Friday, July 20, 2007
Who Sold Out Whom?
I have had the privilege of living in some of the most religious Jewish neighborhoods including Flatbush ,Crown Heights, Geulah in Jerusalem, etc. I have heard many people complain in those neighborhoods about how G-d sold them out. It isn’t true, it’s the other way around.
Years ago, I went to Chaifa to visit the Viznitzer Chasidim with a contingent headed by Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach. Rabbi Yeshua Witt also went with us.
Rabbi Witt, Shlomo’s number one man, who is one of my very best friends and a man who has helped me out several times despite his limited resources, posed the question to Rabbi Carlebach on whether or not the Chasidim actually had freedom of will. Shlomo said they didn’t.
Rav Shlomo Carlebach used to say that on one level there is freedom of choice but on a higher level there isn’t. And Rabbi Levi Yitzhak Berditchiver was quoted by him as saying that no one ever does anything wrong. Rabbi Carlebach maintained that the Berditchever didn’t say it because he was so naïve but because he was so deep. Unfortunately, Rabbi Shlomo didn’t explain the whole thing.
To my way of thinking, the problem is that very often a person’s ancestors blaze a path that the children can’t leave successfully. I’ll give you a case in point about Rabbi Shea Hecht of Chabad.
Shea told me years ago to leave Jack Hickman’s cult, Shoresh Yishai, but he also told me not to come to Chabad as his dynasty doesn’t have the truth. He left me with no alternative on what to do with my life. Nor did he have any concrete solutions.
Shea got his living through his father who was a big man in Chabad Lubavitch. His father, Rabbi JJ Hecht, was on many government committees, including an anti-suicide committee (despite the fact that I almost personally committed suicide when I came to Chabad years ago) and also he translated the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s talks on Sunday into English from Yiddish.
Shea’s father simply put Shea in power in Crown Heights and set him up for better or worse. It’s bad situation.
To leave off this posting, I will give one of Rabbi Carlebach’s better quotes. “It’s not how you believe in G-d that counts, it’s how G-d believes in you and that’s so much deeper!”