I will admit. Last week, in hearing some news that I had wanted to find out more about, I looked at Matzav.com. Before reaching the news that I wanted to see, a different article caught my eye. It was not what I was looking for. It was actually not about the matzav in Eretz Yisroel or the health and welfare of the roshei yeshiva. Far from it. It was about a comedian. Although I cannot quote any jokes from him and never saw him perform, I will admit that I have heard of him. His name is Jay Leno. In the article, which may be an editorial on the state of the union, Mr. Leno, who looked pretty old in the picture, was lamenting—pardon the pun—the matzav of comedy today.
Leno was reflecting on how politics has crept into everything. He said that for forty years, he knew another famous comedian, a Jewish clown (Jacob Cohen) who called himself Rodney Dangerfield, and despite shmoozing about jokes with him for forty years, never once did they discuss politics. “I had no idea if he was a Democrat or Republican,” Leno said. “We never discussed it; we just discussed jokes.”
To him, comedy wasn’t about politics. It was about giving people a break from it.
“I like to think people come to a comedy show to get away from the pressures of life,” he said. “And I love political humor—don’t get me wrong—but when people cozy too much to one side or the other, they forget what it’s all about.”
He intoned the problem with being political and deriding the president with your humor, explaining that it’s not good for business when you have to make jokes that only make half of the audience smile while infuriating the other half.
Although this week is Shabbos Nachamu, I am not writing an article about comedians. But the article touched a nerve and a memory.
The novi cries, “Dabru al leiv Yerushalayim—Speak to the heart of Yerushalayim.”
Maybe that’s about us. We live in a world where everything feels like it has to be a position statement. The Shabbos table. The wedding table. Even a vort can turn into a referendum. Everyone has a side and everyone assumes you must too. But perhaps we can speak a different language, one that transcends sides and bypasses politics and speaks straight to the heart.
My zaide once told me a story that was rekindled in my memory after reading about Leno’s lament. Back in the 1950s, as rosh yeshiva of Yeshiva Torah Vodaas, he often consulted with a Jewish psychotherapist who treated some of his bochurim. The doctor was brilliant, he trained under Freud himself, and he was always respectful of Torah and mitzvos. Yet, in all their conversations—about psychology, chinuch, and the struggles of teenage bochurim and many other inyonim—my zaide never tried to be mekarev him to become frum. In fact, the doctor never argued on a point of hashkofah that my zaide spoke about that would impact a psychological decision, and he had the utmost respect for his daas Torah. I assume that is why my zaide used him for so many years.
Years later, when the doctor passed away, my zaide told me that he was debating whether or not to attend the levayah, which he assumed would be officiated by a rabbi he would not know. But for the sense of his tremendous hakoras hatov, he went to the service and stood inconspicuously in the back of the large hall of Riverside Chapel in Manhattan.
He was expecting a secular crowd filled with the man’s assimilated colleagues. Instead, he was stunned to see a room full of frum Yidden. A prominent rov, a friend of my zaide’s, officiated the levayah totally al pi daas v’din. Afterward, my zaide approached him. “How did you know the doctor?”
The rov looked surprised. “What do you mean? He davened in my shul three times a day!”
Imagine! For years, my zaide spoke to him quite often, and the doctor never broadcast his Yiddishkeit to my zaide, while my zaide never pried into the man’s religiosity. Rather, he spoke to him about the needs of others without ever touching politics, theology, or identity. They saw each other as those charged with the roles they had accepted for their charges. Rebbi, doctor. And somewhere in that quiet respect, a bond formed that transcended anything else.
My father-in-law, Rav Yacov Lipschutz, who headed the OU Kashrus Division, related to me that during one plant inspection, the wealthy manufacturer suddenly tried to engage him in a theological debate. “Rabbi,” the man asked, “what do you think really happened at Har Sinai?”
Without missing a beat, my father-in-law smiled and said, “I came here to see whether your product is kosher, not to engage in theological debate. That is what I’ll do. Nothing more. Nothing less. We can talk theology tomorrow.”
Sometimes, the greatest wisdom is knowing when not to make everything about ideology or politics. Not every encounter has to turn into a platform. Not every conversation needs to prove a point.
After the tears of Tisha B’Av, after the churban and the churbanos, Yeshayahu Hanovi doesn’t say, “Convince them.” He doesn’t say, “Win the argument.” He says, “Nachamu, nachamu Ami, dabru al lev Yerushalayim—Comfort My people. Speak to them, heart of Yerushalayim.”
Redd tzu Yidden.
Before my wife’s zaide, Rav Leizer Levin, left Radin, the Chofetz Chaim tasked him with a four-word mission: Gei redd mit Yidden. He was the rov of Detroit for more than 50 years. When he was niftar, the largest newspaper in Detroit, The Detroit Free Press, did not make an obituary for him. They made an editorial. Full page. During his tenure, no Reform or Conservative clergymen ever gave a get through their own congregation or religious arm. They all deferred to the rov, because he spoke to the heart of the Yid.
To console a nation, you don’t aim for the head. You don’t argue positions or policy. You speak to the heart, and the only way to do that is to speak from the heart.
Maybe that’s the message for this week. Not every friendship has to be a referendum. Not every Shabbos Kiddush has to become a debate stage. Not every conversation has to score a political win. Sometimes, the biggest mitzvah is to step back and say, “I don’t care who you voted for. I don’t even care if you voted. I don’t care where you daven or which rebbe or rov you cling to. You’re a Yid. You have a heart. You have a neshomah tehorah that Hashem created and blew into you.”
The consolation of Nachamu is a call to bring the heart and the neshomah back into our conversations, our friendships, our simchos.
If comedians realize that their goal is to make people smile and not join a side, maybe we can all find a message of harmony that is pshat in a sheverer sugya or blatt Gemara.
The Tosafos, the Ramban and the Rambam have a deeper commonalty that transcends any specific ideology.
“I knew him for forty years. I have no idea what his politics were. But he told me such a beautiful pshat. He asked me such a shtarker kasha. He shared with me a most fascinating insight. I did not know his politics, but I knew his heart.”
This Shabbos Nachamu, maybe that’s what Hashem is whispering to us. Dabru al lev Yerushalayim. Speak to the heart. To the Yid across from you. To the Yid inside you.
And if we can do that—if we can find the heart again beneath the noise—hopefully the nechomah we bring each other will finally be the one that lasts.
