The legendary genius, the Vilna Gaon, went into voluntary exile for several years dressed as an ordinary beggar.

In previous generations, some of the most pious Jews would leave their homes and cities to wander from city to city. They disguised themselves as ordinary beggars, took a walking stick and traveled from one Jewish community to the next. They did this in order to suffer the ignominies of exile. The practice of voluntary exile is mentioned by Maimonides (Laws of Repentance 2:4), who writes that it atones for a person’s sins. However, other reasons are suggested by various commentators, including feeling the pain of the Shechinah (Divine Presence), which is in exile, and to attain a truer picture of the world.

The legendary 18^th century genius of the Jewish people, Rabbi Elijah Kremer, the “Vilna Gaon,” was the greatest Talmudic mind of many centuries, past and present. His immense scholarship and rigorous intellectual discipline influenced almost all of the later commentators to the Torah text until our day. When he was in his twenties he undertook a personal exile time. It is not clear whether the Gaon did so for three or five years. Either way, he did not advertise that he was the renowned scholar he already was and he was usually not recognized as such. However, on some occasions he was discovered. The rabbi of the town saw that this was no ordinary beggar.

There are numerous legends about the Gaon in exile. One is that he came to a town and a rabbi invited him to stay in his house overnight. The Gaon asked if he had any books and rabbi answered that he had only one book, the commentary of the Rashba, a great 14^th century Talmudic commentator. The rabbi did not know that he was hosting the Vilna Gaon, and gave him the Rashba so as not to embarrass the poor, ignorant beggar. The Gaon took the book and studied it all night. The next morning he returned it to his host, thanked him and mentioned that the last two pages had been missing but he had written them out for him.

In his wanderings, he attempted to discover not only rare manuscripts but rare people — those whom he felt had potential for Torah greatness. Many times there are great people who find themselves in small and unknown communities. They can easily become discouraged and feel that they are never going to get anywhere. The Gaon looked for such people and attempted to strengthen them in knowledge of the Torah.

In the course of his travels, the Vilna Gaon once asked his gentile wagon driver to stop at the side of the road so that he could daven. As he was praying, the wagon driver whipped the horse and disappeared in a cloud of dust, taking with him all of the Gaon’s meager possessions. He was stranded with absolutely nothing to his name – nothing, that is, except for his prayer.

Think about this story the next time you travel. You land in an airport and wait for your luggage to appear on the carousel. You follow the bags as they revolve upon the carousel until your neck is sore. Then when the last piece of luggage has been removed and your battered suitcase is nowhere in sight, you trudge down endless corridors to the lost-and-found. They tell you that your luggage has gone to Omaha. You are not in Omaha.

How will you react? Will you get angry? Or will you say, “Ahah! That is what happened to the Vilna Gaon. I am in exile just like him.”

That is when you can begin to identify with the Creator. The airline can take everything away from you, but your connection to the Shechinah stays with you. Instead of feeling humiliated by your helplessness and dependency, you will come to see it as a way of connecting to God.

Jews lived in Lithuania for centuries. They were by nature a secretive, quiet, humble people. They did not make the noise that other sections of Eastern European and Central European Jewry made. Therefore, we do not really have the accurate picture of them to the degree we should. There is unfortunately very little written about them even today.

Lithuanian Jewry was, first, much poorer than most of Polish Jewry; certainly poorer than Hungarian and Czechoslovakian Jewry. The country itself does not have much in natural resources, except timber and swamps. Winter came early and summer late. Summer was broiling hot and winter was bitter cold. No one went to Lithuania for the weather.

There were two large cities: Vilna and Kovno. The main one was Vilna. There also were smaller places like Ponevezh (often pronounced Ponevitch), which was large by Jewish standards, and Telz, which was the county seat of a city. Overall, their numbers were not large. Before the Second World War, there were only about 250,000 Jews in Lithuania. Nevertheless, the influence of Lithuania was such that it was as though it had millions of Jews, because intellectually it was the crown of Eastern European Jewry. Out of Lithuania came a tremendous amount of Torah, yeshivas, and even intellectuals in the later secular movements connected to Haskalah. Lithuanian Jewish genius was disproportionate to its numbers.

