To The Editor:
The areas hit by last year's Asian tsunami were described as
the most paradisical on Earth. In a few seconds they were
reduced to the most hellish.
At the time of the Mabul 4,110 years ago, in addition
to the violently destructive torrents of rain and the
breaking open of the mayanos tehom rabbah, mighty
tsunamis, vastly bigger than last year's, hundreds of feet
tall, repeatedly circled the globe at hundreds of miles per
hour, pulverizing everything in their path: "Deep calls unto
deep at the roar of Your water-channels: all Your breakers
and Your waves have swept over me!" (Tehillim 42).
"No trouble comes to world except on behalf of Yisroel"
(Yevomos 63) — "in order to frighten them to do
teshuvoh" (Rashi). If Jewry and mankind were logical,
by rights the earthquake off Indonesia that spawned the
tsunami wave should be more than enough to spawn a national,
even an international wave of teshuvoh. When Tokyo was
destroyed by an earthquake in 1923, killing 60,000, the
Chofetz Chaim did not stop speaking about it for ten years,
saying that it was a sign for his generation to mend its
ways.
"Surely in that day there will be a great shaking in the Land
of Yisroel; so that the fishes of the sea, the fowl of the
heaven, the beasts of the field, all the creeping things and
all the men that are on the face of the earth will shake at
My presence; and the mountains will be overthrown, the cliffs
will topple and every wall will collapse" (Yechezkel
38).
"G-d sends earthquakes when he sees places of amusement and
entertainment overly flourishing, while the Temple lies a
heap of dust and ashes" (Yerushalmi Brochos 9)!
Beneath our feet lie the fossils of millions of extinct
animals and men. They are a silent witness to a time when
mankind became so depraved that finally it was virtually
wiped out in one great cataclysm of water. Fearful though
this thought may be, we can take some comfort that we have
been promised that this will never happen again.....next time
it will be by eish!
Yours truly,
Amnon Goldberg
Tzefas
