Part II
The first part quoted HaRav Moshe Blau saying that despite
the trials and difficulties experienced, the key is not to
lose our wits and our intellect. If we have our wisdom, our
daas Torah, then we can hope for better days and we
will know how to deal with what confronts us. The Ponovezher
Rov, speaking in the middle of the War, said that Am Yisroel
and Eretz Yisroel are permanent features of Creation.
"Losing one's sense", as defined by R' Moshe Blau, is a
different matter altogether with regard to the Jewish people,
as opposed to all other nations and certainly from the
secular viewpoint which sees everything as natural and
circumstantial. What appears today to be in deep crisis, on
the brink of disintegration, is not the Jewish faith in the
Redemption and a heaven-sent salvation, but that secular
strategy of "taking our future into our own hands," both from
the aspect of a military confrontation or that of a supposed
peace settlement.
The Zionist movement sprang forth and was nurtured from the
foreign source known as "emancipation," which was rooted in
the French Revolution. This called for an abolishment of all
social classes, and imposing equality between workers and the
ruling aristocracy. It served its purpose to those nations
who sought to shake off the yoke of their titled masters and
to grant equal rights to all men. Some succeeded, to a lesser
degree.
But none of this was relevant to the condition of exile for
the Jewish people, since the Jewish exile had a spiritual
background. Similarly, its redemption will have to have a
spiritual nature. Emancipation from slavery and oppression is
the end purpose of the nations of the world, whereas with
Jews, it is only the beginning of the process.
When the Jews left Egypt and ceased to be slaves unto
Pharaoh, they were only at the beginning of the road to their
true destination: receiving the Torah from Hashem as
transmitted through Moshe at Mt. Sinai. Only at that occasion
did they finally become a nation. "On this very day you have
become a nation unto Hashem your G-d" (Devorim 27:8).
Only then was the way prepared for them to enter Eretz
Yisroel and possess the Promised Land. And then, when they
sinned by abandoning the Torah -- they consequently forfeited
the land.
"Wherefore was the land lost?" asks Yirmiyohu. "For their
having abandoned My Torah" (9:11,12). For other nations,
losing their homeland is the factor that causes their speedy
and ultimate decline. But for the Jewish people, the loss of
the homeland, which is only a temporary condition, is not a
cause but a result of its having abandoned the Torah, since
the Torah is its primary foundation and institution, without
which it cannot continue to exist.
Therefore, losing one's wit or sense for the Jewish people
does not mean losing one's common sense, one's normal human
mind. Quite the opposite: it signifies employing natural
intellect instead of daas Torah which is the supreme
wisdom of this nation, by which alone it must conduct itself.
It must not conduct itself according to what is the accepted
norm among other nations, for what is good and beneficial to
all the nations does not serve the Jewish people at all. On
the contrary: the reality in which we find ourselves today
proves that the fifty-odd years of statehood during which
Israel adhered to all the rules that govern modern developed
states only brought it to the brink of a very difficult
crisis. This crisis has resulted from abandoning the sense of
direction, abandoning the path which the Jewish people are
destined to follow.
*
Perhaps we can find a hint for this in this week's
haftorah: "You, the afflicted, tempest-tossed and not
comforted . . . " (Yeshaya 54:11). The first verse of
this chapter is all good tidings: "Roni akoroh,
Rejoice, the barren one; you who did not bear, burst forth
into singing and cry aloud . . . for more are the children
of the desolate than those of the married . . . Enlarge the
place of your tent . . . Have no fear for you shall not be
put to shame, nor be confounded . . . "
What, then, is the meaning of the verse that follows later,
"You, the afflicted, tempest-tossed and not comforted"? If
the barren is being bidden to rejoice, wherefore is she "not
comforted"?
