[RBS] Fruit Salad

[Pinhasik's]

Beautiful-thank you

-----Original Message-----
From: rbs-bounces at cs.huji.ac.il [mailto:rbs-bounces at cs.huji.ac.il]On Behalf
Of Shmuel Rothenberg
Sent: Wednesday, February 08, 2012 9:06 AM
To: rbs at cs.huji.ac.il
Subject: [RBS] Fruit Salad


>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.


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