Va’timalei ha’aretz osam, “The land became filled with them.”
The areas that had been closed to the Jew were now open. The alien society gave them carte blanche to become goyim, and they accepted the invitation. This is the result of forgetting. The Satmar Rebbe, zl, committed himself to rebuilding the Satmar Kehillah on the American landscape. The Holocaust had decimated European Jewry, and many of those who survived sought physical and spiritual haven. Some were not prepared to live life as they once had. This was a new world; they had suffered enough; it was time to distance themselves from the world that was. The Rebbe would not hear of it. Strict adherence to the customs of old was a benchmark of Satmar. They retained their distinctive dress code, as well as their unshorn beards and payos. This was not a yearning for a long-lost past, but an end in itself. Changes of location do not determine the application and practice of Torah and mitzvos. Many have posited that, because the Satmar Rebbe was prepared to stand and lead his community to the extreme, the rest of the Jewish community was able to survive, even with their lenient attitude toward dress and fashion.
The Rebbe was not the only one who refused to permit forgetfulness to permeate the minds of the newly-emerging American Jewish community. The handful of surviving Roshei Yeshivah and Chassidic Rebbes, together with a number of inspired American laymen, saw to it that the American Jewish community would not suffer a memory loss and that Torah and Yiddishkeit would flourish once again – in America and in Eretz Yisrael.
