[RBS] Fruit Salad

[Shmuel Rothenberg]

>From HaRav Ron Yitzhak Eisenman (Passaic, NJ)

Fruit Salad
 
My wife has a beautiful practice which she observed from her own home and integrated into my life as well.
Every Tu B'Shevat (the 15th day of the Hebrew month Shevat – which in Israel is the "New Year' for the tress) my wife works hard on preparing a fruit salad containing at least fifteen different types of fruits.
Apples, grapes, bananas, figs, dates, strawberries, star fruits and carob slices all join forces together to form a beautiful, delectable, delicious and nutritious fruit salad.
As I sat at my table tonight I first visually admired the appetizing and appealing mixture and subsequently as I tasted the mixed medley of fruits I thought about current events.
I remembered Rav Elyashiv who is critically ill in a Jerusalem hospital.
And I thought about Iran and their constant threat to destroy the Jewish State.
I sat there for a few moments staring at the fruit and thinking about life.
I was suddenly awakened by a question from my wife.
"Which fruit do we eat first: the grape or the fig; the date or the pomegranate?"
As all of us know, the salad cannot be lumped into one spoon and consumed as such.
Rather, we have to look at the individual items in the salad and give each and every one of them their proper respect and recognize each one of them for what they are- separate and distinct entities which together create a beautiful and unified collective body.
However, the collective body never frees us from recognizing the individuality of each specific fruit.
If you view the entire salad as one lump item, it is easy to `attack' the entire mixture.
However, when you take the time to identify each individual fruit you appreciate all of the different parts in their uniqueness.
My wife's question connected my thoughts on current events to the uniqueness of the fruit in the salad; as the same concept applies as well to people.
If you view a group of people as just a lump sum, a depersonalized faceless blob symbolizing a group whom you detest as opposed to individual human beings who have feelings and a heart, then it is much easier to hate them.
Meaning, when you depersonalize your enemy and consider the individual person as symbolic of the entire group as opposed to a human being who is very similar to you- then you can hate them and spit on them.
All of us realize the necessity of not lumping all of the fruit into one unrecognizable `chulent'.
However, do we realize the danger in lumping all Jews who are different than us -be it in their standards of Tzinius or be it in the color of their hats –into one faceless group as being extremely detrimental to our hope of achieving Ahavas Yisroel?
Do we realize that when we depersonalize all `Black hatted Jews' and characterize all of them as being `spitters' and rock throwers we are ignoring their individuality?
And do we acknowledge that when we broad bush all `Modern Orthodox Jews' as trouble makers or as being lackluster in their mitzvah observance we are actually granting ourselves a license to hate?
Remember the lesson of the fruit salad.
If G-d forbid something happens to Rav Elyashiv or something arrives from Iran you can bet your bottom dollar that their will be unity and hatred will be forgotten.
Learn the lesson of the fruit salad and maybe, just maybe Hashem will not have to deliver the lesson through
.
I can still hear everyone stating and declaring in the summer (it was only six or seven short months ago when we still had hopes that little Leiby was alive) how we are all one and how hats and their color are unimportant and immaterial to what's really important.
What happened to us over the last six or seven months?

Unfortunately, apparently nothing.