe Nachman terms (see Likutei Moharan I: 28), “The scholarly demon,” the demon disguised as a Torah scholar.
A year transpired. Rafi never saw a cent of his money. The Dean ignored all his phone calls and letters. He laughed in Rafi’s face, “What loan? I don’t remember your lending me a thousand dollars. It was charity. Did I ever sign a promissory note?” There was nothing Rafi could do. He had no leg to stand on in a religious court.
Meanwhile, Rafi’s wife gave birth to their fourth son. Rafi suggested that they make the Brit in their living room to save money. His wife, physically and emotionally fragile anyway so shortly after giving birth, erupted like a volcano: “Are you crazy? How am I supposed to host fifty guests with three little kids and a hurting little infant? Who needs the chaos? Take the thousand dollars that we saved for emergencies, and make a catered Brit in the synagogue. Let them clean up the mess!”
Rafi’s jaw dropped. How was he going to explain to his already hypersensitive wife that he no longer had the one thousand dollars? Her acute intuition honed in on the truth. She extracted an admission from her husband that that money no longer existed.
“Didn’t they teach you in Kollel that charity begins at home?” she shouted. “The Dean’s wife wears a natural-hair wig that costs more than fifteen hundred dollars! I walk around with a polyester scarf that costs thirty shekels! What the heck is he doing taking money from us? Besides,” she ranted, “If he needs money, let him sell some of his wife’s gold. She wears a half ton of it around her neck and on her fingers. I don’t dress for a wedding like she dresses to go buy cucumbers! With that money, we could have made a catered Brit, bought a new stroller, and everything the baby needs. Now, we won’t even have a normal Brit?! Let them all go straight to the devil. Who needs their hypocrisy? Who wants to be like them? Who needs their stupid religion?” In an act of rage, she ripped the scarf off her head, and threw it in Rafi’s face.
Rafi’s non-religious in-laws were more than happy to let their newly “resecularized” daughter convalesce with the baby in their home.
* * *
I wish the story had a happy ending to it. To save his family, Rafi moved back to a secular neighbor around the corner from his mother-in-law. He still wears a small kippa and repairs home computers, but his wife is unwilling to hear of anything more than a casually traditional lifestyle.
Let’s not be judgmental toward Rafi or his wife. They devoted seven dedicated years in becoming observant Jews. One sting from a religious-disguised demon destroyed their Jewish lifestyle and their children’s Torah education, and nearly destroyed their marriage and their family.
Let’s make sure that the demon never hides within us. The Gemara says (Yoma 86a), “And you shall love your neighbor as yourself – when your actions are upright, people say, ‘Happy is he who learns Torah. Woe to the people that don’t teach their children Torah.’ But, when your actions are not upright, people say, ‘Woe to he who learns Torah – look how terrible his actions and how ugly his ways!” There is no greater defamation of Hashem’s name than the ugly deeds of an apparent Torah scholar.
There is no greater Jewish outreach than a smile – or just by being a good, upright example. Each of us is Hashem’s ambassador. Let’s go out of our way to welcome newcomers to the fold. Let’s be extra careful in everything we do and say. Let’s be courageous enough to fight against the imposters, swindlers, con-artists, and child molesters that hide under black hats. Rebbe Nachman of Breslev fought that battle, and we should walk courageously in his footsteps until Moshiach leads us to our rebuilt temple in Jerusalem, speedy and in our time, amen.
Post script – several weeks after Rafi removed his three sons from religious schools and moved back to a secular neighborhood, one of the Dean’s daughters died from a mysterious killer bacterial infection. Nothing is gratifying to Hashem as Jewish outreach, and nothing incurs such swift retribution as weakening a fellow human’s connection with Hashem.
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