The Never Ending Story

A Rov in Eretz Yisrael spoke on Asara b'Teiveis. He gave a report about a current event in Israel. I think that his story encapsulates the inescapable fate of the Jewish people, the result of loathsome behavior becoming enshrined as theological heritage.

Rav Steinman z'l was niftar two weeks ago. There is a group of very frum and learned Jews that is vehemently opposed to Rav Steinman's approach to certain problems both within the community and in the community's relationship with secular society. When the besura ra'ah of Rav Steinman's petira spread, certain members of this group, in one particular city where they are concentrated in significant numbers, celebrated his petirah in a manner similar to the celebration of the Yotzei Mitzrayim when they saw the bodies of the Mitzrim cast up on the shore of the Yam Suf.

In the following ten days, that community suffered the grotesque deaths of three infants. One fell out of a window; within his shiva, another was decapitated by a falling cabinet, and a day later the third in a different horrible manner. 

The Rov of that community got up to speak.
The disasters had touched every family in his community, and he spoke softly, with a trembling voice and with tears in his eyes.
He said that these tragedies, these horrors, coming one after the other, in a manner never experienced in Israel before, are a clear message from the Ribono shel Olam, and we have, at the risk of our very lives, to pay attention to what the Ribono shel Olam is saying.
The Ribono shel Olam is taking us by the shirt and shaking us!
It is clear as day, he continued, that these yesurim are happening because people are using smart phones and because women's tzniyus is deficient.

This reminds me of the Medrash of the Ribono shel Olam offering the Torah to the nations. Each one declined because one of the mitzvos was contrary to their national tradition. As Yom Tov Ehrilich puts it, Retzicha? Gneiva? Kibbud Av? Nope, that's not how we do things around here. 

מיר האבען געלערנט בא די טאטעס אליין אזי וי בא אונז איז שיין

There was a story like that in Lakewood a couple of years ago. As is the habit of bnei Torah baalei bitachon, a yungermahn was driving like a maniac. He narrowly avoided a fatal accident with a mini van that had a woman and her whole family with her. They ran off the road, there was only minor damage, but it had been a hair's breadth from the unthinkable.  The woman got out of the car and went over to the man and yelled at him, "What's wrong with you??? Why do you drive like that???You are driving like a meshugener, and you almost killed me and my family!!! And you know what would have happened if you had killed me? There would have been asifos all over Lakewood about the tragedy, and they would have said that this happened because women don't dress with tzniyus!"

In the Birkos Yaakov, Rav Moshe explains that Yaakov told Reuven, Shimon, and Levi, that their flaws were not the essence of their identity. They were good people, even if they had middos that were very problematic. Reuven had done endless Teshuva for many years, since before the sale of Yosef, and still Yaakov talked to him about Pachaz kamayim. The point is that Reuven felt that his teshuva was flawed, because he still had this middah. Yaakov told him that this does not mean your teshuva is not good. This midda is not who you are, you have distanced yourself from this bad quality. True, a person with that middah should be neither king nor kohen, but he was absolutely Yaakov's Bechor. Bechori Attah!

The problem is that there comes a point when a bad midda does become the tamtzis of a person't identity. At that point, he cannot listen to reason. Anything you tell him that attacks this essence will be denied. Even if he does listen, he cannot do teshuva. Teshuva would mean that he would die, as the Gemara says in AZ 17a.

This is also very relevant to Asara b'Teiveis and Achad Asar b'Teiveis and Shneim Asar b'Teiveis........

To end on a more elevating note, there's this.