|
Contributed by Rav Ariel Bar Tzodeck
|
For the most part, the Ashkenazim have totally won out over the Sephardim in almost every arena.
Today almost every Sephardic yeshiva is so in name only. Almost all Sephardic yeshivas today teach according to the Ashkenazi teaching model, totally ignoring the way Sephardim have run yeshivot for centuries. Today almost all Sephardic Rabbis have been educated exclusively in Ashkenazi yeshivot and know no other method of Torah teaching and study other than the Ashkenazi. Almost all Sephardi Rabbis today dress like Ashkenazim, learn and teach like Ashkenazim, culturally behave like Ashkenazim, speak Yiddish like Ashkenazim and do everything else indistinguishable from their Ashkenazi brethren.
Mind you, the Ashkenazi path of Torah is by no means a bad path, on the contrary, it has produced numerous great Torah leaders. However, the Ashkenazi path itself has become skewered and many walking it have become lost in the externals of the path, and blind to the inner beauty that once made it so rich and vibrant.
That which made the old Ashkenazi path so beautiful was what it once shared alongside the Sephardim, a healthy focus on matters of the heart. When this was left out, the good old path merely became old. The Sephardi path has always emphasized matters of the heart. This is true even with regards to Talmudic study.
Whereas in Ashkenazi yeshivot, the Agadic sections of the Talmud were skipped over and not studied because they offered no intellectual challenge, in the Sephardi yeshivot they were studied in depth with all their lessons of morals and character taken to heart. I still teach my Gemara classes in this way. I am the only Sephardi Rav that I know who does so; and I am snickered at by my peers for what one told me was a waste of my student’s time. Last but not least, we all know how Kabbalah today is viewed in the Yeshiva world as practically something “foreign” to Torah (G-d forbid). It is ignored and actually held as repulsive by many of my fellow Rabbis. Granted, we can quote sources to fill a dozen books about the value, legitimacy and importance of Kabbalah. But these are all words falling on deaf ears today.
Rabbis and Rosh Yeshivas for the most part are complete strangers to Kabbalah study and emphatically teach their students to distance themselves from its study. Mention study of Kabbalah today in a traditional yeshiva and you might as well have said you’re considering converting outside the religion. The response you will get from the one will only be equal to the response you get from the other.
Granted the Kabbalah cults today have given Kabbalah a terrible name. Yet, we do not fight cults by surrendering to them what is holy. We do not surrender our sacred TaNaKh to the Christians because they have adopted it and twisted it to their own use. We can certainly not allow our hijacked Kabbalah to remain in the hands of its abusers who pervert it and twist it into something so utterly not Jewish. The only way to rescue our sacred Torah is by claiming it back from the hands of its abusers. We will never succeed in doing this all the while that Torah students are ignorant and oblivious to the problem.
I therefore raise the voice of alarm. I cry out to all who will hear, FOLLOW THE PATH OF TORAH CORRECTLY – RECLAIM THE HEART! Focus again on those areas of study not aimed at the intellect but rather at the emotions. Heal the heart; restore the love and fear of G-d to its rightful place.
For more go to...www.koshertorah.com
|
