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15 Teves 5761 - January 10, 2001 | Mordecai Plaut, director Published Weekly
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Opinion & Comment
The Waters of a Sotoh

by Yochanan Dovid

(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.


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