Parashat & Current Events

The Gemara (Shabbat 30b) records a didactic strategy that the illustrious amora Raba ben Nachmani would employ in order to gain the attention of his students before entering into a complex halachic discourse. He would begin with a humorous story or joke. So, in the spirit of the 15th of Menachem Av, one of the two happiest days in the lives of our ancestor’s years ago, permit me to begin with a light story.

This Wednesday night is the 9th of Menachem Av (the 9th day of the 11th month of our calendar year Menachem Av, counting from the previous month of Tishrei [Rosh HaShana]- that is our 9-11). For the 1950th time, we will mourn – in that exquisite unity that binds all Jews – the death of the 600,000 Jews in the desert who turned their backs on Eretz Yisrael and will feel the fresh anguish at the destruction of our two temples and subsequent expulsions into galut.

The Jewish Hall of Infamous Events and Characters contains villains like Nimrod of Mesopotamia who cast Avraham Aveinu into a fiery furnace; Avimelech the Philistine king at the time of Yitzchak Aveinu, Lavan who did everything he could to make Ya’akov Aveinu’s life miserable, and the Egyptian king who enslaved our fathers. The list goes on to include the arch anti-Semites of each generation: Nevuchadnezer, the destroyer of the first holy Temple; Haman and Achashverosh, the evil players in our Purim shpiel; Antiochus of the Chanuka episode; and the Roman general Titus, destroyer of the second holy Temple. The list includes popes, cardinals, archbishops, bishops, local Spanish, Ukrainian and Polish priests, caliphs, kings, knights, emperors, czars, presidents, chancellors, chairmen of the party, sheikhs and just plain folk who murdered Jews for the fun of it.

The situation could only be described as surrealistic, bizarre, inconceivable, and even grotesque. The participants, on both sides of the issue; those who stood for HaShem, for Torah, for Yiddishkeit versus those who turned their backs in denial of all they had mastered over the previous four decades: all behaved and responded inappropriately.

Medinat Yisrael is now on a crossroads of our future: annex or not? And if yes, how much and where? Many of the world’s leaders, each in his own manner of speech and threats, seek to instill fear in the hearts of our civilian and military personnel, that to annex would be suicidal.

It is a test by HaShem. Pressure was brought to bear on David ben Gurion not to declare independence in 1948. The US threatened and kept their word that they would place an arms embargo on the nascent State if he declared independence. But Ben Gurion and the majority of the yishuv’s heads voted for independence, and now we are 72 years old and standing tall among the leading nations of the world.

The universe, in its entirety, comprises space and time and their contents. It includes two trillion galaxies consisting of planets, stars, black holes, and all forms of matter and energy. The actual size of the spatial universe is unknown, but the size of the observable universe is currently estimated at 93 billion light-years in diameter. The distance of a light-year is about 9.46 trillion kilometers (5.88 trillion miles). Therefore, the size of the observable universe is 9.46 trillion kilometers times 93 billion. There are theories hypothesizing that our universe is only one of many disconnected universes belonging to a larger multi-universe, which comprises all of space and time and its contents.

So, the question under consideration is why did HaShem create such a huge and complex entity?

An allegory:

When an owner wants to punish his herd, he blinds the leading sheep, who then misdirects them the herd over the cliff to oblivion.

Think about it.