Part III. The Loyal Nation
The Rousing Rooster
Now, when the Sages called us the ֹ̇וּמֻ‡¿ּב זַﬠ, the most stubborn among the nations, you’ll remember that they compared us not only to the ֹ̇וּיַח¿ּב ב∆ל∆ּכ, the tenacious bulldog. There’s a second metaphor there: ‘The Am Yisroel among the nations’ is set side by side with the ֹ̇פוֹעו¿ּב לֹו‚¿נ¿רַּ̇, ‘the rooster among the fowl’. And so we’d be remiss in our study of the stiff-necked nation if we didn't examine also the habits of the rooster.
What’s one of the functions of the rooster? In my neighborhood, we have a lot of Jamaicans. So they brought in a rooster lately; they smuggled in a Jamaican rooster from the island. What for, I don’t know. But I know that he crows.
You know when he crows? When the sun is about to rise. He has an instinct in him that tells him the day is coming and that he has to announce it. So he gets up early in the morning while it’s still dark and says, “Cock-a-doodle-doo! Get up! Get up!” That’s what Hashem wants the rooster to do – to announce.
Now, imagine the farmer, or even I, we’re lying in our beds; it’s nice and warm inside the bed and outside is nice and cold. And we think there’s a long night ahead of us. We think it’s only 3:00 at night and we have hours and hours of sleep. All of a sudden, this little rooster pops on top of a fence and opens his brass whistle and lets go. It’s a raucous cacophony. It’s not a melodious tune that will soothe you to sleep like a lullaby. It jolts you out of bed.
The Stubborn Rooster
So the poor farmer opens his eyes. “It’s still dark outside! What do you want of me?” And he opens the window and takes a shoe and he hurls it at this bird. But the bird refuses to budge. It has a function in life and that’s to let the world know that life is not all for sleeping. The day is soon coming; whether you care to hear the truth or not, I’m going to force it into your ears with my brass whistle: “You have to get up and accomplish!”
And the nimshal is, the Jewish people proclaim to the world – a world of idolaters, of materialists, of evolutionists – “Whether you like it or not, we proclaim every day, ל≈‡ָר¿ׂ̆ƒי עַמ¿ׁ̆ – there’s Hashem Who created the world; there’s only One and He’s ours.”
A Nation of Roosters
Now the world doesn’t like that. The big cathedrals would like that the rooster should stop crowing because it jolts them out of their sleep. They say three and here the Jews are proclaiming One. They say that He rejected us and we went lost and meanwhile we’re still crowing as loud as ever: “There’s only One and He’s ours.’
And the evolutionists are ridiculing too: “What three? What one? There’s nobody!” they say. But we’re stubborn; we hop on the fence and let out a screech, “There’s One and He’s Elokei Yisroel.”
And the materialists, people who want nothing except money and good times and they want to sleep away the whole life, to lie in bed; fun, pleasure, movies, entertainment. They’re saying we want only good times in this world because this world is it. But the Jewish people climb up on the fence and announce that this world is only a temporary place; that the daylight is soon coming and you have to get busy because this place is a place of achievement.
You Can Run...
A lot of people don’t like to hear it. So they moved out of Brownsville and they moved as far as they could go. In the good old days, they went to Amityville, Long Island; as far as they could go from the Orthodox roosters.
Today they go somewhere else; they get lost in Florida someplace. Not Miami. Miami is a ghetto; too many Orthodox roosters. Way out in some suburbs, they get lost. They want to forget. “Don’t remind me!” They get lost in California, in deserts near California. Wherever they can run to so they should be able forget that they’re Jews, that they have to be Torah Jews.
... But You Can’t Hide
But it’s a queer thing that this noise pursues them all the time. And even in the most far-flung suburbs, there’s an echo of that voice that comes; the rooster’s call.
Once I was sitting in my shul. Wednesday morning, I teach Gemara in my shul and I say it in English. So a Satmarer chossid came in – a black hat, long kapote, no necktie, a black beard – a young fellow. He sat down. Well, I was ashamed to speak English in his presence, so I began speaking in Yiddish.
He opened an American mouth and said he doesn’t understand a word of Yiddish.
I said, “Where are you from?”
He’s from California. His parents are assimilated Jews. Like the world says, ‘they don’t want to know from nothing’; that’s the colloquialism. But all of a sudden, in that home, a tragedy took place. There grew up a boy who decided to be a Satmarer chossid. A Satmerer chossid?! Not just a modern Orthodox. A chossid! And not any chossid. A Satmarer! You understand what happened in that house? “S’iz gefahren oif reder,” The house was going on wheels!
The Jew Crows ...
They were lying in bed in that home hoping that this night would last forever, that they’ll never have to climb out from underneath the down quilt. And all of a sudden they hear a voice. Their own son is transformed into a rooster and he’s standing near their bed and he’s shouting, “ל≈‡ָר¿ׂ̆ƒי עַמ¿ׁ̆.” In their own home!
So they throw things at him. They make life unbearable for him. But he doesn’t change his habiliments. He may move out of the house, but he crows someplace else. You know why? Because he became a Jew now and a Jew is always announcing to the world. That’s his job.
Now, it doesn’t mean that you have to climb to the rooftops and crow. Just the fact that you’re a frum Jew – you look like a frum Jew, you talk like a frum Jew, you act like a frum Jew – that’s already a cock-a-doodle-doo.
The Jew is so busy with his G-d. The gentile sees the Jew every morning, he goes to shul. Every morning he goes to shul! Every morning?! What’s all this about? And then in the afternoon he’s going back again. And in the evening too!
The world is frustrated with that. “What are you doing?” they say, “Keep quiet, you Jews! Why are you talking so much about going to shul and keeping mitzvos and so on?”
