Dear Friends:
We are in the midst of the Three Weeks. The forces of chaos are intensifying their attacks against the Land and the Children of Israel. Not only does this emanate from the surrounding nations, but sinas chinon, internal antagonism is exploding like a volcano in the very heart of the Holy Land. It is as if the Satan, sensing the imminent coming of the Moshiach, is making his final stand, trying – G-d forbid! -- to destroy all vestiges of Torah and turn the Land of Israel itself into a scarred, barren wasteland. From inside and outside, the enemies of G-d are preparing their final assault against sanctity.
My friends, I want to tell you a personal story. I frequently daven mincha at a popular shul in Brooklyn which has continuous minyanim. On a recent afternoon, I entered as the previous minyan was ending. I passed a young man talking on his cell phone during Kaddish. I stopped and said to him, “If you want to use the phone you should go outside.” Shortly thereafter, just before the next minyan was about to begin, a man came over to me and said, privately and very politely, “I agree with you, but you embarrassed him in public. Other people heard you, and he turned red with shame.”
My rationale had been that this young man had been behaving incorrectly in public, and that I had a right to rebuke him, even publicly, but the more I thought about it, the more I came to think that the man who spoke to me had been correct. As it says in Sefer ha Chinuch, “I might think that he should reprove him even if the other’s countenance is altered. [However] Scripture states ‘and you shall not bear sin because of him.’” (Mitzvos 239/240). In other words, one must give mussar the proper way. I consulted eminent rabbis, who confirmed that I had acted incorrectly. By this time, however, all these people were scattered; I had no idea who any of them were.
I could not sleep that night. It seemed that my entire life had blown up in one second, G-d forbid! As it is written, “Whoever shames his fellow-man in public has no share in the world to come”! (Bava Metzia 59a) “It is better for a man to throw himself into a fiery furnace than to shame his fellow man in public.” (Kesubos 67b)
Furthermore, if I was so deficient in this area and had not been aware of it, perhaps I was deficient in countless other areas as well! How deep was I buried in the pit of sin? I thought of King David’s cry, “Who can discern mistakes? From unperceived faults cleanse me!” (Tehillim 19)
This was a desperate situation.
But even in the depths, can a Jew give up? There must be a way out!
I thought about the following passage in my book, WORLDSTORM: “How could Adam and Eve live with the burden they had introduced into the world? …. Can you imagine their burden on that day, the hot tears flowing as their feet walked out of [the Garden] and passed the angel guarding the entrance through which no man has ever returned? … Already they must have felt the guilt of thousands of future generations of their own children, the accumulated pain which was to befall every individual who would ever exist in the future world! It would all come about as a result of their one ‘tiny’ error… How could they bear it?
“The truly amazing thing is that they did bear it! Their greatness is shown perhaps more by the way they bore their exile than by their actions inside the garden. Adam and Eve did not commit suicide…. They did not give up!”
Amidst my feelings of hopelessness, I knew that I could not give up. Of course, I still had to try to find the young man to ask his forgiveness, but the Children of Israel do not give up, even with the accumulated weight of all our tzouris, the hatred of the entire world, and terrible dissension in our midst. I began to realize that this event had been a gift to me. Perhaps that man had been Elijah the Prophet, who had come to bring me to teshuva!
My friends, I hope you will pardon my personal story, but I feel that it is perhaps the right time of year to discuss such things. The fact is that everything happening to us in this chaotic world is a message from our beneficent Father Who watches over us ceaselessly. Some messages come with pain attached, but that is probably because we have been ignoring the previous signals. He is calling us back to Him and His voice is becoming louder and louder.
We are going to listen to Him. We are going to pay attention. We are not going to give up. We are all going to do teshuva! We are coming home to Hashem, and – with His kindness and mercy – we are going to usher in that day, very soon, when “those who devoured you will be cast far off” (L’cha Dodi) and the light of Torah will blaze forth from the Holy City until it reaches the four corners of the earth.
“Who may ascend the mountain of Hashem and who may stand in the place of His sanctity? One with clean hands and pure heart …. This is the generation of those who seek Him, those who strive for Your Presence! (Tehillim 24)
Teshuva will save us!
© Copyright 2010 by Roy S. Neuberger
