One year later, converging circles of heart and hope

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Noach stepped out of his teivah. Although he knew what to expect, the sight of it shook him to his core. A prosperous, blossoming, incredibly beautiful world was no more. People, animals, trees, and plants were gone. All that remained was muck and more endless muck — the residue of a verdant world utterly destroyed.

Noach could not contain himself, and turned to Hashem demanding, “You, Who are the Merciful One, how could You have done it?”

What did Hashem reply?

“Foolish shepherd, when I told you that you are the only righteous one, that I was going to bring a deluge upon the world and that you should build a teivah, what were you thinking? I warned you about the flood and delayed it for so long so that you would pray for the entire world. But as soon as you heard that you would be saved in the teivah, you didn’t even think of praying for anyone. You simply built the teivah and saved yourself. Now that the world has been destroyed, you are opening your mouth to talk to me about mercy? Why did you not pray then?”

Noach then became contrite and then began offering sacrifices.

Zohar 1, 67b

T

he events of Simchas Torah 5784 were a churban. It was not about any one person being killed, or even many people. It was wholesale destruction. A whole swath of Eretz Yisrael was overrun by those bent on destroying us. And they actually succeeded in doing so, to a certain degree. Entire communities and villages were wiped out. Fields and orchards, homes and belongings, women and the elderly and infirm, all were ravaged and pillaged.

We woke up the day after Simchas Torah to a post-mabul world. No one who saw the churban, including non-Jews, remained dispassionate. As humans, we are programmed to crave living, thriving, and blossoming; churban is the antithesis of all of that.

As we look around at the devastation, we raise up our eyes to Heaven, and in our hearts, Noach’s question wells up: “How could You, the Merciful One, bring such destruction to Your beautiful world?”

But we are maaminim. We know Hashem has a plan. Having learned the parshiyos of Bechukosai and Ki Savo many, many times, we know that our relationship with Hashem is a two-way covenant. We are His chosen people, and if we choose to stray, chas v’shalom, we suffer the terrible consequences listed in the tochachah.

The devastation spelled out in these perakim is so ferocious that we read it quickly and quietly, for it is painful even to think about it. Since the destruction that happened on Simchas Torah echoes so much of that tochachah, we could easily conclude that the wrongdoers among us are at fault. As further evidence, witness the almost miraculous sparing of the various shomer Shabbos communities in the Gaza Envelope region. What further proof do we need?

But if these are our thoughts, then Hashem turns to us and pounds us:

“Foolish shepherds, where have you been? If you are indeed the ‘righteous ones’ and the knowers of the truth, what have you accomplished with your knowledge? If a few thousand people gathered to be mechallel Yom Tov for a placebo spiritual buzz, why didn’t anyone get to them and somehow draw them to the real joy of Simchas Torah? Included in that crowd were a few hundred kids who grew up in Yerushalayim, Kiryat Sefer, and Bnei Brak. Why did you not find whatever it would have taken to hold on to those neshamos?

“Yes, you consider yourself tzaddikim. You are proud of the fact that you were saved in your teivos. But why do you think I gave you the siyata d’Shmaya to become who you became?”

“In the very description of that covenant in the tochachah, I have stated that ‘all of Israel bears responsibility for one another’s deeds’ (Shevuos 39a).”

Can we honestly say that we did everything?

My rebbi, Rav Chaim Shmuelevitz, repeated many times the Chazal (Vayikra Rabbah 9:3) about Rabi Yanai, who once met a distinguished-looking person and invited him to eat with him. At the meal, Rabi Yanai tested him in every part of Torah, and found him totally devoid of any Torah knowledge. Rabi Yanai then asked him to lead the bentshing. The guest demurred, obviously unfamiliar with the words.

Rabi Yanai then angrily told him, “Repeat after me: Yanai has fed his bread to a dog.”

The guest grabbed Rabi Yanai and told him, “You have robbed me of my inheritance!”

Rabi Yanai was puzzled. “How so?” he asked.

The guest replied, “I was once passing by a melamed teaching a group of children Torah, and he was saying, ‘Moshe taught us Torah, which is the inheritance of Yaakov’s community.’ He did not say that it was ‘Yanai’s inheritance.’ Rather, he said ‘all of Israel’s inheritance.’ And if you possess it, and are withholding it from me, then you have robbed me.”

It is true that each person has bechirah and will have his own reckoning to face. Other people’s reckoning we leave for them to deal with. But for those who possess Torah, the judgment may be, “If you have it and they don’t, it is you who are withholding it.” It was not given to us alone; it was given to us to share. We are the trustees, charged with the duty of dividing the inheritance appropriately.

Sharing means finding ways to reach those who may even resist the idea. The onus is on us to try to reach them.

This is not only true of those growing up in a secular environment. It is doubly true of the hundreds of Jews who, tragically, have gone “off the derech,” like some of the people who were at the Nova festival on Simchas Torah. The off-the-derech phenomenon has many, many causes: molestation, emotional abuse, family dysfunction, educationally unsuitable institutions, and many more. Our obligation to the next generation is not only to create the next Rav Akiva Eiger, but also to give to each and every child his rightful share in Torah, whether it’s Talmud, Mishnah, Mikra, or derech eretz, so he can dance on Simchas Torah with a fire of joy, holding his share of Torah proudly aloft.