A Chassidic Rabbi out of Monsey, is doing his best to explain the Jewish view of the many aspects of Jews and Judaism on Iranian TV. His name is Rabbi David Eidensohn, who has acquired a huge number of following on YouTube. As an attempt to clarify the Charedi position on Israel and Iran, he has done a good job, in my humble view.
Open dialog with mutual respect for each other, to demistify the myths of the Jews and explain it with sweetness according to Torah seems to be the trend nowadays. YouTube is full of intellectual debates between atheists and clergy, and civilized enemies of different nations.
I wish much success to Rabbi Eidonsohn and his "kiruv" work to the nations. Maybe this will make our transition to Moshiach much easier, kein y'hi ratzon, without a nuclear war.
I mention this point particularly to an American audience. In recent
years, one observes on the American scene a terribly disturbing
phenomenon: the spread of hedonistic values, but with a kind of
glatt-kosher packaging. There was a time when the problem of hedonism
for religious Jews didn’t often arise, because even if you wanted to
have the time of your life, there wasn’t very much that you could do.
The country clubs were all barred to Jews, there weren’t many kosher
restaurants, there were no kosher nightclubs, etc. In the last decade or
two, a whole culture has developed geared towards frum Jews, where the message is enjoy, enjoy, enjoy, and everything has a hekhsher (kosher certification) and a super-hekhsher.
The message is that whatever the gentiles have, we have too. They have
trips to the Virgin Islands, we have trips to the Virgin Islands.
Consequently, there has been a certain debasement of values, in which
people have a concern for the minutiae of Halakha (which, of course, one
should be concerned about), but with a complete lack of awareness of
the extent to which the underlying message is so totally non-halakhic
and anti-halakhic (By His Light).
