I will not go up in your midst because you are a stiff-necked people. (Shemos 33:3)
We know that one of the basic traits of the Jewish people, which kept us going throughout the generations, is stubbornness and tenacity. We are a “stiff-necked people,” but in a positive sense.
The Torah usually uses the term “stiff-necked” to describe how the Jews are stubborn and won’t change their minds and are not amenable to mending their ways. However, the Mefarshim say that despite it being a fault, it is also a Jewish virtue. If not for the stubbornness of Jews, if not for their unbreakable spirits, they would not have been able to survive all the exiles they went through, with all the attendant troubles and nisyonos, for two thousand years.
On the one hand, we have already demonstrated our stubbornness and tenacity for the sake of Hashem and His Torah throughout the generations. A Jew would rather die than deny. All the exiles, all the suffering, and in recent years, Haskalah and Zionism have tried as hard as they can to tear out the last bit of genuine Jewishness from us, to no avail.
However, it seems that there is another kind of nisayon that Jews in general and bnei Torah in particular need to undergo. We need to show stubbornness and tenacity even when no one is trying to force us to transgress the laws of the Torah. Even when things are good, when we lack nothing, and we can do as we please – even then we need to tenaciously uphold our principles.
Once when speaking to a group of thoroughly secularized Jews in Israel, I said to them, “I will show you a trick how I can make all of you into Shabbos observers, and you will tell me whether I am right or not.”
“What do you mean?” they asked.
So I explained. “If I would explain to you very well why you need to keep Shabbos, and how pleasant and sweet it is to keep Shabbos, etc etc, you would not keep Shabbos. Even if I proved to you that there is Gan Eden and Gehinom, you still would not keep Shabbos. But if an Arab dictator would get control of Israel, and would announce that anyone who keeps Shabbos shall be put to death, in other words, he is forcing you to desecrate Shabbos, you would all start keeping Shabbos. Am I right or not?”
They said, “Yes, you are right. We admit it. If we would be forced to transgress the Torah, we would do the opposite.” This is Jewish pride.
So why, when no one is forcing them to desecrate Shabbos, do so many people disregard Shabbos observance?
In a certain way, it is much harder to keep the Torah when no one is forcing you to do otherwise. This is the great nisayon of our generation. I am not downplaying previous generations in any way, far be it from me. They showed greatness of spirit and soul. In supreme holiness, they gave up their lives for the sake of the Torah. But also we, in our generation, need to show our faithfulness to Hakadosh Baruch Hu, as Jews and as bnei Torah, and to this purpose, we have been placed in a new kind of nisayon.
A few decades ago, a Jew who kept up Torah and yiras Shamayim did so lishmah, for its own sake. Anyone whose emunah was not deeply rooted, anyone who did not have l’sheim Shamayim planted firmly in his heart, quickly gravitated in other directions. Many yeshivah bachurim left Torah and Yiddishkeit in those days.
Today we live in a different generation. Many people are part of the Torah world only for the simple reason that they have nothing better to do... The street culture is not a very attractive alternative, and neither is serving in the Israeli army. People are where they are because that’s where they are, without any special reason.
This is why we must put content into our avodas Hashem and keep well-aware of the true goal in life.
