On Sunday, I drove my kids for the first time this season to their ski lesson at Bridger Bowl, our local ski area. It was 31 degrees outside, about 80 degrees warmer than last Sunday, and the roads had just enough black ice to slip and slide like a bobsled. Yet, as I drove through Bridger Canyon, I discovered once again the Montana charm, the Montana concern for neighbors, the Montana recognition of human beings as created in the image of Hashem. Everyone was driving slowly, giving distance between cars, giving others the time and space to break, and realizing that one car losing control can pose real danger and a domino effect. It’s not a given, but around here it’s the norm; community kindness is a way of life.
Just a few weeks ago while in Arizona and enjoying various hikes, we realized that kindness and friendliness are not a given. In Bozeman, when hiking our beautiful trails, everyone says hello and always making room for others to pass, while keeping a special eye out for families with young children, recognizing that it’s not easy to shlep the whole mishpachah along for the journey. In Arizona, the locals on the trails acted somewhat differently. They gave us the vibe that “you and your kids are annoying and should really get out of our way,” and we felt it. I don’t want to label an entire state, but when you come from a caring community such as Bozeman, we become more sensitive to unkind behavior.
Sensitivity is important, which is why Chavie and I were so pleased that our daughter Chaya signed up last week on her own initiative to be a ski assistant with Eagle Mount, a local organization that helps special needs children and adults, and includes skiing for the handicapped as part of their offerings. Chaya, who is fourteen, went for training and will now do weekly lessons as a chaperone for a child who needs assistance on the slopes. Yes, every Jewish child needs to be raised with the foundation of Torah and mitzvos as illuminated with the light of Chassidus, but at our core we want our children to be sensitive, loving, kind, caring, and giving human beings. We could have all the Torah learning and mitzvah observance under our belts, but without basic humanity, without being a mensch, it’s a waste. When Eliezer was seeking a shidduch for Yitzchak, he knew Rivkah was the right wife when he saw how kind she was to him and his camels.
One of the challenges while living on shlichus away from family is the lack of relatives close by who can help babysit for a few days and give parents an occasional break. So last week Chavie offered to babysit our two nephews and niece so that Chavie’s sister and her husband, who serve the Montana Jewish community in the Flathead Valley, could get away for a few days. I would never make such an offer, I think our life is busy enough. But Chavie has a heart of gold and wanted to give this gift to her sister, who has done the same for us in the past. Having an extra three kids in the house adds a lot more noise and action, but our children loved the company. One morning, as our six-year-old Chana Laya was playing with her cousins at 5:30 a.m., I heard her telling them that “my dad is up because he’s always up learning Torah.” I was elated to hear that. True, Chana Laya and our other children wake up each morning and see me learning my daily Rambam, daf of Gemara, Chumash, Tanya, and Chassidic discourses from the Rebbe, zt’l’s incredible teachings, but you never know if they get it, if they internalize it, and hearing my six year old explaining to her younger cousins what I was doing, was heartwarming.
Yet, if my children only saw me learning Torah and never saw me helping the poor, visiting the sick, caring for the homeless (including giving them an occasional ride in our car), or burying the dead, which Chavie and I do at all times of the day and night for all flavors of Jews, it would be very hard to raise our children to be menschlech, which would be an epic failure. If they saw me davening and not being available to serve others, if they saw me “talk the talk” and not “walk the walk,” lacking the sensitivity to those in need, I would be failing as a father and a shliach.
Since October 7, we’ve been reeling as a people. We are watching millions, if not hundreds of millions of people standing with Hamas and against the Jews, and it has forced us to make a real reckoning of our standing in the world and the re-awakening, or reappearance, of unadulterated Jew-hatred. Yet, I find it a bit disturbing to see many Jews talking or posting real nastiness about other human beings. Most of us are still speaking with kindness and humanity, but we are trending in the wrong direction, and we should change course before it’s too late. Sure, we are mandated by the Torah to eradicate every last terrorist and terrorist helper, as they are one and the same, but we are also Yidden, Jews who have a beating heart and sensitive soul and must never be joyously dancing when human beings lose their Divine Image and lose their life. We can pray for Israel to beat every last enemy, take back the entire Holy Land, including Judea and Samaria, and destroy every last remnant of Hamas, while simultaneously being sensitive to the hardships of war on G-d’s children.
We can delight in the destructions of the Houthis and be sad that so many Yemenis are suffering because of them. We can be excited when Israel finally takes out the Hamas leadership, but unhappy about those who died as a result of being in their proximity. We can have both feelings at the same time. The same feeling of mercy that wants terrorists dead, also wants suffering to end.
