From a Satmar Chassidisteh
Two men are called the Satmar Rebbe. If you're in our communityyou already know that. What's worth saying out loud is how little
actually separates them.
The same position on Zionism. The same VaYoel Moshe, the sefer,
the book, that defines our hashkafa, our worldview. The same
Yiddish, the same minhagim, the customs, the same levush, the
dress. Ask an Aroni and a Zaloni what they hold and you hear the
same answer. No point of doctrine divides us.
I'm not judging a machlokes, a dispute, between talmidei
chachomim, Torah scholars, and I'm not taking a side. That isn't
mine to do.
But with Yom Kippur five days away, there's something each of us
has to check honestly, and only we can check it for ourselves.
The machlokes between the rabbonim, the rabbis, is one thing.
What lives in our own hearts is another. When we cross to the
other side of the street. When we hear which shul someone davens
in and something tightens. When a shidduch, a match, gets turned
down over a label and everyone knows that's what it was.
That isn't the succession. That's sinas chinam, baseless hatred,
and it belongs to us, not to them.
Yoma teaches that the second Beis Hamikdash, the Temple, was
destroyed through sinas chinam. Not avodah zarah, idolatry. Not
shefichas domim, bloodshed. Yidden, Jews, who held the same Torah
and couldn't be in the same room.
And the Mishnah there says plainly that Yom Kippur is not
mechaper, does not atone, for what stands between a person and
his fellow until he goes to him and makes it right. Not davening
harder. Going.
So before Monday night: the cousin you stopped calling. The
neighbor. The chavrusa, the study partner, you fell out with and
can't remember why. And if there's someone you've kept at a
distance over which side they're on — that one especially.
Four minutes on the phone. Worth more than every machzor, every
prayer book, on the shelf.
A gmar chasima tova, may you be sealed for good, to all of us, on
both side#forgiveness
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