Lithuania was the hub of Jewish intellectual life for many centuries.

The Jews of Lithuania had lived their own life in little towns for hundreds of years. For instance, in the little-known town called Vashky, Jews had lived for almost 600 years. At the turn of the 20^th century it had 41 Jewish families and 26 non-Jewish families. Yet, it was large enough and well-known enough to have a rabbi and for there to be competition when the position opened.

The non-Jewish neighbors knew all sorts of details about Jewish life and lore. They were often very well-versed in the Shulchan Aruch, the codebook of Jewish law. Even the calendar of the non-Jews followed the Jewish calendar. Of course, none of that prevented them from destroying the Jews when the time came. Nevertheless, it shows how the Jews took root in those towns.

The Jews did not converse in Lithuanian. They knew enough words to get by in a conversation, when necessary, but Lithuanian was not their tongue. Yiddish was. Lithuanian Jews had a special accent, which one can still hear today in their pronunciation of Hebrew and of Yiddish. They are famous for mixing the “sh” and “s” sound. Either way, their ability to remain Jewish was extraordinary.

They also had a very ironic view of life, expressed with a very sardonic, wry sense of humor. They made up all sorts of folk sayings which really characterize life.

There were about 250,000 before the Holocaust. Today, less than 5,000.

Most of all, they respected scholarship, especially Torah scholarship. A person who was a talmid chacham — a genuine Torah scholar—was worthy of honor. Wealthy Lithuanian Jews were in the minority. The height of achievement in Lithuania was to be a talmid chacham. That was the treasure.

Finally, Lithuanian Jewry was known for its impeccable honesty and commitment to ethics. That is why Lithuania turned out to be the most fertile ground for the Mussar Movement. In Lithuania it found an audience. The Jews were extremely committed to ethics and self-improvement.

He is the father of many of the coming changes in Jewish life – yet the protector of Jewish tradition. More than anyone else, he did not allow the Chassidim to fall into excesses which would have driven them eventually out of the mainstream of Jewish life.

He was undisputedly a genius among geniuses. As a young child, his fame already spread as a prodigy of note. By the time he was in his early twenties, he was renowned to such an extent that when one says, “the Gaon” (“the great one” or the “incredible genius”) it refers to only one person: the Gaon of Vilna.

The Gaon’s genius began with an incredible photographic memory. It is said that he had “no memory” because everything he ever learned was as fresh as if he had just learned it. From the age of maturity—some say from the age of 20, others say from the age of 30—until at the age of 70 (for at least 40 years of his life), he never slept more than 2 hours out of 24, and he never slept more than 30 minutes consecutively. Combine such diligence with a mind of the ages and it gives us some inkling of what type of person we are talking about.

Lithuania

He was born in 1721 in Vilna, the capital of Lithuania. Among Jews it was known as “Yerushalayim de Lita,” the Jerusalem of Lithuania, because it had always had a reputation for great Torah scholarship — the Gaon was the crown of Vilna. In fact, after the death of the Gaon the city never again took anyone officially in the position of Chief Rabbi. After his death, the leader of the Jewish community was the Dayan, the “Judge.”

One of his first major accomplishments was establishing corrected texts for all the major works of Jewish scholarship. We have since found many of the old, original texts in libraries throughout the world, and we have seen that the Gaon was unerringly correct in changing the extant text at that time to what the real text was.

Rabbi Chaim Volozhin wrote that when the Gaon had to make an emendation in the Talmud he would fast. The easiest thing is to change the text to conform to one’s idea, and many scholars do so. After a while it becomes a charade, and creates the opposite of what scholarship is trying to accomplish. However, the Gaon would fast to enlist Heaven’s support in the change he was about to make in the text.