In this week’s Torah portion, Beshalach, we read about Kriyas Yam Suf, the splitting of the Red Sea, a most miraculous part of the Exodus from Egypt, en-route to Sinai. There’s the famous teaching of Rav Yochanan in the Talmud that when Kriyas Yam Suf was taking place, the angels on high sought to praise Hashem with song, and Hashem stopped them and said, “My handiwork is drowning in the sea and you’re singing?” While there’s an interesting debate as to whether the conversation in heaven was referring to the Egyptians drowning or to the Jews heading into the sea and that their praise was premature, the bottom line is that on the second days of Pesach, we don’t say full Hallel and one explanation for that is because there was so much human suffering during the Exodus; therefore, singing is not appropriate. Later, of course, the survivors, the Jews, expressed their gratitude in song, but they were the survivors, and it was more about their survival and how the miracle of their survival played out than just straight up joy for the demise of others.
Before you think that I believe Israel should back down, let me categorically state that I am a Chassid of the Rebbe who taught me that Israel must act swiftly, preemptively, and decisively against its enemies when even one Jewish life is at stake, but that doesn’t mean we should lose our Jewish touch, our holy sensitivity to those Hashem brought into this world. If we become like them, careless of the value of life, careless towards other human beings, desensitized to human suffering, then they end up winning, turning us into cruel people and that’s not who we are. We can recognize the truth, that good must eradicate evil without being happy about the end result. If our kids hear us constantly delighted about the death and suffering of others, it can have a negative effect on them.
Tomorrow is Tu B’Shevat, the day when we celebrate the Rosh Hashanah L’Ilanos, the New Year for Trees as it relates to the tithing of new fruits in Eretz Yisrael. The Torah tells us in Devarim that “a person is like the tree of field.” There is so much potential in each human being, so many possibilities for bearing fruit, so many avenues to educate, inspire, guide, and help people be better human beings. When a tree is struggling to grow properly and bear fruit, it’s easy to give up on the tree, but the better option is to attempt everything in our power to make it grow healthily and hope for a day it can bear luscious fruit. Some days it feels helpless, we feel depleted, without koach to deal with the haters, but we must not ever stop trying to enlighten others and help their tree grow properly. Last week a local Jewish friend along with his Gentile buddy came to the shul to chat with me about Israel. I spent almost two hours discussing the realities on the ground and encouraged both to be ambassadors to educate their circles about the truth, and to have the gumption to intervene when hearing someone say something derogatory about Israel. We can’t surrender to a reality that “those who hate us will always hate us.” Yes, some will always hate us, but others can be taught to think correctly if we spend time educating them with sensitivity and kindness.
I live in Montana, a state with thousands of farmers and ranchers, each of whom is a gem that works tirelessly through thick and thin. It’s easy to give up when it’s minus fifty degrees outside or when it’s scorching hot in August, but they feel obligated to their crops to give them the best chance to grow properly. I remember hearing Paul Harvey’s amazing “So G-d made a farmer” speech:
“And on the 8th day, G-d looked down on his planned paradise and said, “I need a caretaker.” So, G-d made a Farmer.
G-d said, “I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, work all day in the fields, milk cows again, eat supper, then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board.” So, G-d made the Farmer.
“I need somebody with arms strong enough to rustle a calf, yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild; somebody to call hogs, tame cantankerous machinery, come home hungry, have to wait for lunch until his wife’s finished feeding visiting ladies, then tell the ladies to be sure and come back real soon—and mean it.” So, G-d made the Farmer.
G-d said, “I need somebody willing to sit up all night with a newborn colt, and watch it die, then dry his eyes and say, ‘Maybe next year.’ I need somebody who can shape an ax handle from a persimmon sprout, shoe a horse with a hunk of car tire, make harness out of haywire, feed sacks, and shoe scraps. Someone who, come planting time and harvest season, will finish his forty-hour week by Tuesday noon, and then, from the back of a tractor, put in another seventy-two hours.” So, G-d made the Farmer.
G-d had to have somebody willing to ride the ruts at double speed to get the hay in ahead of the rain clouds, yet stop in mid-field and race over to help when he sees the first smoke from a neighbor’s place, so G-d made a Farmer.
G-d said, “I need somebody strong enough to clear trees and heave bails, yet gentle enough to tame lambs and wean pigs and tend the pink-combed pullets, who will stop his mower for an hour to splint the broken leg of a meadow lark.”
It had to be somebody who’d plow deep and straight and not cut corners; somebody to seed, weed, feed, breed, and rake and disc and plow and plant and tie the fleece and strain the milk and replenish the self-feeder and finish a hard week’s work with a five-mile drive to church. Somebody who would bale a family together with the soft strong bonds of sharing, laugh and then sigh, then reply with smiling eyes when his son says he wants to spend his life “doing what dad does.” So, G-d made a Farmer.”
We must tend to Hashem’s world with the same devotion and sensitivity that the farmer tends to its farm and the world will be a brighter, holier, kinder place.
Rabbi Chaim Bruk is co-CEO of Chabad Lubavitch of Montana and spiritual leader of The Shul of Bozeman. For comments or to partner in our holy work, e-mail rabbi@jewishmontana.com or visit JewishMontana.com/Donate.