Slabodkeh and Novarodok

I can only describe the experience as affecting, in the sense of evoking a strong emotional response, and I'm not sure why.

We have had the honor of  hosting Harav Shimon Krasner, the learned and pious author of the Nachlas Shimon, for several weeks every year.  

Yesterday, Harav Krasner told me that he had a question. Everyone is familiar with the aphorism "Slabodka taught Gadlus Ha'adam, Novarodok taught shiflus ha'adam." The story of Novarodok that underlines this approach is that they would tell bochurim to go into a pharmacy and ask for a pound of nails. At that time, a pharmacy was not like CVS; it was a respected and professional enterprise focused exclusively on medicine. To walk in and ask herr doctar pharmacist for a pound of nails would elicit an immediate and wrathful reaction. This taught the talmid to never allow others' opinions of him to effect his self image. A man should know who he is, do what he knows is right, and not allow public ridicule to turn him from his path.

Rabbi Krasner asked me, "Wouldn't this be a חילול השם? Wouldn't this make people think that bnei Torah, yeshiva bachurim, were fools? Or mechutzafim?" Isn't this the opposite of אשרי אביו שלמדו תורה אשרי רבו שלמדו תורה?

I told him that he is a talmid of Rav Rudderman, who gave over the Alter's mesora of gadlus ha'adam, so he cannot even comprehend how the Novarodoker mesora is muttar, to say nothing of appropriate.

But I am looking forward to speaking to my brother in law, an einikel of Rav Avrohom Jofen, to see what he says about this. 

UPDATE.  

I am including some comments because they add so much, and I post this to more than one website, and comments at one site do not appear at the other..

1. From R Micha Berger:

The best response I heard to this, from someone who studied in Novhardok in France, in my own words. He said that this depiction of Novhardok doesn't really pay attention to what they taught and lived, and more used them as a foil to highlight the chiddush in the Alter of Slabodka's derekh.

Novhardok is less "shiflus ha'adam" than boot camp. In boot camp, the sargeant tears you down, calls you a maggot, and builds you up again stronger and prouder than you were before.

Novhardok tool talmidim, replaced their faulty defense processes with a strong core of bitachon, and created men capable of heckling the Communists, standing up life in Siberia, who stayed loyal to Torah when many were abandoning it... And all with smiles, laughter and a simchas hachaim that belies the outsiders' stereotype...

2. From Menachem:

Chillul hashem, I'm sure you know, is not ALL about what outsiders perceive, as clearly demonstrated by the gemara (brachos 19b) where, if one is wearing shaatnez he must remove his clothing, "afilu bashuk"- and the gemara actually refers to NOT doing so as chillul hashem! With that in mind, is it possible that if one will be perceived as not stupid, but just utterly out-of-touch with the world around him- that that is not a ch"h at all, no matter what people think of him? An easier-to-palate example would be someone demonstrating publicly that he has never heard of Amazon or Youtube- not a ch"h in my opinion. Can the Novhardok story fall in that category, albeit several madreigos more extreme?

3. From Marzipan:

Thank you for an insightful post, as always. For a few years, I learned Madreigas Ha'adam regularly. It is full of beautiful interpretations of midrashei chazal, and exceedingly down-to-earth and practical. The approach to humans and their foibles is very blunt and real. But not much of shiflus haadam, at least the way the velt bandies about that term. I don't quite understand, because besides being the Alter's own writings, it was used as a mussar sefer in the yeshiva!

My own conclusion has always been that the hashkafa is much more complex than a simple term can really convey, just as Gadlus Haadam is an oversimplification of the Alter of Slabodka's multi-pronged approach. (Yes, R' Dovid Liebowitz used to say, "I heard one shmuess from the Alter: Gadlus Haadam!")

Bottom line: Only after a full, in-depth study of ALL of the shmuessen and hashkafos of the founders of these two schools of thought, can we begin to try to understand these terms.

To which I replied with an important Beis Yosef:

Marzipan, thank you for the reminder. The fact remains that Novarodok has given and continues to give a great deal to Klal Yisrael. There must be an insight there kepatish yefotzeitz sela, not one monolith "shitta". Witness today's descendants of the family, all gedolim, but if the Alter would see them, he might be taken aback. (Rhetorical understatement.) As one great grandson said, on some things "volt ehr geschvigen," but on others "volt ehr geschriggen." It is very likely that they viewed the local gentiles as irrelevant, as mortal antagonists, that seeking their respect was an absurd and futile effort, or that developing the strength to ignore societal pressure was a primary value that trumped everything else, I don't know. I know that such behavior easily segues into simple azus ponim, as the Beis Yosef says in the beginning of the Tur, where he warns that Azus is like uranium;

 ומ"ש ע"כ הזהיר שתעיז מצחך כנגד המלעיגים ולא תבוש מפני שמדת העזות מגונה מאד כמו שנזכר ואין ראוי להשתמש ממנה כלל אפי' בעבודת השי"ת לדבר דברי עזות כנגד המלעיגים כי יקנה קנין בנפשו להיות אפי' שלא במקום עבודתו יתברך לכך כתב ולא תבוש כלומר אני אומר לך שתעיז מצחך כנגד המלעיגים ואינו לדבר להם דברי עזות אלא לענין שלא תבוש מהם אף על פי שילעיגו עליך

So maybe R Yosef Yoizel did extreme things. But the mesora he gave over is a gem.