The Gaon’s range of knowledge was absolutely breathtaking. There was no subject he did not know intimately. Besides the entire corpus of Jewish writings, he knew mathematics, astronomy, science, music, philosophy and linguistics. He did not study the mathematical texts of his day, but from the mathematics of the Torah and the Talmud he deduced mathematical principles and formulas. The Gaon’s interest in all of the sciences was based on his hope to gain Torah knowledge. He said if one did not know mathematics, astronomy, science, etc., then one could not fully appreciate the Torah.

The Gaon was not only well grounded in all fields of revealed knowledge, but he was also the greatest Kabbalist (mystic) of his time — even though he spoke out very strongly against the study of Kabbalah and one of his main objections to Chassidism was its reliance on Kabbalistic ideas.

The Gaon’s interpretations of the Torah and Talmud are absolutely genius. There are a number of books that were written after his death by his disciples and these types of books are still being written today. Some provide his insight on almost every word of the Bible. Others collate some of his famous sayings.

Against Chassidism

The Gaon entered into the fray against Chassidism not on the basis of firsthand observation, but from evidence that was brought to him by others. His main concern was that Chassidus would degenerate into a cult of extremism, magic, miracle workers and all sorts of beliefs that are contrary to Judaism.

He was also afraid that it would further perpetuate the potential for false messiahs. Therefore, he did all in his power to prevent that from happening. That included signing a ban of excommunication against the Chassidim.

A ban from the Gaon was not to be ignored. The Chassidim were constantly forced to defend themselves. Within 35 years after the death of the Gaon, Chassidism became the establishment and the entire bitter dispute had become defused. Nevertheless, in his opposition to Chassidism, he turned the movement away from extremism. He was such a formidable foe they were forced to come to terms with the criticisms that were leveled against them. Once they came to those terms, they were able to reign in the excesses that had emerged.

Father of the Mussar and Yeshiva Movements

The Gaon is viewed as the spiritual father of the Mussar Movement, one of the main great philosophical and social trends of East European Jewry in the 19^th century and founded by Rabbi Yisrael Salanter. Put succinctly, the Mussar Movement came to not only restore morality to its highest plane in Jewish life, but to emphasize the development of proper character traits as being the most important thing in life (albeit not at the expense of Torah).

One the movement’s most famous aphorisms was: “If one only has 10 minutes a day to study, what should one study, Mussar or Talmud?” The answer was, “Study mussar, and then you will see that you have more than 10 minutes in the day.” The Mussar Movement, with its emphasis on self-improvement and self-analysis, was almost a psychological reworking of the person. That was a direct inheritance from the Gaon.

The Gaon was also the father of what we would call today the Yeshiva Movement. Beforehand, the “system” was that people learned on their own with a rabbi of their community in the synagogue, and those who showed promise traveled to other great rabbis and continued learning with them. There was no formalized type of higher education.

Formalized higher education began with Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin, and it had been the Gaon’s idea. Until then, a Jewish young man who had a good mind and wanted to study had one address, Torah. He was not accepted in the outside world, and almost none of the outside world seeped into the Jewish world.

During the lifetime of the Gaon, that began to change. There was competition for the Jewish mind now. And in order for Torah to win the competition, it had to use, so to speak, the weapons of the opposition. And that really is the Yeshiva Movement. It was an attempt of the Torah community to formalize its education, to put it in a modern framework, to make it competitive in form—in substance it was always more than competitive—with other types of so disciplines.

Once in a Thousand Years

The Gaon lived in an age of great people – yet he dwarfed them all. Had they lived in any other age, they would have been the leaders of the Jewish people, the leading scholars and intellectuals. As it is, they are great and well­-known. Nevertheless, at the time of the Gaon, they were not measured perhaps as they should have been.

One of those great people, Rabbi Israel Lifshitz, author of the commentary Tiferes Yisrael to the Mishnah, wrote: “There is one star that shines in our firmament: the Gaon of Vilna. Once in a thousand years such a person comes into the world. Once only in a thousand years does this falling star come to earth and illuminate the Torah for us in such a fashion.”

In his lifetime, the Gaon wanted to leave Lithuania and travel to the Land of Israel. Legend has it that he set out more than once, but every time he did, something happened that prevented him. He is purported to have said that he saw it as a sign from heaven that they did not want him to go to the Land of Israel.

