OU chair rallies 5 Towns: Fight for Jewish unity

Challenging someone to step forward and forge unity across the varied streams of Torah observant Judaism in the Five Towns and Far Rockaway, Stephen Savitsky declared the need for achdut (unity), in a talk following Shabbat mincha at the Young Israel of Woodmere.

Savitsky quoted Rav Pam and cited personal experiences — emphasizing the community’s unity in the face of Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath — in his talk, “Achdut in The Orthodox Jewish World: Fact or Fantasy.”

Savitsky, chairman of the board at the Orthodox Union and a longtime YIW member, said the Jewish community needs to join forces, especially at this time of year when during the Three Weeks we mourn again the destruction of both the first and second Bait Hamikdash — the second destroyed due to sinat chinam (purposeless hatred). This is a time when Jews the world over confront the need to create a climate of ahavat chinam and yet, said Savitsky, the different streams of Judaism are very divided from each other.

He noted that the Torah observant community, despite outward differences of clothing choices, has much more in common than not. He quoted a comment that Mashiach is waiting at the gates of Yerushalayim but is burdened with a suitcase of diverse garments and hats, uncertain as to the type of hat that would be acceptable to all Jews.

He recounted setting up a meeting with a rebbe and, when he arrived at the appointment, the rebbe asked him, “Why did you come?” He answered, “I missed you.” The rebbe lowered his head. Two long minutes later the rebbe looked up with tears in his eyes and said, “I missed you, too.” The two men hugged. Savitsky asked the men and women in the shul why this can’t be done across the board.

A unity shabbaton was recently held in Chicago, noted Savitsky, where the rabbis exchanged pulpits. He said that it was organized by one person and he challenged the community to duplicate that event here.

Savitsky cited the tremendous efforts expended by local Jews to unite the Far Rockaway Jewish community on its rebirth with the vibrant Orthodox community of the Five Towns, to enable all to eat in every restaurant, purchase in every supermarket and eat in each others’ homes and shuls. He recalled that the work took a year and a half but succeeded in launching a unified kashrus presence that communities elsewhere strive for and attempt to emulate.

Recalling the tremendous effort and achdut of Sandy, how hard times bring us together, he called on a leader to step forward and not wait for dire circumstances to once again bring all segments of the Torah observant Jewish community together, to respect each other’s differences and focus on commonalities.

Savitsky noted, in a phone conversation with The Jewish Star after Shabbat, that the Three Weeks is an appropriate time to give a speech on achdut.

To achieve unity, it is necessary to “create an atmosphere, an environment” to enable a “dialogue with someone not necessarily like you,” he said, adding that Judaism is “not an isolationist type of religion” and people should not stay isolated in “one yeshiva, one shul.” He stressed the need to “open up, even if we don’t share everything.”

He said that it only takes “one or two people to decide to make a difference.” He is “hoping that people will say, ‘What can I do?’ I have a lot of ideas. I’ll help them.”