Someone who was present at Katowice during the Knessiah Gedola in 5674 said that during this major convention, one Torah scholar from Riga went up to the platform, a venerable and very learned rav, disciple of HaRav Yaakov Etlinger from Hamburg (author of `Aroch LaNer') and said:
Chazal state that Chizkiyohu Hamelech drove a sword into the floor of the beis medrash, declaring that whoever did not engage in Torah study would be pierced by the sword.
We cannot help wondering why it was necessary to place a sword inside the very beis medrash. Those who come there are the very ones, the remnant who do seek to study Torah and are beckoned there by Hashem! Shouldn't the sword have been embedded outside, in public places like theaters, circuses and sports centers and that it be declare there that whoever does not go to study would be pierced by the sword?
The aged scholar continued:
Chizkiyohu knew that whoever is on the outside is lost and not swayed by the threat of the sword. He is so immersed in the quicksand of foreign culture, apostasy and mockery, of the poisonous venom, that there is no hope for him. Chizkiyohu embedded the sword expressly inside the beis medrash to at least preserve the atmosphere there and protect it from outside influence of foreign winds, that no one who was already influenced by the outside world not introduce its poison into the sanctuary of holiness and have it mingle with what was still pure. Precisely there was it necessary to wield the sword threateningly, said the elderly scholar.
Those who have sunken up to their necks in secular society through the window of technology can hardly be rescued. But let us at least ultimately protect the beis medrash itself lest foreign winds penetrate. "Away, unclean one, they cried at them. Away! Away! Do not touch."
