Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein writes:
“If they understood the effect the chiming of the church bells had on the Jewish soul, they would never stop them.” So observed a Torah sage of a different generation, when the grandeur and power of the Church further demoralized an impoverished and persecuted European Jewry. If the Pew Research Center is correct, today’s worry should be the growing silence of those bells. In this we find a challenge as Elul is upon us, and as we look towards the yemei ha-din…
Not so long ago, Jews would pithily observe, “Vi es christelt zich, azoy yidelt zich.” The translation loses all of the flavor, but the meaning is something like “whatever is happening in the Christian world, is going to happen in the Jewish world.” We would not be amiss if we modernized that to “Vi es un-christelt zich, azoy yidelt zich” – whichever way Christianity is unraveling, Jews will follow suit. And follow suit we certainly will, unless we act less like the Fiddler on the Roof shouting one word slogans at questions, and more like the am chacham v’navon we are supposed to be.