Nevertheless, his disciples left and made it. The Ashkenazic Jewish community, especially in Jerusalem, was founded by the disciples of the Gaon of Vilna. In Jerusalem today most of the customs in Jewish law and prayer follow those of the Gaon. The influence of the Gaon was therefore enormous on his generation and on all later generations.

He Seals One Era and Begins Another

The Gaon died on the intermediate days of Sukkos 1797 and was buried in Vilna. The Soviet Union, that great peace-loving progressive Socialist state, turned the entire Jewish cemetery in Vilna into a soccer field after the Second World War. Nevertheless, through the efforts of a few Jews a handful of graves were preserved, one of which is that of the Gaon of Vilna. A new tomb and mausoleum has been erected there… right outside the soccer field.

The Vilna Gaon became for the Ashkenazim-Misnagdim what the Baal Shem Tov was for the Chassidim. With him, modern Jewish history in Eastern Europe begins. He seals one era and he begins another era.

This fulfills a pattern we find in Jewish history. Many times the last person of an era is a throwback to the beginning of the era, in terms of greatness. The Gaon of Vilna was a throwback. He was not a man of the 18^th century in terms of Torah greatness. He was a man of the 12^th or 13^th century — 500 years before. His enormous stature, his guiding light, impressed upon Lithuanian Jewry particularly but upon all Eastern European Jewry certain values, educational systems, beliefs, customs, which remain current today.

Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto’s “Path of the Righteous” became the primer on Jewish ethics.

Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto was not only a first rate genius, but also a truly holy person. When he was yet a very young man, before his twentieth birthday, he already had a reputation in northern Italy as a great master of Kabbalah. In the early 1700s, he authored one of the premier works in all of rabbinic literature, Mesillas Yesharim (“The Path of the Righteous”). The book is based on a passage of the Talmud attributed to Rabbi Pinchas Ben Yair (Phinehas ben Jair), one of the great holy men of the Talmud. He was such a holy man, the Talmud says, that even his donkey was able to discern whether the hay it was given had been tithed or not.

In the Talmud (Avodah Zarah 20b), Rabbi Pinchas ben Yair is quoted as describing a series of ethical steps by which one can achieve the apex of saintliness: Ruach Hakodesh, “Divine Inspiration.” Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto’s book, Mesillas Yesharim, is based on that statement. In it, he expounds each of those steps.

Within each step, Rabbi Luzzatto explains the step itself, its elements, how it can be acquired, and what might distract from its acquisition. For example: Watchfulness can be acquired by setting aside time for introspection. Acquiring watchfulness can be impaired by excessive mundane responsibilities, wrong company or a cynical stance in life. The same pattern is used for each of the traits mentioned.

In his introduction, he makes one of the most famous statements in all of rabbinic literature: “I did not write this book to tell you that which you do not know. Rather, I am only putting it down in book form to remind you of that which you already know.” The book is therefore deceptive. At first glance, it looks very simple. But it is bursting with seminal ideas in philosophy and ethics.

The Gaon of Vilna lived a half century later and was a very young man when he read the book. He said that in the first ten chapters he did not find one extra word. In part due to this resounding approbation by the next generation’s undisputed leader, the book became widely popular, and became the primer on Jewish ethics when it was advocated by the Mussar Movement in the mid-1800s. Even today it is studied in most of the yeshivas in the world. A yeshiva student cannot consider his experience complete if he has not studied The Mesillas Yesharim.

Even though it is a very hard book to live up to, nevertheless it sets a code of human behavior and a truly Jewish value system and outlook on life. Jews tend to take on the coloration of the society in which they live, sometimes ingesting and displaying values that are not really Jewish – even though people are convinced that they are Jewish. “The Path of the Righteous” represents authentic Jewish ethics of the highest standard.

At great person risk, Rabbi Tzvi Ashkenazi made it his mission to uproot any vestige of the damaging heresy of Sabbatai Zevi and his beliefs from the national body of Israel.

