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How common is it for people living in Israel not want to be part of a community or have a Rav? Someone told me that this is how they want to live in Israel and that they want to be their own person without having to conform to anyone.
I asked this to someone else and they told me that it probably has to do with religious politics in Israel. What does that mean? Aren’t you supposed to “Oseh Lechah Rav” -make for yourself a rav”?
What about community support when you need them? Personally, my own community has provided so many wonderful things for myself and my family. Who would not want to be part of a group or want to be a loner and go through hardships on their own?
Maybe it is common, and maybe it isn’t, but it doesn’t matter. Hashem loves people even if they don’t have a Rav, so I do too.
For their own sake, they should get one. It’s a mitzva d’Oraysa to attach yourself to a Rav. Plus it is nice to have a community.
But maybe we will try to avoid denigrating such people from our comfortable chairs behind our laptop screens, because they are Jews, just like us, living in Israel, and trying to do the right thing, and we do not know their stories.
I settled in a large community in EY with the intent to move out to the miniburbs. I have become a rolling stone, davening in many shuls, connecting to them all, but not fully. I have two Rabbonim I can access but I do that only rarely. My take is that in the city, without constant and serious effort, you will always be ‘other’ and certainly if you don’t willingly conform to one of the labels that local society allows.
BTW, he is not alone. He daavens in a shul with a hundred other guys and is good friends with them. The shul has a gabbai and could be even a rav, but the rav does not lead the community and one is part of the community without ascribing to the rav. Actually its the norm, unfortunately.
Everyone in Israel has a Rov:-
If you are Ashkenazi, Rav Dovid Lau shlita is your Rov for the next decade.
If you are Sephardi, Rav Yitzchak Yosef shlita is your Rov for the next decade.
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