It’s Rosh Chodesh Nissan in Lakewood. Imagine the experience of a new member of the town sanitation department. Two weeks ago, he would have been amazed at the quantity of wrappers, pans, cans and bottles that made this quiet hamlet look like a party town. Now, suddenly, there’s a new explosion of trash. Sidewalks are lined with old furniture awaiting “bulk pick-up” day. Households that usually fill up one town-provided trash receptacle are filling up two and even three a week. To accommodate this odd annual rite, the sanitation department sets up round-the-clock trash collection throughout the town. Men in hats and jackets can be seen wheeling their trash containers through the streets into the wee hours of the morning, heading like moths to the light of the local collection site. Two weeks later, when the trash and garbage have finally been expunged from the community, it seems that the Jews celebrate by consuming still more food and wine. The recycling cans once again overflow. As the Jewish calendar goes, so goes Lakewood, or so it seems.

People who live in an Orthodox community see the world through a peculiar prism. They view the state of the Jewish community as robust, growing and thriving. Although, like all other people, they encounter loss and tragedy, these are far outweighed by a calendar overflowing with family Shabbos and Yom Tov meals, brissim, bar mitzvahs, weddings and sheva brochos. Family trees are sprouting new branches with startling speed. Communities are outgrowing their boundaries and yeshivos are bursting at the seams.

Every so often, an occasion like the recent Siyum HaShas, which brought together 120,000 Jews at gathering points throughout the world, seems to scream out, “We’ve survived, we’re here and we’re not going away!”

Endangered Species?
From this perspective, it’s hard to relate to the fact that Klal Yisrael’s numbers are diminishing every day. One cannot see first-hand the crisis secular Jewish organizations are talking about when they discuss intermarriage rates, assimilation and the disappearing American Jew. From the Orthodox viewpoint, Jews do not appear to be an endangered species – or at least any more endangered than they have been throughout history.

Anyone observing the scene from that viewpoint must wonder why there is a need for kiruv? What’s the big emergency?
The answer comes from the first man on earth, Adam. Chazal teach that Hashem created mankind with just one man, from whom everyone else descended, in order to demonstrate that each individual is an entire world. Klal Yisrael is not about demographics; population trends account for next to nothing in the Jewish scheme of things. What counts is each individual Jew. Each one is a world, and when one is lost, it is as if the entire population of the world is lost. Yes, there are still plenty of people around, but that does not compensate for what is gone.

To see this principle in action, one need only do a little math. Take one little boy starting out in public school this year. Bring an Oorah kiruv volunteer into his parents’ lives. Convince them to send their boy to a local yeshiva, and watch him grow in Torah. Twenty years later, instead of wandering around in the secular world until, at 30 or 35, he finally settles down with a wife (who may or may not be Jewish) and has a child or two, he is a committed Jew building a bayis ne’eman. If that one man has six children, and each of those children has six children, and so forth for 10 generations, some 10 million Jewish men and women will trace their ancestry to that one boy. He is not a world in the figurative sense; he is in a very literal sense the progenitor of a nation – another Avraham.

That is what is gained when one child is brought back to Torah. And it’s what is lost when a child is left to drift away.

Indispensable
The significance of these losses goes far beyond than the numerical quantity of Torah observant Jews at stake. The integrity of Klal Yisrael itself – including the thousands who are observing the mitzvos and learning Torah -- is crippled by the loss of a single Jewish neshama. Chazal teach that every Jew is a letter in the sefer Torah. Every Jew at Mount Sinai entered into an eternal bond with Hashem, and each of their neshamos is represented by a letter in the Torah. When even one letter is missing, the entire sefer Torah is invalidated. Likewise, when one soul is missing from the body of Klal Yisrael, it, too, is invalidated. The Jewish people cannot fulfill their ultimate destiny without a complete complement of neshamos. Just as no letter in the Torah is without intrinsic meaning and value, no Jew is dispensable either. Each has his role to fulfill, and each role is an essential element in the Divine design.

So, while the observant Jewish world may not need to bring back its non-observant brethren in order to fill up shuls and schools, expand the population and provide business for the kosher grocer, it needs each and every Jew in a far more fundamental way.

Each Jew needs every other in order to be whole. This is not necessarily something one can see and feel in his everyday life. Most emotionally healthy people feel quite “whole,” despite the millions of Jews who are not connected to Torah, despite the thousands of Jews married to non-Jewish spouses, despite the thousands of Jewish children being raised in mixed households and learning nothing meaningful about their religion.