In the decades immediately following the false messiah Sabbatai Zevi there arose a tremendous backlash that unhinged the Jewish world. It is no exaggeration to say that the debacle of Sabbatai Zevi is the turning point of modern Jewish history. It let loose forces that are here today, including the division of the Jewish people into the factions, sects and groups. The fractionalization is a direct result of Sabbatai Zevi and the reaction to him. It pitted Jew against Jew in such a way that the deep scars have still not been erased.

Sabbatai Zevi’s messianism was a distortion of the ideas of the messiah in the Jewish world and the continued belief in him — in any dead person as being the messiah –was a direct threat to Jewish tradition. In the zeal to uproot any vestige of the major, damaging heresy of Sabbatai Zevi and his beliefs from the national body of Israel, many innocent people were punished. In excising the tumor of Sabbatai, healthy tissue was also cut away. Nevertheless, it was a task that needed to be done.

One of the first and greatest Jewish leaders who made it his mission to expose masked Sabbateans was Rabbi Tzvi Ashkenazi (1656-1718).  He was a famous Talmudic scholar as well as a master of Kabbalah. His most well-known book is a collection of responsa called Chacham Tzvi (published in 1712), and he became known as the “Chacham Tzvi.”

Of Eastern European origin, he served as rabbi in many places throughout Europe. Some biographers say that he served as a rabbi in 18 locations. We know of at least a dozen. Eventually, he was appointed chief rabbi of Amsterdam and led a large, powerful and wealthy congregation.

A strong personality, he had within himself the facility of making enemies. He did not bother with diplomatic niceties. He said what he thought and because of his great genius and knowledge he did not suffer fools very well. Not surprisingly, he gained the reputation as a zealot.

Amsterdam was one of the great seats of support for the false messiah Sabbatai Zevi. At great personal risk, Rabbi Ashkenazi became his main opponent and was driven from Amsterdam for his opposition. After the false messiah was exposed, he saw it as his role to uproot any vestiges of Sabbatai Zevi’s movement that still remained in Amsterdam.

He set about on what amounted to a personal crusade. He sought out anyone who promoted the ideas of the Kabbalah upon which the Sabbatai Zevi movement was based. He personally went after all of those rabbis who supported Sabbatai Zevi and made sure that they did not retain any positions of importance in the community.

It was not possible to uproot it all. Even today there are certain customs in the Spanish Portuguese community which date back to the Sabbatai Zevi era. However, in the Ashkenazic community he was successful completely uprooting everything.

“Sabbatai Zevi enthroned.” Amsterdam, 1666. Messianic beliefs die hard and even survive the death of obviously failed dead messiahs.

Messianic beliefs die hard and even survive the death of obviously failed dead messiahs. Such was the case with Sabbatai Zevi, who died in 1676. Although he died as an apostate, he had a considerable Jewish following even at the end. Even after his death, his movement was kept actively alive by his “prophet,” Nathan of Gaza, and a cadre of unstable personalities.

Nathan’s father, Rabbi Elisha Ashkenazi, who was in Morocco in the late 1660s and early 1670s, spawned a new wave of messianic fervor by a Moroccan peasant Jew named Joseph ben Zur, who claimed to be Messiah ben Joseph. In the Talmud we are told that there are two personifications of the Messiah. One is the Messiah ben David, i.e. the Messiah from the House of David. He is the ultimate Messiah who will redeem the Children of Israel, introduce a time of peace and prosperity, build the Temple, etc. However, there is a precursor: the Messiah ben Joseph, stemming from the tribe of Joseph. This Messiah will die or be killed, according to the prophecy in the Book of Zechariah (12:10).

The identity of Messiah ben Joseph troubled all believers of Sabbatei Zevi, because according to tradition he is supposed to come before the Messiah ben David. Where was he?! When was he?! In response to that, Nathan of Gaza gave conflicting answers.

One was that the Messiah ben Joseph had existed in the person of Solomon Molcho. He was a convert to Judaism who died a martyr’s death at the hands of the Inquisition. The idea that Solomon Molcho was the Messiah ben Joseph struck a responsive chord within the Jewish people because he was a folk hero.

