Light is the only thing in the world that does not tolerate any mixture. It by nature must be free of all foreign matter. Light can be stronger or weaker, but light is always free of everything else.
Throughout the generations, until a hundred and fifty years ago, the Torah was free of other things. Those who learned Torah were closed up within their yirah, secluded within their way of life, and they had nothing else except for Torah.
I think that our generation, although we have developed so beautifully in Torah learning, baruch Hashem, is seriously missing something. The new world that was born after the Holocaust has made a big mistake.
I am not worthy of saying such a thing, but I feel that I must express an idea. Let’s talk first about America. There is an enormous amount of Torah learning there, and so many yeshivos. There is a yeshivah there with two thousand excellent bachurim. Jews learn Torah everywhere. But American Jews have not sufficiently distanced themselves from the non-Jews.
I grew up in a true Torah home in America. I remember like it was today, I am talking about something that happened fifty years ago, my father took me wrapped in a tallis and brought me to cheider. But, nevertheless, we spoke English.
Once I asked by father-in-law zt”l, “Tateh, did you know how to speak Polish?” He looked at me and said, surprised, “What, am I a goy?”
I said to him, “But you were born in Poland, how could you not know Polish?”
He answered, “How could I know Polish? What does Polish have to do with me?!”
In Poland, the Jews did not know how to speak Polish. In America, a new generation arose, and all the Jewish children speak English, and in France they speak French, and here, in Israel, no one knows what they are speaking at all. There is such a mixture, and no one knows what language it is...
We have been in Galus for two thousand years and we did not distance ourselves sufficiently from the non-Jews. Bilaam, when he saw the Jewish people, said “It is a people that dwells isolated, and is not considered among the nations.”
