Followers

Monday, September 19, 2005

Tocho ke-Varo: Are we the same on the outside and the inside?

Tocho ke-Varo: Are we the same on the outside and the inside?: "r"
Are we the same on the outside and the inside?

We all present oursleves in a certain way. Living in a religeous community enforces this on us even more, as there is "ma-arat ayin" (lit. what will be seen by the eye). Not only do we have to do the right thing, but we have to be seen doing the right thing.

This works reflectively on ourselves. We subconsciously judge people by what we see, since that is all we know of them.

I will give an example. Once I was "Corralled" into a yom tov afternoon mincha in a very different kiruv minyan. I was not specifically bothered about being forced to "pray" as I was on my way to a different shule anyhow, but this was just not my kind of shule. This was a sefardi minyan for Israelis run by locals (Ashkenazy, not Israeli). this meant that the key members of the minyan (a chabad rabbi and a few older european gentlemen) did not perform many of the standard shule tasks.

The baal tefilah was an israeli guy who was wearing a leather jacket and blue jeans. Now I am no Chassid, nor even a jacket regular, butI was wearing a nice pair of black pants, a business shirt and a tie. The older gentlemen were wearing light coloured suits, and the Chabad rabbi was wearing a Kapotl and a gartel, yet our chazzan was wearing jeans.

At first those prejudices inside of me were boiling out. What was I doing allowing some guy off the street in jeans to daven for me?

Then I remembered. "Tocho ke-Varo" - His inside is like his outside. This Israeli tourist was fulfilling the talmudic edict of Rabban Gamliel. In order to gain entrance to the synagogue - he had to present himself as he really was.

This left a long night of thinking about the reality of this concept. How do we react to this concept in judaism. Do we better appreciate the true inside of a person, and their admission that they have room for improvement, or would we rather that our chazzan had put on a black hat and coat before we saw him, and then we can just assume that he is up to our standards, or at least in the right hands.

I will quickly add a postscript that I am quite aware of the problematic nature of "Tocho ke-Varo" and the fact that it is not univerally agreed as to whether it is a good idea or not. I will B"H deal with this in later posts

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

all jews are alike, especially when it comes to the kiddush after shachris