A second explanation that Nathan of Gaza offered, at a different time, was that Sabbatai Zevi was of such stature that he obviated the necessity of having a Messiah ben Joseph before him. A third reason he gave was that the collective suffering of the Jewish people constituted the Messiah ben Joseph. Even though this was an enormous problem theologically, it did not bother the masses. Likewise, the fact that all these “answers” conflicted with each other did not bother Nathan. The important thing was that each struck a responsive chord in its own way to different people.

Joseph ben Zur was probably mentally unstable. At the very least, though, he was guilty of a very prevalent habit in the Middle East: smoking hashish. Now, smoking hashish in the 17^th century was not seen in the same negative light as the modern world views it. Nevertheless, Joseph ben Zur was both slightly touched and usually high, which together is a lethal combination. He claimed he saw a vision when an angel came to him and said that he was the Messiah ben Joseph and that in order to cement the bond between Messiah ben Joseph and Messiah ben David he should travel to certain place and meet a girl, Sabbatai Zevi’s daughter, and marry her.

Nathan of Gaza’s father encouraged this nonsense. Unfortunately, thousands of Jews in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia believed in and followed him. When Joseph ben Zur died they were terribly disappointed. The influence of all of these crackpots — Sabbatai Zevi, Nathan, his father, Joseph ben Zur — was especially prevalent among the Marranos.

Therefore, as hard as it is to imagine, Sabbatai Zevi’s movement did not die with his apostasy. It did not even die with his death in 1676 or Nathan’s in 1680. Remarkably, even one hundred years later, well in the 18^th century and even at the beginning of the 19^th century, there were still vestiges of the movement.

Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote an introduction to Roman Vishiniac’s photographic record of Eastern European Jewry before the Holocaust called Polish Jews. It is a description of Jewish life in the shtetl.

Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote an introduction to Roman Vishiniac’s photographic record of Eastern European Jewry before the Holocaust called Polish Jews. It is a description of Jewish life in the shtetl:

There was scarcely a house in all the kingdom of Poland where its members did not occupy themselves with some study of Torah. Thus, there were many scholars in every community. With the coming of dawn, the members of the chevrah Tehillim, a group devoted to reciting the Book of Psalms, would rise to recite the psalms for about an hour before prayers. Each week they would complete the entire recitation of the Book of Psalms. And far be it that any man should oversleep the time of prayer in the morning, for there was a beadle assigned to the task of knocking on the window shutters of all homes.

Szeroka Street. Vishniac referred to it as the “Broadway” of Jewish Kraków.

One did not miss going to the synagogue except for very unusual circumstances. No disputes among Jews were ever brought before gentile courts or before a nobleman or even before the king. And if a Jew did take his case before a non-Jewish court he would be severely chastised and criticized.

All of the pillars upon which the world rests – Torah, prayer, charity, truth justice and peace — were in existence in the Jewish communities in the kingdom of Poland. To be sure, in the life of Eastern European Jews, there was not only light but also shadow. Though there was learning, there was also a neglect of manners, discourtesy, and provincialism. In the crowded conditions in which they lived, persecuted and tormented by ruthless laws, intimidated by drunken land owners, despised by the newly enriched city dwellers, trampled by the boots of the police, chosen as scapegoats by political demagogues, the rope of self-discipline sometimes snapped.

In addition, Jews lived among naked misery and frightful poverty. And this deafened the demands and admonitions of religious enthusiasm. The regions of piety were at times too lofty for ordinary mortals. Not all Jews could devote themselves exclusively to the Torah and service to God. Not all old men had faces of prophets. There were not holy men and kabbalists, but also yokels, beggars and tramps.

There were many who lived in appalling poverty. Many were pinched by the never-ending worries and there were plenty of taverns available with strong spirits. But drunkards were almost never seen amongst Jews. When night came and a man wanted to while away his time, he did not hurry to the tavern to take a drink. He went rather to his books or joined a group that even with or without a teacher gave itself over to the pure enjoyment of study. Physically worn out by their days of toil, they nevertheless said over open volumes and intoned the austere music of the Talmud.

