Rav Chaim Kanievsky: True Greatness
Why a million Jews went to the funeral of an elderly sage.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/03/true-greatness-rabbi-chananya-weissman/
Excerpt:
Officially there are close to seven million Jews in Israel. Nearly one million of them poured into Bnei Brak to attend the funeral of Rav Chaim Kanievsky, and most of the rest probably feel some measure of guilt that they didn’t.
Think about that. It’s staggering.
There is not a single rock star, movie star, professional athlete, or other celebrity on the planet whose loss would be felt by such a high percentage of ordinary people. They have tens of millions of “followers” who idolize them, but that’s the thing – they are idols, not the real deal. Idols are a dime a dozen and are easily replaced when they fade from glory or pass from this world.
Even during their lifetimes, they have short a period of greatness during their prime years, after which they coast on the fame they achieved. If they pass away in their nineties, very few people outside of historians will be moved by their death. After all, it will have been many decades since they were relevant. The longer a secular celebrity lives, the fewer people will care when he dies. His true death occurs when a younger star eclipses him, and his physical passing is a mere technicality.
....Torah scholars do not retire after a few years of greatness and then rest on their laurels. They continue to learn and grow, making the most of every precious moment until their very last. Even if physical frailty prevents them from public activities – even if they can barely speak – they remain relevant just as they were decades earlier in their physical primes. Probably more.
This is why a million Jews went to the funeral of an elderly sage. They understand that a Torah sage cannot be replaced. They understand that Rav Kanievksy achieved a level of Torah greatness that is simply unfathomable to ordinary people. They understand that everything there is to know about everything is contained in the Torah, and Rav Kanievsky absorbed about as much of this divine wisdom as is humanly possible in our time.
.....Can you imagine a million people out of seven million attending the funeral of any military or political leader, past or present? They are fortunate if so many people aren’t glad to be rid of them, let alone mourn their passing. They are fortunate if people care at all.
No world leader will ever know honor like this. In some countries they force people to attend funerals and pretend to mourn. That isn’t honor; it’s the biggest disgrace. These “mighty rulers” are pathetic. An old man with no official position, who lived in a simple apartment, had no worldly pursuits, and devoted his life to Torah study earned the respect of the masses. No guns required.
A moment like this is a rare teaching opportunity for the world. Most people spend their lives chasing money, fame, power, material rewards. They dream of greatness, but they don’t know what greatness really is. They want to be rich and famous, but rich and famous people are almost universally miserable. The more they stuff themselves, the more empty they feel, the more they need just to feel momentary satisfaction.
Celebrities have many fans and followers, but the masses loathe them even as they envy them. When a celebrity has a downfall, as they so often do, the masses cannot kick them fast enough. It isn’t the person they love – it is the money and fame. Shallow people idolizing other shallow people who have more shallow things.
The passing of Rav Kanievsky is a reminder to the world what real greatness is. Greatness isn’t found on big screens, big stages, or social media. It doesn’t conform to the latest trends or concern itself with the faux morality of the day. It doesn’t seek attention or approval.
.....Greatness is seeing every moment as an opportunity to get closer to God, impart wisdom, blessings, and assistance to others, and hasten the redemption.
We can’t all live an ascetic lifestyle completely devoted to Torah study. But we can recognize that true greatness is there, aspire to it, and do a little better.
Also:
A funeral in Israel shows the remarkable power of faith
*****
Greatness is seeing every moment as an opportunity to get closer to God, impart wisdom, blessings, and assistance to others, and hasten the redemption.
Now I will look up Rav Chaim Kanievsky; thank you for posting this.
Thank you. Reposting much of the American Thinker article, it is excellent. Photos of the huge crowds.
March 21, 2022
A funeral in Israel shows the remarkable power of faith
By Andrea Widburg
On Friday, March 18, in Bnei Brak, a city near Tel Aviv, Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky passed away at the age of 94. I’m sure that means very little to you. Unless you are an ultra-Orthodox Jew whose life is dedicated to the study of the Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible), your life will not have intersected with Rabbi Kanievsky’s. However, he was important enough to Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community that, on Sunday, over 750,000 men (or almost 8.5% of Israel’s total population) poured into the streets of Bnei Brak to be part of his funeral.
Still, why should that matter to you? It matters because a religious text that’s around 2,500 years old in its present form and existed in other forms before then, and that recognizes and seeks to tame and elevate human behavior, has such power. Compared to that, today’s wokism, firmly grounded in fantasy, cannot and will not last.
Aside from being a fascinating insight into a culture that few of us know about, why does this matter? It matters because it’s a reminder that, as Geoffrey Clarfield and Salim Mansur so elegantly explained, there is a civilizational conflict going on. In the West, one level is Islam versus Western values. We see that clearly because of 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another level, though, is more profound, for it occurs within the West and sees an epic struggle between traditionalism and faith, on the one hand and...well, the technical terms are secularism or postmodernism on the other hand, but I tend to think of what’s happening on the left as insanity.
Those hundreds of thousands of Jewish men are the ballast of faith. They are the living embodiments of a faith tradition stretching back, unbroken, for at least 2,500 years. That’s when scholars believe that the Torah was set down in its present form, in the 6th century B.C. But the Torah existed long before that, in myriad written and in oral versions.
Then, beginning in the years after Christ’s birth, the world’s Christians embraced these core concepts, especially those articulated in the Ten Commandments. Even Islam revolves around the Bible, which inspired Mohamed’s visions.
The core concepts in the Bible are unchanging: there is a God, God made men and women, marriage creates cultural stability, people should have children, slavery is immoral, coveting destroys social cohesion, etc. Dennis Prager has an excellent series explaining how these core biblical concepts create strong, healthy, prosperous communities:
Against that continuity of faith and morality, nothing leftists do or say will last. Why? Because traditional faiths, whether Western or Eastern, recognize human nature and exhort people to embrace principles that optimize the realities of human nature to benefit the greatest number of people.
Meanwhile, post-modernism and the societal deconstructionism that comes with it reject reality. In the post-modern world, slavery is virtuous if the master, rather than being an individual, is the government. Male and female are just societal constructs that can be overridden by wishing, surgery, and hormones. Race, a category that denies people’s individualism and their divine spark, is immutably and completely determinative. Rampant, uncontrolled, untamed sex makes everyone happy.
The most important difference, though, as those 750,000 or more mourners show, is that religious people have babies, lots and lots of babies. Secular people do not. Secular Europe is dying (including Russia, which no longer has the wherewithal to throw bodies into battle as it once did), while religious communities are demographically booming.
Yeah, that’s a lot of messaging to take out of a unique event in Israel, but I do think it’s worth noting.
[PS my note: Russia is trying to turn around the population decline]