Weekly Letter: “My Jewishness Means Little to Me”

In this week’s parsha we learn of the birth and life of Yaakov and Esav, twins born to Yitzchak and Rivkah – and we see Esav disregarding the teachings of his parents and rejecting the responsibilities of a firstborn. In this connection – we bring a letter in which the Rebbe answers one who declares that “my Jewishness means little to me.” This letter is from volume 5 of The Letter and The Spirit.

By the Grace of G-d
Rosh Chodesh Adar II, 5736
Brooklyn, N.Y.
Mr.
Toledo, Ohio

Greeting and Blessing:

This is to confirm receipt of your letter in which you write again about “discharging therapies,” asserting that one should not brush the idea aside without first studying and investigating it, etc.

Let me assure you, though I thought you would have known about it, that the matter has been carefully studied and investigated and then brushed aside.

The fact that this has been done by others does not mean that every person must do it all over again to be personally satisfied of the veracity of it. By way of a simple illustration: when a medical scientist and authority in his field, having dedicated all his life to it, comes out with irrevocable proof that a certain thing is hazardous, indeed dangerous, to health, it will be universally accepted, and there would be no point for everyone to attempt to verify it personally, going over all the research and tests conducted by the said authority. Certainly it would be foolish to ignore the warning of the authority in actual practice – pending one’s personal verification – and in the mean time do anything that had been conclusively shown as a danger to life.

With regard to your remark that “my Jewishness means little to me at this time,” I can only say that it is the same as saying “my life means little to me at this time.” To be sure, G-d has given every person free choice to hurt himself, G-d forbid; but challenging the harmful thing will not make it harmless. Jewishness is not negotiable. For very good reasons, G-d has left it to one’s own free choice, desiring that a Jew should follow the Torah and mitzvos in his daily life out of his free will; to depart from it, G-d forbid, is to separate oneself from the source of life, with all the consequences from it. a Jew, born a Jew, cannot change this in the slightest, regardless of his attitude.

I can only hope that – as I wrote to you in my previous letter – you will know how to utilize your capacities and your time which have been allotted to you from Above; and nothing is given form Above to be wasted. Yet, if one takes even a minute of his time and an ounce of his energy to explore something that has long been explored and resolved, whether or not the person knows about it, one deprives oneself thereby of the good that could have been done instead and, what is even worse, does something harmful to himself and his surroundings. The excuse that unfortunately many use, namely, pointing to others who do it, is not and has never been a valid one, certainly not in our day and age.

I will say no more on this subject, though much more could be said, because either/or: if you are seeking the truth, the above will suffice; if not, there is no point in elaborating on it.

With blessing,