Rabbi Frand challenges listeners to use Jewish might for repentance

Rabbi Yissocher Frand exhorted listeners at the Young Israel of Woodmere to draw on the inner strength of the Jewish people to strive to improve themselves.

In a rousing speech between Mincha and Maariv on Tzom (the fast of) Gedaliah on Sunday, Rabbi Frand, rosh (head of) yeshiva of Ner Yisroel of Baltimore, discussed what he “did on my summer vacation,” when he was the scholar in residence on a tour of Italy.

He pointed out that in 165 BCE, Yehuda Hamacabi sent messengers to Italy, site of the oldest Jewish community outside Israel, in existence since Bayit Shaini (the second Temple). In the 1500s, the Jewish population of Venice swelled with the addition of thousands of Jews who fled the Spanish Inquisition, he said. Many other Jews remained in Spain, appearing as Christians on the outside — having been forced to convert — but Jewish on the inside.

“Despite their seeming lack of mesirus nefesh (self sacrifice) they were mosair nefesh,” Rabbi Frand stressed. He recounted the struggle of a family that did not eat chametz (leavened bread prohibited on Passover) all year, claiming a digestive disorder so as to not be questioned when they eat matzah on Pesach. And they would perform bris milah (circumcision) themselves so as not to arouse suspicion. On Rosh Hashana they would go into the mountains to the caves to blow shofar so as not be heard. In the crowded ghettos of Venice, Padua, and Sienna, Jews practiced yiddishkeit. Their only way out was conversion, but most did not convert.

The Jews of Rome were forced to get “harangued” every Shabbos at a church there after their Jewish service and to this day there are no speeches in shul on Shabbos there (“which may prompt people to move to Rome,” joked Rabbi Frand).

“How did they do it?’ asked Rabbi Frand. “What is the secret of their strength?”

He noted that Rabbi Eliyahu Lopian cited the perception by non Jews of the Jewish nation as “pushy, aggressive and money hungry” and said that it’s true, but not negative. G-d knew that the Jews would find themselves in oppressive conditions and that to survive they would have to be an “am kishey oref (a stiff necked people), chutzpadik, with boldness, tenacity, grit — that’s us, that’s how we survived.

“Through chutzpah and sacrifice the Torah survived among the Jewish people, survived throughout the generations. Hashem gave the Jews an insatiable thirst for Torah, so broad, so deep, but if we don’t use it for Torah we use it for other things. A Jew who is not refined by Torah is money hungry and pushy.”

He spoke of the difficult choices that had to be made regarding Judaism by previous generations, such as whether to work on Shabbat or starve — a choice we do not face today.

“Our midas gevurah (character trait of strength and might) has atrophied, the hallmark of our people for millennium has fallen into disuse, but it can be awakened even now when we are asked to make the tough decisions,” Rabbi Frand said.

He said he recently spoke in Israel between Shacharit and Musaf on Shabbat Aykev, about how Hashem commended Moshe when he broke the luchot (the tablets of the ten commandments), as the “pinnacle of his career” because of the mesirut nefesh. Moshe poured his being into the luchot but had the ability on witnessing the sin of the golden calf to say that, “this is not right,” and smashed the tablets. He cited the “ability to say ‘I’m wrong’” and “discard all his life’s work.”

“In these days,” continued Rabbi Frand, one must ask, “Is my Shabbos, my davening what it should be, have I made compromises and rationalizations over the years, am I not dressing right? We hate to change [but] we have to let go and call on our spiritual DNA.”

He pointed out that the fist used for striking ourselves on the chest during viduy, the confession, illustrates our challenges, that we don’t want to let go.

He recounted that when the Ponovitcher Rebbe went to Italy and saw the arch of Titus, he had said in Yiddish, ‘we are still here — where are you?’ and a Holocaust survivor said similarly about Hitler, yimach shimo (his name should be erased), ‘Here I am with my children and grandchildren, and where are you?’

It is the strength and gevurah of the Jewish people, boruch Hashem, that keeps us alive and that has to be harnessed for our growth in teshuva (repentance) and Torah.