The Clarity of History

By Rabbi Dovid Sapirman, Dean, Ani Maamin Foundation

It wasn’t so very long ago—only 250 years or so—that there were frum communities around the world. In Eastern and Western Europe, there were hundreds of kehillos, most with a talmid chacham for a rav, a shul and beis midrash at the center of their lives, and no holidays but our own Yamim Tovim. So it was in communities across North Africa and the Middle East—each community had its chacham; every child learned in cheder or with a melamed. It was highly unusual to find a Jew who would knowingly be mechallel Shabbos—even in private, but certainly not in public! There were no denominations of Judaism but Torah.

We look around the Jewish world today. The contrast is striking. True, there has been a extraordinary revival of observance, with yeshivos, Bais Yaakovs, day schools, and kollelim thriving in numbers never seen before. However, the vast majority of the Jewish people have assimilated to the point of knowing nothing about their 3,000-year heritage. Extraordinary numbers have intermarried.

How did this happen? Could it happen again? The Torah commands us, “Remember the days of old.” If we don’t learn the lessons that history teaches us, we leave ourselves open to the danger of repeating our ancestors’ mistakes.

Whenever the Jewish people suffered spiritual decline, it was generally due to the influence of the nations around us: “They mingled with nations and learned from their deeds.” The Torah commands us repeatedly to remain separate, but the temptation of foreign culture beckons to us time and again. The lure of idolatry during the times of Tanach, the desire for pomp and pleasure in Spain, the attraction of German sophistication from which we have not yet recovered.

For this reason, b’ezras Hashem, my next book will soon appear in Jewish bookstores. Titled “Separated to be Mine,” it outlines a clearer picture of how these devastating historical changes took place. It is my hope that the reader will see more clearly that we need to distance ourselves from indulgent lives of our gentile hosts and their pursuit of materialism, and devote our lives to Hashem and His Torah in purity and sanctity.