The Malbim comments as follows: "After he prophesied about
the barren one who will have plentiful progeny, which is a
paraphrase for the ingathering of the exiles, [the prophet]
depicts that at that time, Zion will not yet be fully
rebuilt. Thus this tortured one, which is Zion, will still be
distraught in spirit for not having been completely
comforted. The barren one will be filled with exuberance for
the exiles will have returned. But the afflicted Zion will
still be dis- comforted. The land will fill up with exiles
but Zion will still mourn."
The meaning of this, as we see later on as well, shows
clearly the division of two states of being. In the physical
state, the sons of the desolate one will have returned and
the land will be repopulated, but in the spiritual sense,
Zion will still be desolate and unrequited, unconsoled. This,
says the Malbim, is clear from the words, "`Lo, I shall lay
your stones with fair colors and lay your foundations with
sapphires' -- the stones upon which the foundations will rest
will be the nofach-puch, or turquoise, which is the
Ephod gem representing the tribe of Yehuda, which is
royalty. The foundation itself will be made of sapphire,
which is the stone of Yissochor, which symbolizes wisdom and
Torah. These two will constitute the foundation of the
building: the crown of royalty and the crown of Torah."
He writes further: "The controversy and dissension within the
nation will come about from four sources, two of them
internal and the other two, external. The internal reasons
are: 1) poverty -- and to denote the reversal of this, he
first stated the contrast to the wealth and success they
would enjoy. And 2) there will be friction in faith, meaning
there will be different factions with conflicting approaches
to religion, as happened in the time of the second Beis
Hamikdash with the factions of the Tzedukim and the
Baysusim.
"Alluding to this, the prophet said, `And all your sons are
learned of Hashem.' In the times of the Ultimate Redemption,
the sons will accept their faith and wisdom from Hashem to
the point that there will no longer be any dissenting
factions amongst them and subsequently, `Much peace shall be
unto your sons.'
"But then there shall be two kinds of enemies threatening
from without: 1) Those who oppress economically and 2)
enemies who threaten the spirit. Alluding to the latter, he
says, `In righteousness shall you be firmly established.' The
building which will be built in Zion and founded upon
turquoise stones will be completed through acts of
righteousness which are the good deeds between man and G-d.
In their merit will we be spared from the enemies who seek to
destroy us from without."
*
In summing up, we see that the prophet speaks of two stages:
first the physical one, which is necessary to pave the way
for the later spiritual redemption. This redemption, however,
will not come about in the manner of an "emancipation," nor
in any way resembling the natural path of the nations, but
via the unique process determined by the Pacemaker of all
history, through a complete spiritual repentance and return
to Hashem and His Torah.
This, we can happily say, is already evident as the buds of
the teshuva movement, in the swelling numbers of
yeshivos, shiurei Torah, the increased ranks of sons
and daughters attending Torah institutions even from families
that considered themselves removed from religion, children
that are being saved from spiritual perdition, from the
whirlpool of material overindulgence, violence,
licentiousness and crime.
Furthermore, we can already witness the overt signs of
acknowledging the pure truth of the Torah outlook which our
Torah leaders establish. Witness the incident of the veteran
kibbutznik who has publicly admitted, albeit decades too
late, that the Chazon Ish was so right when he likened the
secular public to an empty wagon, which raised many hackles
at the time. He now sees how farsighted was that Torah leader
and seeks to reject the empty wagon of secularism, as well as
its wagon drivers. This was aptly expressed in an article
appearing in a popular secular newspaper as words emanating
from an aching heart.
It is up to us to strengthen our ranks from within and to
increase our activities from without, to do our utmost to
bring close the wayward and to show them the path of truth,
for then we will also extricate ourselves from the sorrowful
state of "An afflicted and tempest-tossed one, uncomforted .
. . " Metzudos Dovid explains this as referring to
"Jerusalem, who is like an afflicted one, shivering from the
stormy wind, with no one to comfort her."
May we merit the realization of Hashem's promise to the
prophet: " `And I shall be unto her,' says Hashem, `a wall of
surrounding fire, and in honor shall I dwell in her midst' "
(Zecharya 2:8).
