Despite the threat of renewed anti-Semitism and other growing prejudice against us in the world, there is much for Klal Yisroel to celebrate and to be proud of in the world. One of the most unnoticed and yet crucial transformations in education, child-rearing and even basic humanity has been invented and promulgated primarily by Torah-true Judaism.
Let us listen for a moment to the voice of a Yale University teacher. For the past eleven years, she has led a writing course for Yale where she insists that her students, who have been ensconced in a village in the southwest of France, “go completely offline for our month together. No texting, no Googling. [The students] had cell phones in their hands as early as second grade; by middle school, Instagram and Snapchat dominated their social lives and TikTok and ChatGPT have defined their college years. You might think enforcing a technology ban gets harder with each passing year. In fact, it’s gotten easier… In 2017, the first year I instituted an internet sabbatical…my students wanted to hold on to their phones… But by 2015, any resistance had faded away” (Coleen Kinder, “Students Know They Are Rotting. They Want Our Help,” New York Times, Sunday December 21, 2025).
Imagine a “Shabbaton” for gentiles with a complete issur from the internet with voluntary participation. Wonder where that came from? Two elderly rabbis who cried at what was called by many at the time a “failed asifah” started something in Klal Yisroel and it has trickled down to the gentiles. This is the magic of ohr lagoyim and our role in the greater world. I was at the asifah and I heard many around me — all good ehrliche frumme Yidden — muttering “too much Yiddish. The Skulener Rebbe and Rav Matisyohu don’t get it. This won’t change anything.” Yet, today, there are TAG centers everywhere. Are things perfect? Far from it, but surely we have influenced the world.
Let’s look at the process. It is well-known that Rav Shamshon Raphael Hirsch devoted a good deal of his life and works to the concept of Klal Yisroel being an ohr lagoyim, a light unto the gentiles. But I doubt if even he could have seen or predicted the revolution that began with two zekeinim who changed Klal Yisroel, and the rest of the world is finally coming around as well. Once it is in the air, there is now even — sadly —a posthumous book for gentiles about “keeping Shabbos. The late Charlie Kirk, assassinated for his traditional beliefs, promulgated the idea of shutting down the secular universe for 24 hours. I haven’t read the book, but I don’t think poor Charlie had the 39 melachos in mind or even Kiddush, challah, cholent and kugel. But his followers are apparently enamored with one of the main joys of Shabbos, knowing that “all our work is done” and it is time to feed our spirit and soul.
Miss Kinder became “convinced…that we owe it to today’s college students to create internet-free spaces, programs, dorms and maybe even entire campuses for students committed to learning with far fewer distractions.” What’s next? Tznius, middos training, and mussar? Who knows, but it certainly feels just a bit like yemos haMoshiach.
Of course, this is not only Rav Hirsch. Many of our leaders, from the nevi’im through the current Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah, have taught us to be the ohr lagoyim. The posuk (Yeshayahu 2:3) famously tells us that “Torah will emerge from Tzion and the word of Hashem from Yerushalayim.” However, as Rav Yosef Tzvi Dushinsky, rov of Chust and later Yerushalayim, lamented, “our sins caused us to be exiled where we became a light unto the gentiles” (Toras Maharitz, Devorim, page 14).
My own rebbi, Rav Yitzchok Hutner, once shared with me an incredible panoramic view of all of Jewish history using this concept. In Tehillim, after the sin of the meraglim, Moshe Rabbeinu davened for forgiveness, to which Hashem agreed. However, the kapparah was not to be complete. “Hashem said, ‘I have forgiven because of your words. But as I live — and the glory of Hashem shall fill the entire world — that all the men who have seen my glory…and not heeded My voice, if they will see the Land’…” (Bamidbar 14:21-22). Rashi there explains, “As I live is an oath. Just as I live and My glory shall fill the entire world, My glory will not be desecrated so that people should not say that Hashem lacked the ability to punish these transgressors.”
