Editorial: Color blind color war breakout

A Jewish Star Editorial

Issue of August 22, 2008

Proper chinuch can be all about striking just the right balance — as much about not saying the wrong things as it is about saying the right things. Above all else, it's about teaching our children by our own good example.

Take, for example, the trumped up rabbinic ban that led the singer Lipa Schmelczer to cancel a charity concert at Madison Square Garden last February.

Many people felt the economic blackmail brought to bear on Schmelczer, and the supposed issue of secular influences in his music, made a mockery of more important matters, and reflected poorly on our leaders.

Regular readers will recall front page reporting in The Jewish Star that proved that not all the rabbinic signatories were fully aware of what they were signing — suggesting that the exercise wasn't so much one of Da'as Torah, as supporters claimed, as it was a fraud that would tend to lessen Emunas Chachomim, and faith, in general.

Still, many people took great pains to curb their confusion, hurt and anger in front of their children for fear of doing irreparable harm to the children's faith in Torah leaders, even as the faith of the parents was being shaken.

Now, several hundred boys will return to yeshiva in September — including to some local institutions — having learned a very dubious lesson at summer camp: that their adult role models at Camp MaNaVu think that the "ban" was so completely ludicrous that it can be openly mocked in a roomful of children, and satirized as a color war breakout. MaNaVu, by the way, has strong ties to Yeshiva Chaim Berlin.

While they may be correct, spelling it out the way they did was, in our opinion, a terrible miscalculation.

Lipa Schmelczer himself was on stage at the camp in upstate New York last week performing a particularly secular-sounding number. Suddenly, a man dressed in what was intended to pass for Charedi garb jumped up and 'threw' the singer off the stage, then harangued the campers about the damage secular-styled music was inflicting on their souls.

A video of the event shows the campers responding with cheers for Lipa, deriding the "rabbi" and singing "We Will Rock You," an anthem performed by the band Queen.

We asked two well-respected local educators for their thoughts about the incident which was written up on a website called hamercaz.com.

"This whole ban thing is a real screw-up," said one. "I think, honestly, it goes back to the situation that we're in — you've got to be careful what you're ossuring because it's going to come back and haunt you."

About the ban as fodder for a color war breakout, he said, "Once you start making fun — it's just not what you're supposed to do as adults — is make fun of rabbonim. To make a satire of a ban, is just dangerous."

"The response of the kids is very telling," the other educator observed. "It's not that they promoted a chilul Hashem," he said. Without knowing the intentions of the camp officials, the context in which the satire was approved, or how color war was broken out in the past, he stressed, he wasn't prepared to judge them specifically.

Still, he said, "You can see how upset the kids are about the whole thing. I think it really exposes an underlying problem that people think these kids are dopes and can be dictated too."

"They are very naive about how a kid thinks and how he should be educated," he added.

One final irony: Lipa Schmelczer, who feared for his livelihood six months ago, is now the undisputed star of Jewish music, confident enough to take part in this ill-considered satire.