Precisely because he had such a keen feel for the pulse of the people and the needs of the time, it is fascinating – and useful – to wonder what the Chofetz Chaim would have said to today’s problems. Indeed, we should go a step further and wonder how he would have defined the real problems of today. After all, Chofetz Chaim and Ahavas Chessed were effective replies to problems not even recognized by most. It would be a mistake to take the sizeable collection of his major and minor writings, apply them to each era, and assume that the Chofetz Chaim would have had nothing more to say.
How would he have diagnosed today’s ills? This question should be answered by the few survivors of his era who knew him well, but perhaps we can hazard some guesses.
- There is little doubt that he would be appalled at the sharp and shady business practices that are so much a part of modern life, Orthodoxy not excluded. We live in an age when ethics have not kept pace with sophistication, and Jews have not escaped contamination. How would he have prodded our conscience?
- Picture the Chofetz Chaim entering a typical middle-class home today with its emphasis on “creature comforts,” and recreational pursuits rather than a Torah atmosphere . . . Would he have smiled tolerantly? Or would he have considered his surroundings more appropriate to the House of Romanoff than to the House of Israel, and told us so?
- What would he say to the growing gap that divides yeshiva, rabbinate, and laity from one another?
- And what about the organizational weakness of Orthodoxy? He was one of the founders of Agudath Israel, long aware that modern times required modern tactics – and organizational unity was one of them. Surely he would work to end today’s factionalism.
- In this time of turbulence when the values of centuries are being discarded, we may be certain that the Chofetz Chaim would have found our attitude wanting and far too complacent. We are content to condemn the drug culture, but are ill prepared for our own acid test. Indicative of this is a memoir of one his students, Rabbi Avrohom Hillel Goldberg, later rabbi of Kfar Pinnes in Israel:
It was near the end of his life and the Chofetz Chaim was in a summer cottage near Radin. He was heart-broken over the persecutions of Jews in Russia. He saw their situation as the severing of an entire limb of the Jewish body from its life-sources of Torah and mitzvos.
“There is only one real hope,” he said – “Mashiach must come soon. The Final Redemption must come sooner or later, but it is up to us to hasten its arrival. We must demonstrate our overpowering desire for Mashiach. How many of us religious Jews who say ‘Ani Maamin’ every day truly long for his coming? Why don’t we cry out to Hashem to help us? This is no time for silence!
“Even in the Egyptian exile the Torah says that only when B’nei Yisrael cried out for help – then did their outcry go up to Hashem. We must do the same now! I must go to Vilna to Reb Chaim Ozer – without him nothing can be done!”
His family and students were aghast. He was over ninety years old and he could scarcely leave his armchair for the length of a day. He might not survive the difficult trip to Vilna. They pleaded with him to abandon his plan, but he would not be dissuaded. The goal was worthy of even mesiras nefesh. They told him that Reb Chaim Ozer was a man of halachah and action; such ideas as the Chofetz Chaim’s were out of his domain. He smiled as if to say, What do you know of Reb Chaim Ozer?
To his deep regret, the journey to Reb Chaim Ozer never took place. Had they met, who knows?
This article originally appeared in the Jewish Observer and is also available in book form in the ArtScroll/Mesorah Publications Judaiscope Series.