Rav Hutner elaborated based upon a cryptic posuk in Tehillim (106:26). Dovid Hamelech is reviewing many of the incidents in the Torah and is focusing upon the events following the sin of the meraglim: “Then He (Hashem) lifted up His hand (in an oath), to cast them down in the wilderness, and to cast down their descendents among the nations.” The question is: Where did Dovid Hamelech derive the fact that Klal Yisroel was punished for the sin of the spies by being sent into exile?” Rav Hutner answers with the story of our people.
Hashem wanted Klal Yisroel to settle in Eretz Yisroel, from where the entire world would learn how to live from us. However, as Dovid Hamelech notes, we “despised the desirable land” (106:24), so Hashem sent us into golus. But then Hashem stated, “However, I have already sworn that My glory will fill the world,” so how will that happen? The answer is that instead of the world coming to you, you will have to go to them, but the kiddush Hashem still has to be made. That is the true source for our becoming the ohr lagoyim wherever we live.
On a personal note, after I heard this from the rosh yeshiva, I realized, very sadly after he was niftar, that he was also alluding to the fact that it is historic truth that after each expulsion of the Jews by the various empires, they either ceased to exist at all or became irrelevant to world history. Thus, Babylonia, Greece, Rome, England and eventually most of Europe became negligible at best, with no Jews from whom to learn. When Yeshaya said, “I will make you a light for the nations so that My salvation may extend to the ends of the earth,” he meant that those nations that want no part of us and will never learn from us have no purpose in this world. What the anti-Semites will probably never understand is that without any interest in learning from Klal Yisroel, they have signed their own death warrant as well. It is nothing we need to do. Hashem will cause the forces of history to do so naturally.
Going back just a bit to Chanukah, Rav Chaim Kanievsky (Taama Dikra, Chanukah, page 49) was asked whether or not someone who lives where there are no Jews whatsoever should light Chanukah neiros. He answered in the affirmative from the Gemara (Shabbos 21b), where Rashi explains that the nation whom we use as a criterion for how late we must keep the candles burning (or at least how late we may light) was the gentile nation of Tarmudians. From this we see that part of the mitzvah of spreading the word of the Chanukah miracle is for the gentiles. Rav Chaim acknowledges that this proof is dependent upon a disagreement amongst a number of Rishonim and Acharonim. One of the baalei mussar (see Chochmas Hamatzpun from the Degel Hamussar, Vayeishev, page 112) quotes the haftorah of that sedra: “You alone did I know from among all the families of the earth. Therefore, I will hold you to account for all your iniquities” (Amos 3:2). What exactly is the connection between the two statements about the nations and ourselves?
The answer is given in the form of a parable. A king assigns those close to him to keep an eye on one who is further away. When the nation that is located further away sins, the one who was supposed to be responsible is called to task. The novi reminds us that we are the ohr lagoyim and must make sure that Hashem is happy with His entire world, not just us.
In our own day, Rav Yitzchok Sorotzkin cites another posuk. The novi (Yirmiyahu 44:8) warns, “To anger Me with the deeds of your hands, to burn incense to the gods of others in the land of Egypt.” To explain the posuk, Rav Sorotzkin cites the Gemara (Pesochim 87) that “Hashem sent us into golus only to add righteous converts to Klal Yisroel.” The Bais Halevi explains that, undoubtedly, exile is a punishment for our own sins, but Hashem could have left us in our land. He sent us into exile to add geirim so that when we are truly a light unto the gentiles, some of them will wish to be megayeir. Yirmiyahu’s anger at us is because not only are we not inspiring the souls who are worthy of conversion, but, if anything, we are emulating our enemies, and this is unforgivable.
Today, we should be proud and even relieved that we are actually fulfilling our Divine calling. The world is realizing that the children are “rotting” and we are the ones who have already provided the “cure before the illness.” In other words, although the illness is already there, they don’t even have to start from scratch. The best of the gentiles are even turning to our Shabbos and certainly to our cures for uncontrolled technology. The danger of the internet and the addiction to evil phones that are destroying all youth are being conquered, boruch Hashem, in line with our ancient mandate.
This is truly a kiddush Hashem hopefully worthy of helping the world at large and for us to bring Moshiach very soon, bemeheirah beyomeinu.
