(The current daf yomi is from Sotoh.)
We celebrated a siyum masechta this past motzei
Shabbos. We learned the last lines of the tractate and the
first few lines of the succeeding one, recited the customary
prayers for our continued success in Torah study and then
partook of a meal that was both a siyum and a
melave malka. Our regular lecturer had invited a
noted speaker to honor us with a message and we could not
help being curious what he would find to say about Moed
Koton, a tractate that deals mainly with mourning. This
is what he said:
I had the opportunity this week to hear the personal
testimony of the former head of the Mossad (the Israeli
Intelligence Agency) regarding a miracle that involved R'
Meir Simcha Hakohen, the author of Meshech Chochmah
and rabbi of Dvinsk, Russia. In that particular year, the
snows and ice at the sources of the Dvina River had begun
melting before spring came to the river's estuary near the
sea. Over the last stretch of some 200 kilometers, winter
still reigned, and the river was frozen over with a thick
layer of ice. The raging waters, bearing gigantic blocks of
ice, found their path to the sea impassable but they stormed
inexorably forward, uprooting bridges, sweeping up entire
villages, and battering at the mighty retaining dike that
surrounded the city of Dvinsk.
The treacherous waters swirled higher and higher and
threatened to flood the entire city. Its residents rushed to
the higher places and climbed upon rooftops for safety. They
awaited imminent tragedy fearfully. On Shabbos morning the
climax was about to be reached, when the river would
overflow its banks or burst through the dam and tear it
apart. The Jews risked their lives in going to shul.
In the midst of the prayers, which were pitched high with
emotion and heart-rending weeping, a group of Jews stormed
into the building and shouted that the river was about to
flood the city at any moment.
R' Meir Simcha rose from his seat and, still enveloped in
his tallis, walked towards the dam, followed by the
entire congregation of white-shawled worshipers. He climbed
up on the dam, stood there and prayed. As he was praying,
the onlookers saw the blocks of ice beginning to move apart
and give way. They split asunder, creating a path for the
rushing, swirling waters to gush downstream. The city was
miraculously saved from disaster through R' Meir Simcha's
prayer.
Isser Harel, the eyewitness who told the story, who was a
little boy at the time, stood on the dam just several steps
away from R' Meir Simcha and saw it happen before his very
eyes. The many gentile eyewitnesses were convinced that the
saintly man had performed a miracle. Harel declared that the
scene is etched in his memory forever more and he can
reconstruct it before his mind's eye at will.
"I was particularly curious," continued the speaker, "to
know what, exactly, R' Meir Simcha had said in his prayer.
What potent words had he uttered? What plea had he expressed
that had succeeded in saving an entire city from utter
destruction? The young lad who had stood a few steps away
from R' Meir Simcha could not have known what the Rov had
said there, on the dam, seventy years before. But the
tractate which you have just completed, Maseches Moed
Koton, gave me a clue as to what might have been his
prayer. It brought to my memory a similar incident related
in the gemora. And I am certain that R' Meir Simcha,
as he strode purposefully towards the high point on the dam,
must have been reminded of it as well.
"The gemora tells that when the Euphrates River once
overran its banks, Bar Avin said a prayer. The incident is
brought briefly in passing, taking up no more than two
lines. But we shall avail ourselves of the rabbi of Baghdad,
the Ben Ish Chai, who expands upon this incident in his
work, Ben Yehoyada:
The river Digles once swelled so dangerously that the water
reached the city walls and threatened to flood the entire
city. A fast was proclaimed and selichos recited to
stave off the imminent disaster. Rovo, rosh yeshivas
Mechoza, together with all the townspeople, went to repair
and reinforce the dikes and to recite prayers on the site.
Rovo asked Bar Avin the darshon to recite a short
prayer asking for heavenly mercy and to arouse the hearts of
his audience.
Bar Avin complied. His succinct, poetic prayer is brought
verbatim in the gemora: `The majority of the third-of-
water has come. Consider and have mercy! We have strayed
from You like a wayward woman from her husband. Do not
forsake us; grant us the sign like the bitter waters of
mei moroh.' "
The speaker explained:
The simple meaning of this prayer is: The plentiful waters
of the third river of the four mentioned in Parshas
Bereishis, the Euphrates, is upon us. We have betrayed
our `husband' and strayed from the true path. But we beg of
You, Hashem, to have mercy on us, and to give us a good sign
like that given through the waters of the sota.
Rashi explains that the bitter waters are the cursed waters
which test the sota's fidelity. But according to this
explanation, we cannot understand the meaning of the good
sign that the residents of Mechoza were asking from Hashem,
for these bitter waters punished the unfaithful wife with a
tortured death if she was guilty. Here we need R' Meir
Simcha himself to explain the matter, as he did in his
commentary on the Torah, Meshech Chochmah.
The Kohen used to say to the betraying wife: If you
were not defiled, you shall be cleansed through these
bitter, accursed waters. In other words, they shall proclaim
you pure. Actually, this woman deserved affliction for even
being suspected of disloyalty, but the fact that she is
degraded and forced to drink the bitter accursed waters is
enough, in itself, to atone for the hint of sin, as it is
written, "And the woman shall be cleansed." The demeaning
process shall be her atonement from sin.
According to R' Meir Simcha's explanation, spiritual
punishments such as debasement and fear are sufficient to
provide atonement. This, then, was the prayer of Bar Avin as
he stood on the dam of the Euphrates River. "Even if we have
strayed from the true path, even if we deserve a punishment
as dreadful as this threatening flood, please, Hashem,
accept the emotional upheaval of our spirits, the fears and
anxieties accompanying this danger, as our atonement. Let
them come instead of the real punishment, for this, too, is
truly suffering. Only save us from the awesome punishment,
itself. This, then, is the explanation of the plea that
Hashem consider it "like the sign of the bitter waters."
We now can imagine, almost for sure, what R' Meir Simcha
Hakohen prayed as he stood on the dam of the Dvina River on
that Shabbos morning of the imminent flood, seventy years
before. He proffered the same prayer as Bar Avin who had
stood on the dam of the Euphrates River near Mechoza.
The Jews of Dvinsk had experienced several terror-filled
days previously and the rabbi of the city was asking Hashem
that He consider their emotional suffering as the actual
punishment, as providing sufficient cleansing and atonement
by itself, just like the woman who was forced to undergo the
experience of drinking the bitter waters. For if found
innocent, she was promised cleansing and atonement through
the process alone, from the experience.
The rabbi of Dvinsk performed no miracles; he merely
sagaciously used the very prayer specified in the oral
tradition of the Torah. He drew a parallel and inferred the
apt application of the lesson in the Torah, from the portion
of the sotoh, to the situation of his own
townspeople.
When we, here in Eretz Yisroel, were under the threat of
attack from dozens of Scud missiles several years ago, and
emerged unscathed from the imminent danger that should have
wreaked untold havoc -- who knows which saintly
tzaddik stood before Hashem in prayer and asked that
the very fears, anxiety, panic, debasement of those seeking
refuge on hands and knees under beds and tables or huddling
in rooms behind masking tape with heads grotesquely
ensconced in gas masks -- be considered our atonement by
itself, instead of the actual punishment which should have
descended upon our heads, G-d forbid.
We see from the mere two lines in the tractate that you just
completed that we succeeded in divining the prayer that R'
Meir Simcha must have uttered on that dam, seventy years
before, to save a prestigious mother-city of Jewry. We
learned how the right defensive plea can protect and provide
atonement for Jewry in the heavenly court of mercy.
