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Did the Carnival Triumph?

I’ve been thinking about the recent Carnival Truimph cruise ship fiasco all week. Although it was far away and may not seem to have anything to do with us in truth it was a profound lesson we can all contemplate.

In all the news reports about the incident in which a cruise ship carrying over 3000 would-be vacationers found itself stranded at sea for five days without power without even working toilets one sentence kept repeating itself thematically: what was to be a relaxing luxurious vacation turned out to be a nightmare. After the ship was finally towed back to civilization one of the disembarking passengers said that going through the ordeal was like being on two different ships: some of the unfortunate travelers had acted like angels others like animals.

There’s no need to repeat the shocking descriptions of those five trying days the passengers suffered; suffice to say that they were definitely pushed to the brink.

What is fascinating is that these vacationers were certainly normal average people — not what you’d think of as desperadoes. If they could afford an upscale cruise presumably they are at least reasonably well-off and in their everyday lives they are considered respectable people. And if they’d been asked before embarking on the cruise “What if the ship were to break down and you were to find yourself stranded under harsh conditions would your character also break down? Would you start behaving like an animal?” they would surely have stared at the questioner in uncomprehending surprise.

Yet when it came to the crunch that is just what happened to many of them. Hundreds of people rose to the occasion dragging mattresses of their cruise-mates up to the deck for fresh air organizing prayer groups making sure the less assertive had water food and protection. Yet there were others who losing all semblance of shame grabbed extra food for themselves without a care if others go hungry and on many levels deprived their fellow passengers of basic rights abandoning any sense of civilized restraint. Surely while they were still comfortably on shore they never dreamed they could sink to such primitive behavior. And afterwards safe at home again they were surely ashamed at the recollection of how they had acted during the crisis especially because their behavior stood out in disgraceful contrast to that of other passengers who rose to the challenge in quite the opposite manner offering help to others and looking for ways to raise the spirits of everyone on board during the disaster.

What I’ve been thinking about is this: what made the difference? Why did the crisis bring out the best in one group while bringing out the worst in the other making the passengers feel they were on two different ships?

What happened to them was really no different from what happens to us to each one of us every single day whenever we face a trying situation.

The Midrash on Parshas Mishpatim says that there is no one whom HaKadosh Baruch Hu does not test. One person is tested through wealth another through poverty one through an easy life and another through suffering and fortunate is the one who withstands his test.

When we are tested our favorite question is “Why?” And indeed why do we have to go through nisyonos? Why can’t a person just live in peace without being sent all these tests from Heaven? Why did Avraham Avinu have to go through ten harrowing tests? Why must we all pass through the fire? What is the purpose of it all?

In an extreme way the animalistic behavior on board the Carnival Triumph provides the answer. We can safely assume that none of those who descended to the level of beast thought of themselves that way before it came to that desperate test. They surely considered themselves rational people and never dreamed that their actions could be dictated by such debased urges and impulses until a five-day crisis brought them to that extreme.

And what about us — can we be so sure that we know ourselves? Each one of us carves out a certain personality when life is proceeding peacefully. And ten when those tests come we discover unsavory aspects of ourselves that we hadn’t imagined would emerge or were even present. Just go visit a beis din during divorce proceedings or a dispute over an inheritance: meanness lying degrading others in order to look good forgery and other expressions of evil impulses that we never thought we had in us emerge in their worst form. And the proof that we aren’t aware of them is that we’ve never tried to do anything about them. We didn’t even know they existed. We’re satisfied with our regular routine of keeping mitzvos and we consider ourselves basically okay.

I remember a good friend of mine an ehrlich chassidishe Yid telling me once on Erev Yom Kippur “Believe me I can’t think of anything I need to do teshuvah for.” And this person really is a good Jew; it’s a delight to see him wearing his spodik on Shabbos walking regally to shul with his children in tow. But having been influenced by the mussar tradition of Rav Yisrael’s Salanter and the schmuessen I heard in yeshivah over the years I knew I had an answer for my friend.  I asked his permission for a personality analysis and after he agreed to it I pointed out flaws in his character that he’d never noticed. He squirmed uncomfortably but this is what nisyonos are for — to hold a mirror up to us and show us who we really are and on that basis we can know what HaKadosh Baruch Hu is demanding of us.

I recall another acquaintance the owner of a thriving business in Tel Aviv who would talk all day about trusting in Hashem. One day his business collapsed and his life turned into a nightmare of unpaid debts and financial upheaval. He said to me one day “Now I realize that all my talk about trust in Hashem was just words. It was easy to believe I trusted in Him when I was doing well but now I’m having a hard time keeping up that bitachon

And let’s not fool ourselves: we’re all familiar with this phenomenon in its myriad forms. Each of us goes through it at the pivotal point of our bechirah. A lecturer from Arachim put succinctly: This world isn’t a restaurant where each person sits down and selects what he wants to eat. It’s a gym where we come to train to correct our character. The problem is most people don’t have an exercise plan; they make do with being frum and following the routine that’s comfortable for them. The trouble is that then when a big nisayon comes along (or even a small one) chances are they won’t pass the test. Those who devote time thought and effort to correcting their character traits can be like Avraham Avinu passing the tests with flying colors bringing out new strengths and emerging on a higher level. This is the taste of true freedom and this is what we need in order to experience true attachment to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Otherwise the only way to go is down remaining enslaved to our primitive instincts. Victor Frankl a “graduate” of Auschwitz wrote in Man’s Search for Meaning “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances to choose one’s own way.” You can take everything away from a person. You can imprison him in a dungeon starve him beat him and torture him but the one freedom he has left you can never take away from him and that is his right to decide how he will view what is happening to him. In his book Frankl tells of people who shared their last bit of bread with those who were more ill and weak than themselves while others let go of their humanity and gave in to selfishness and cruelty. Those who remained human remained free.

The Carnival Triumph set sail on what was to be a luxury cruise but what turned out to be a testing ground of moral character. And each one of us is sailing in his own little Carnival Triumph. As it is said the war between HaKadosh Baruch Hu and the Satan is fought in the human heart and no one can tell in advance who will win.

 

Food for Thought

Where is the yetzer hara?

Everywhere that we think he isn’t

(Rebbe Naftali of Ropschitz)

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