Haredi or Conservadox?

By: Tzvi Fishman

Published: August 5th, 2012

There are many people who claim to be Haredi Jews, but they aren’t Haredi at all. In the Torah portion of “V’Etchanan,” which we read on Shabbat, we learn from Rashi’s commentary the true nature of a Haredi Jew, epitomized by Moshe Rabeinu himself. On the verse which describes how Moshe set aside three cities of refuge on the eastern bank of the Yarden, Rashi states, “Being that his heart was God fearing (hared) to set them aside, even though their status wouldn’t take effect until those in the Land of Canaan were set aside first – Moshe said, ‘A mitzvah that is possible to observe, I will observe it’” (Devarim, 4:41).

In other words, we learn from Moshe that the true meaning of Haredi is someone whose fear and reverence of God so fills his being that he rushes to do every single mitzvah as speedily and as completely as he can, not wanting to miss the slightest opportunity in serving God.

We also find this Haredi quality in Moshe’s great desire to live in the Land of Israel. Moshe wanted to make aliyah more than anything else. This is a sign of a true Haredi Jew – a towering love for the Land of Israel and a passionate desire to live there. As we wrote in a previous blog, our Sages tell us that Moshe begged God again and again, 515 times, to enter the Land of Israel. This was his life’s supreme desire – not merely to long for the Land of Israel, but to go there to perform the commandments of the Torah the very first opportunity he had. This is what being a true Haredi Jew is all about. A person who wants to fulfill the will of God as completely as he can, rushes to perform every mitzvah he can. He doesn’t wait for a mitzvah to come his way – he hurries to be first on line. Loving God and fearing him with a burning reverence and awe, Moshe yearned to fulfill God’s will in everything, especially regarding the mitzvah of living in the Land of Israel, a mitzvah which our Sages tell us is equal in weight to all the commandments of the Torah (Sifre, Reah, 12:29), as it says over and over again in the portion we read on Shabbat:
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