Poor Jews whose children knew only the taste of potatoes on Sunday, potatoes on Monday, and potatoes on Tuesday, etc. sat like intellectual princes. They possessed whole treasuries of thought, and the knowledge, ideas and sayings of many sages. When a problem came up, there immediately was a crowd of people to offer opinions, proofs, and quotations. One raised a question on a difficult passage in Maimonides’ works and many vied in their attempts to explain it, outdoing one another in the subtlety of dialectic distinction. The stomachs may have been empty, the houses overcrowded and poor, but the minds were rich and replete with the riches of the Torah.

That short description of Eastern European Jewry is certainly accurate as to the Jews who lived in the 1600s in Poland, Lithuania and Russia. It was a time of enormous scholarship. The commentaries to the Shulchan Aruch were all then being written and proposed. It was a time of stability in the Jewish community.

But this was the calm before the storm — and the storm would brew an enormous terrifying hurricane that would engulf the Jewish people.

Grave of the Rebbe of Kotzk, master of the aphorism. He once said: “I would rather deal with a wicked man who knows that he’s a wicked man, than with a righteous man who knows that he’s a righteous man.”

I had a rabbi in the yeshiva who taught us very many great things, none of which we appreciated fully at the time. The Talmud tells us that a person doesn’t understand his teacher until 40 years later. Now, some 40 years later, I’m beginning to get the picture a little. One of things that he always used to say was never confuse Jews with Judaism. A Jew’s shortcomings have nothing to do with Judaism. No matter how disappointed you are in Jews, it should in no way diminish the beauty and greatness of Judaism.

Now, in every generation there are righteous people who more than live up to our expectations. However, most of us don’t know people like that and if we do we don’t know that they are righteous that way. One of the hallmarks of the righteous person is that he’s unknown. It’s a catch-22 situation. There is a famous aphorism by the Rabbi of Kotzk: “I would rather deal with a wicked man who knows that he’s a wicked man, than with a righteous man who knows that he’s a righteous man.” Anybody who knows he’s righteous is not righteous. God help us from such people.

The reality of the Jew rarely if ever equals the dream of Judaism. Most of us make compromises. We are able to make allowances for human weaknesses and foibles and understand that many times the reality is not quite the dream. I think that that’s a very important lesson that we have to learn, for instance, how we deal with Israel. We want it to be perfect. However, there is no perfect state in the world. Yet we expect it; the world expects that it should be perfect. We cannot be guilty of any of the sins that all other nations are guilty of. We have to be above everything. It’s very hard, especially since it’s composed of ordinary people who have a daily struggle for existence and survival. It’s hard to live up to a dream.

The Church could have ignored Martin Luther’s 95 theses that he posted on the door of the Cathedral at Wittenberg. But once they excommunicated him everyone wanted to know what he said!

There has been no more counterproductive weapon in the history of the world than excommunication. By excommunicating somebody you guarantee them an audience. You guarantee them a cause. You make a martyr out of them. Instead of ending the problem, excommunication exacerbates the problem.

That is what happened with Martin Luther and his break with the Catholic Church. The Church could have ignored his 95 theses that he posted up on the wall on the door of the Cathedral at Wittenberg. Or any priest could have just ripped them off! But the mistake the Church made was that they took it very seriously and excommunicated Luther. Once they excommunicated him everyone wanted to know what he said! Where can we get a copy of those 95 things? Before they knew it the Protestant movement spread like wildfire.

That is the problem with excommunication. In the Talmud there are a number of cases of excommunication. But in the Talmud it is always the great men of the Talmud themselves and although the letter of the law was enforced the spirit of the law never was. For instance, the great Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus was excommunicated because he refused to accept the opinion of the Academy of Hillel over the Academy of Shammai. Yet, Rabbi Akiva and all the other great men of the generation continued to visit Rabbi Eliezer and learn from him! They just did not walk within four feet of him, as the letter of the law required. That is not excommunication as it later was made famous – infamous – by the Church.

