Dear Editor,
It’s surprising to me to see everyone patting themselves on the back for the so-called “great job” we did raising over $100 million for the yeshivas in Eretz Yisroel during this week’s visit of the gedolim. But let’s face the uncomfortable truth: this is all so twisted.
At a parlor meeting this week, someone apologizes to the gedolim for making them shlep all the way here to raise funds.
This is what has been gnawing at me all along.
Why did they have to shlep in the first place? Are we so incapable of donating generously without subjecting our revered 90-year-old gedolim to 16-hour days of grueling fundraising? And then we apologize with a straight face?
Are we not ashamed of what we’ve done to our gedolim?
This situation brings to mind the situation of Rav Nosson Tzvi Finkel zt”l, the late Mir rosh yeshiva, whose talmidim cried about how much they loved him and considered him their father after he passed away. But look at what he had to do in his last years, traveling all over to raise a few dollars. Is that how you treat your father and rosh yeshiva? You make him, in excruciating pain and suffering from Parkinson’s, travel to the USA just to collect a thousand dollars from your cozy study?
Now, we have the nerve to ask mechilah from the gedolim for making them come here.
But, of course, they had to come to us first so we could ask for their forgiveness. Is this for real?
Can people stop pretending that they feel bad for them after making them travel around to pick up pledges?
Someone said publicly that when he needs $107 million for a deal, he can raise it in an hour. So why did we have to subject six holy men in their 80s and 90s to an exhausting week-long global trek? Are we not humiliated by this?
We made Rav Dov Landau, who is very old, and Rav Yaakov Hillel, who has battled illness, travel to Canada just to pick up a check.
Rav Moshe Hillel, Rav Don, the Rachmastrivke Rebbe, Rav Salim. These are no youngsters. What did we just just do to them?
Is this what we call respecting our gedolim?
Asking for a Friend
{Matzav.com}