4. A friend wrote the following, slightly edited for derech eretz.

"Sadly, there seems to have been a lack of sufficient sensitivity and focus on how "our" behavior might impress and impact the general population outside the walls of the yeshiva. You might remember reading in Professor Stampfer's book on the Lithuanian Yeshivos that the event(s) which triggered the Russian authorities closure of Volozhin were the physical disturbances and public violence perpetrated by the talmedei hayeshiva on the streets of the town during the battle for the succession of the school's leadership between those factions which supported the Netziv and his family against those who favored Reb Chaim Brisker. (The shopkeepers complained over and over to the authorities that the students' behavior was exerting a deleterious impact upon their business and was disturbing the peace of the community). So much for the bochurim... Regarding the adult religious authorities themselves, much has been written on how many of their public policies actively contributed to antisemitic resentment and hostility. ( As examples, I need only mention the Roshei Yeshivas absolute avoidance of talmidim serving in their country's armed forces ( the real reason behind Slabodka's move to Hebron) or of their refusal to teach the fundamentals necessary for active, positive participation in secular society.) Does not the inability of the Torah leaders in Eastern Europe to read, write or communicate fluently in the language of their own countries, countries in which they had been granted legal rights and citizenship, itself constitute a Chillul Hashem? Isn't Rabbi Krasner troubled by the desecration involved in these more widespread patterns of religious behavior? "

My friend believes that it is a sin to blindly accept everything earlier generations did, and this is what we mean when we say in vidui "אבל אנחנו ואבותינו חטאנו," that we perpetuate their sins by following them without careful consideration. I think he is wrong. 

Also, what he says about the Stampfer book is not precisely true. The primary reason Volozhin was closed was that the Czarist authorities saw the fighting as a symptom of social upheaval that related to Bolshevism and Anarchism. True, in a footnote he mentions that the local storekeepers complained to the authorities that the fighting was keeping customers away and making the city unliveable, but that was not why they closed the yeshiva. They saw the yeshiva as a symptom of rebellion against authority.

5.  I spoke to my brother in law, Rabbi Moshe Faskowitz שליט"א. I am very grateful that he took twenty five minutes of his precious time to explain the Novarodoker shittah. 

He said that he has written an article on this very point, and I hope he can forward it to me. But the gist of his words, and I must say that much is lost in the condensation, was that the story was true, and that such "Peulos" were required of every bachur in Novarodok. 

When his own father was seventeen and a half, the Alter (I believe his yeshiva was in Bialystock at the time) told him to go to a town twenty kilometers away to start a yeshiva ketana, along with another bachur named Bock. He asked, how can we get there? The Alter answered, take a bus. But, he said, we have no money? The Polish bus driver will throw us out! The Alter said, take the bus. So they got on the bus, and told the driver that they need to get to town X, and they have not a penny, but the dean of their school told them to get on the bus and go. So the Polish bus driver said, "So go sit down." And never after that did his father worry about the reaction of people to his behavior when he knows he is doing the right thing.

As for the pharmacy owner thinking the bachur was either a simpleton or a mechutzaf, he said, mechutzaf is absurd. The bachur would come in and respectfull asked for a pound of nails, no chutzpah, no azus panim. The pharmacist would laugh at him, everyone in the story would laugh at him, and he would say, thank you and walk out. Did they think he was a fool? A simpleton? No. The goyim knew that the yeshiva boys were smart and shrewd. They did think that they were odd and strange, but who cares that the goyim think yeshiva boys are odd? Do we care that they look at someone wearing black frock and black hat in Bnei Brak when it's 106 and say that he is crazy? Do we care when they see a man who doesn't use the eiruv, and his wife does, and she is pushing the twin stroller while he walks alongside, and they say, "What a disgrace, to leave the work to his wife while he does nothing!" No we don't. 

He also reminded me that my father zatza'l used to make fun of me for being so sensitive to what people will think of me. He correctly saw this as a weakness of will. My father did not like people to be weak willed. He was a decisive and intense person, and when he decided to do something, nothing stopped him, not pain, not other people's yiush, not challenge, and certainly not difficulty.  He was a chad bedara in Chesed, but unless you were mentally ill, he did not want to look at you if you were self indulgent or lazy.

My friend (mentioned above in (4) also called me back, and said that nothing my brother in law said means anything to him. He reminded me that my mother said that after Reb Yoizel's wife died, and he wanted to re-marry, almost no shadchanim wanted to get involved, because they felt that to inflict his extreme behavior on a Jewish woman would just not be fair. 

Also, there may be some truth to the idea that many bachurim saw the gentile populace as mortal antagonists (which turned out to be true in the vast majority of cases, even among those who professed a friendly relationship with their Jewish neighbors,) who hated them, and worrying about their "losing respect" for Yeshiva Bachurim was not even laughable. 

So I'm hoping to get Rabbi Faskowitz's article. Until then, let's just remember that in Europe, the hashkafos and way of life of Navorodok and Slabodkeh were utterly incompatible.