A similar story in the Talmud is told about the excommunication of Elisha ben Abuyah, the teacher of the great Rabbi Meir. Rabbi Meir continued to study with him, but also kept the distance. He continued the relationship.

The Chicago Cubs

In 1945, the Chicago Cubs last won the pennant. A yeshiva boy decided to stand in line all night and get World Series tickets…

In 1945, the Chicago Cubs last won the pennant. A yeshiva boy decided to stand in line all night and get World Series tickets — which he promptly turned around and scalped the next day for three or four times the price. However, he didn’t realize that he scalped them to undercover agent for the Chicago police department. They took this 13-year-old yeshiva boy and put him in jail for the night so that he should remember the lesson.

The administration of the yeshiva was in an uproar. A yeshiva boy doing something that!? This was the 1950s. It was unprecedented. The school called a meeting the next morning to discuss if they should allow him back to the yeshiva or expel him.

The dean, Rabbi Greenberg, was a very clever man. One of the teachers came up to him and said, “We have to kick this boy out. It’s in the papers — a yeshiva student in jail, scalping World Series tickets!”

Rabbi Greenburg replied, “I looked through the entire Shulchan Aruch (the corpus of Jewish law) and I cannot find the Chicago Cubs.”

And they did not expel the boy. He graduated and became a leader of the Jewish community in Chicago. Today he lives in Jerusalem, learns Torah every day and has marvelous children and grandchildren. If they would have thrown him out of the yeshiva what would have happened to him?

The lessons of excommunication should not be lost on us today.

The 17th century marks the emergence of a new world economy – one which the Jews were extremely influential in bringing about.

The creation of the mercantile system established a new reality for Jewish businessmen, and at the same time, created a new set of challenges in Jewish law and the rabbis tasked with applying its eternal principles.

In the early 1600s we see in the writings of the rabbis of the time that major changes were taking place. The Maharam of Prague, for instance, writes about an agreement known in Jewish law as hasugas gevul, i.e. a non-compete agreement. As a result of the explosion of opportunity created by the mercantile system it became difficult to have business territories. A virtual global economy had come into existence.

When a Jew took another Jew to a rabbinical court saying that he was infringing on his territory the case came to the Maharam of Prague. He answered that in reality the laws of hasugas gevul should be enforced, but that the present system of economics did not allow it to be enforced. He proposed that the parties agree in advance that there would be no such thing anymore as protected territories or areas. It would now be open for everyone.

That ruling reflected and recognized the fundamental change that was taking place in those times.

Similarly, at the end of the 1500s, there entered into the lexicon of Jewish law the principle of the heter iskah, which means “permission to do business.”

There is a biblical prohibition that prevents one Jew from taking interest on a loan from another Jew. According to the Talmud, this biblical injunction is limited. If someone wants to lend his friend $1,000 he is forbidden to give it on the condition that his friend pays him back $1,100. As long as there was no strong mercantile system — as long as money had an intrinsic value and was not symbolic, as it is in our times — Jews were able to live within its confines, as cumbersome as it may have been. But when the mercantile system exploded into existence in the 17^th century and Jews were dealing with extremely large sums of money, a legal device was sought to allow them to operate within this new economic reality.

Basically, it is a great oversimplification, but the idea is to take a loan and convert it into an investment. One does not loan $1,000 and tell the borrower to pay him back $1,100. Rather, one invests $1,000 dollars with the borrower who is going to use it for business and the lender will have the opportunity to make a profit on that investment. Let’s say the lender is entitled to 15% of the profits. However, he does not want to sit down and have his accountant figure out 15% of the profits, so both sides agree that in lieu of the 15% of the profits, the borrower will give the lender a return on the investment of $100. That is basically the heter iskah.

This device of the heter iskah is in use today in many instances and it has become the accepted way of doing business. It has been refined to deal with such innovations as the idea of corporations etc., but the basic idea enabled Jews to become very active in the commercial and mercantile field at the inception of the mercantile system. As such, it serves as an example of how Jewish law is able to deal with new situations in life.