Yet that sense of wholeness is an illusion. One commentator illustrated this point by expounding on the greeting “sholom aleichem.” Most people take these words to be a greeting of peace, and that is indeed one interpretation. However, if one looks at the root of the word “sholom,” one finds a deeper meaning. “Sholom” comes from shleimus, meaning wholeness or perfection. When one Jew greets another with “sholom aleichem,” he is stating that his own shleimus is due to the other Jew’s existence. “I’m not me without you, and you’re not you without me,” is the simple interpretation of the sentiment.

If this is the case, Klal Yisrael’s seemingly robust condition is a beautiful veneer covering a decaying structure. No matter how thick and strong the veneer might be, it is only as durable as the rest of the structure. The delusion of completeness is itself a tragedy.

And this is why kiruv is a “big emergency.” Klal Yisrael needs all its children in order to be whole. If a person would imagine a sefer Torah missing as many letters as the Jewish people are missing neshamos, he would behold a pathetically damaged scroll riddled with voids and gaps. One who loves the Torah and understands its value would be deeply saddened upon opening a scroll and finding it in this condition. Yet that is the condition in which Hashem finds His beloved people.

Repairing the Gaps
The only remaining question is, how can these voids be repaired? How can the fragmented body of Klal Yisrael be restored to the wholeness it possessed at Mount Sinai? Are there enough people engaged in Torah, imbued with a love of their fellow Jew and an understanding of the need for kiruv to make a meaningful difference in the situation?

Thirty years into the “kiruv movement,” there are dozens, if not hundreds, of organizations and programs seeking to bring lost Jews back to their roots. Oorah alone, with its own comprehensive, one-child-at-a-time method, has seen hundreds of new observant Jewish homes take root as a result of its efforts. Other organizations have used seminars and retreats, campus activities, learning programs, Hebrew classes and many other approaches to draw Jews into the world of Torah. Many, many worlds have been saved. And yet, many more are lost each day.

What is needed is momentum, and that will come only when kiruv becomes the grassroots endeavor of every religious Jew. Everyone who has a Shabbos table to share, a few extra seats in their Sukkah, a plate of potato latkes to bring to a neighbor, an interesting English sefer to loan – even a smile and a warm greeting to impart – can add to the energy.

Lay people who are active in kiruv say that it is an outlook, not a profession. A person has to adopt the view that every Jew who crosses his path is there for a reason, and then he will find kiruv opportunities opening all around him.
“Can you invite someone to use your lulav and esrog? Can you offer to teach someone alef-bais? Can you bring them a shalach manos? If you can do these things, you can do kiruv,” said one long-time activist.

This is not to say that everyone, or even the majority of people, will become religious as a result of these efforts. But there are those who will be touched, and there are those who will be moved. There are those who, given a more favorable, less threatening view of Torah Judaism, will feel the need to give their children a better Jewish education.

It is at that point that the many existing organizations can serve as a conduit, ushering the inspired kiruv prospect into the world of Torah learning and mitzvah observance. While many people have the time and people skills to reach out to other Jews, not many have the resources to actually teach them, long-term, all they need to know in order to grasp the meaning and the practical observances of a Torah life.

On the other hand, while organizations can teach and move a person along in the teshuvah process, they cannot find every lost Jew and inspire in each one a desire to learn. Nor can they be friends and welcoming neighbors to each. There is a need for symbiosis; to make the maximum impact on the sprawling mass of non-observant Jews who comprise the greater part of Klal Yisrael today, both private and organized initiatives are essential.

If the Torah world arouses itself to action, a groundswell of teshuvah could build to heights that would dwarf all that has happened thus far. Jews finding Judaism, Jews changing their lives and inspiring their friends and neighbors to do the same – these are not fantasy images. They are the real, obvious, logical result of exposing a Jewish neshama to the truth.
“Shabbos is a present from G-d,” an 11-year-old public-school girl exulted at a Shabbos lunch at Oorah’s GirlZone camp this past summer. She had risen on her bench -- unprepared, unrehearsed, unsolicited -- to address 150 other girls sitting before her. Many were from public school, and almost all were from non-religious homes. “If someone offered you a present, would you say ‘No, I don’t want it?’ This is the most amazing present we are given. Take it and use it, and you will have a beautiful life.”

How many more of these precious souls are silently flickering in children who are spiritually buried in secular culture and ignorance of their own heritage? How many worlds could be recovered and rebuilt if Klal Yisrael made kiruv a part of life rather than a special event? It’s a simple equation. The losses on one side, and the gains on the other, are equally beyond measure.