Daniel Gordis A great quote from R. Shlomo Carlebach: “Let me quote Rav Kook, one of our greatest prophets. He says the world always thinks that religious people are the ones who are close to religion, and non-religious ones don’t care about religion. But it is often the case that the non religious people are yearning for something so deep and they look at the religious people and they don’t find that there.” “People who are announcing themselves as messengers of God are often very mediocre people and they don’t even sense the yearning of those unbelieving people. I see it all the time in Israel: All those secular soldiers in the Israeli army want something deeper than what they see among the religious. I once went to visit our Israeli troops in Lebanon during the Lebanese War, and I met the IDF chaplain and asked him, ‘How is everything?’ And he responded, ‘Fine. The meat is kosher.’ So I said, ‘If I want good salami, I wouldn’t come to Lebanon for it. How are the soldiers doing? Are you talking to them?’ He said, ‘Oh, they aren’t religious, they aren’t interested.’ “So I said to him, ‘I’ll bet you ten dollars that if you offer to teach these soldiers something deep, like Rav Kook, that they’ll respond.’ So I went out to the unit, and walked up to the most coarse-looking soldier, and you could see on his face that he ate on Yom Kippur not three times but five times just to show you, and I walked up to him and I said, ‘Would you like to study Rav Kook, something for your soul?’ His eyes lit up. He didn’t even know that Jewish people talk about the soul. He thought all we talk about is kosher meat and a yarmulke and other religious rituals. Unbelievable.”
Posted on: Wed, 21 Aug 2013 16:22:28 +0000
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