The Holy Rimanover, Dinover, The OTD Crisis and the Hechsher Tzedek

Second only to the Shidduch crisis, the Kids-at-Risk Crisis/OTD youth is the issue that roils the contemporary Frum community like no other. Ancillary to this crisis is another "issue" which is, in fact, far more widespread but neither as dramatic nor, superficially, as tragic as OTD. I refer to the problem of students of great potential who just don't pan out or that flame out young and continue with pro forma lives of Torah and Mitzvos. I'm not necessarily speaking about the Converso Orthoprax in our midst. I'm referring to the many Yeshiva and Bais Yaakov products whose scholarship, bren=ardor and yiras shomayim, while present, are best described as mediocre or stunted through arrested development.

Many TKs, professional educators, sociologists and psychologists have spilled oceans of ink analyzing the causes of this pan-societal problem and proposing solutions. As I answer to none of these descriptions I would not forward an analysis of my own. But it seems that this problem is not new (although it may never have been as acute as it is today) and that the great Reb Mendeleh Rimanover zy"a had spoken out on the issue at some point in the late 18th or early 19th century and I think we'd do well to listen to what he has to say on the topic.

I found something in Agra D'pirka 126 by the Holy Dinover (AKA the Bnei Yisoskhor) , quoting his Rebbe, that got me thinking that, perhaps, the idealistic animating idea (if one, indeed, exists) behind the Hekhsher Tzedek may have something to it. This passage connects the dots between good business ethics and seeing true Yiddisha Nachas from our children.

אמר כבוד אדמו״ר הרב הק׳ מהרמ״מ על מה שחוא מן התימא שאנחנו רואין כמה פעמים הילדים בקטנותם הולכים לבית רבם ומתמידים בלמוד תורתם ומתפללים בכוונה ועונים איש״ר ואמן ומיישרים אורחותם ואח״כ כשמתגדלים מתהפכים ח״ו במדות גרועות ומבטלים התורה והתפלה וכיוצא ומאין יתהווה זה ? הרי התורה שלמדו בקטנותם והוא הבל שאין בו חטא היה מהראוי שתעמוד למשען להם ויוסיפו אומץ בנפשותם כי מצוה גוררת מצוה. ואמר הוא ז״ל שהוא על שאבותיהם האכילו אותם ממון גזל שסיגלו ע״י מו״מ שאינו באמונה ונתפטמו באיסורים ושב להם לבשר מבשרם ועי״ז נולדים תאות ומדות גרועות. והביא ראי׳ מזפק העוף על שנהנה מן הגזל לא נתקרב לגבי המזבח כי לא לרצון יהיה והגם שהעוף לא נצטוה הנה הש״י
שונא החמס עכ״ד

My humble adaptation:

"My Teacher and Master thought it odd that although many young students show great promise in their youth, learning diligently, praying with concentration and passion responding to kaddish et al that they often grow up possessed of nasty middos=character traits and neither learning nor davening properly. How could this happen? Why doesn't the Torah that they exuded in purity and free from the taint of sin as youngsters set a benevolent cycle of ever escalating Mitzvos, Torah and Avodah in motion that would allow them to mature into holy individuals? I think the answer lies in their diet. Specifically nutrition obtained through the ill-gotten profits of shady business practices. You are what you eat and the Tumah inherent in such food engenders terrible middos in those nurtured on this diet. Note the Zefek /Moorah = crop of the Bird Olah (= holocaust/burnt offering) that is cast away before the bird is put on the altar. Why? Because we assume that, unlike bovines, sheep and goats, birds "grazed" by stealing from private property and that the stolen food lodges in the Zefek. As G-d hates theft and covetousness He rejects offerings that incorporate theft. If this is true of birds who lack free-will how much truer must it be of humans who, lacking a crop, have incorporated theft into the very fiber of their beings. These theft-obtained nutrients warp and degrade them such that they are alienated from HaShem and can no longer draw near to him."

Now I've heard analysis similar to this vis a vis the actual ritual Kashrus of foods. Khaza"l revealed to us that forbidden foods are מטמטם את הלב = " 'stuff' the heart" i.e. impede the "understanding hearts" ability to absorb Torah and refinement (IIRC when the Khalav S'tam Similac controversy began 30+ years ago the Debritziner Rov z"l quoted an Ohr haChaim HaQadosh saying that Torah scholarship had suffered in his countries torrid climate because of Tolaim infestation in their foods) but I had never seen a reliable source of note posit causality between diets purchased through financial chicanery and arrested spiritual development.

Now theft, usury, fraud, bait-and-switch, affinity schemes etc. are all forbidden by the Torah and one ought to avoid them on their own merits. Still, doing what's right because its right is, sadly, seldom a powerful motivation. Yet in an era such as ours wherein "whats-in-it-for-me?" Segulah chasing reigns supreme I post this Rimanover thinking that folks might lend an ear to "newly discovered" negative segulohs as well; i.e. not things to do or contributions to make, but things to avoid and deals to pass up. After all the author of this idea is not Solomon Schechter, A. J. Heschel, Morris Allen or Shmuel Herzfeld...it is none other than the Holy Rimanover. It has always been my fondest dream that my posts get attention and even go viral in the J-Blogosphere/ among Jewish emailers. But never so much as this one.

Addendum clarification: I'm not suggesting that all OTDs are attributable to being raised on food purchased through money earned by sub-pristine business ethics. But I think that some of the mediocrity of contemporary Jewry is attributable to this as it was in the days of the Rimanover. Furthermore this is not an appeal for promoting the Hekhsher Tzedek but a call to parents of school age children in particular to improve their business ethics for to what avail is a steak purchased from an "Ethical" meat-packer if the dollars used to purchase it were obtained through a Ponzi Scheme? This post should NOT be construed as an attack on Sholom Rubashkin who is the victim of a miscarriage of justice of Ruthian proportions. I'm convinced that a hanging tough-on-crime judge threw the book at him unjustly and hope and pray that his conviction and sentence are overturned.
Qedusha-Havdala...have you had YOURS today??? Hmmm???