In last week’s edition, I focused on the special nature of the Jewish people and how they are “One Nation on this Earth.” In that article, I mentioned that the suffering of the Israeli people is our suffering. On the other hand, their joy is our joy. This is true of Jews throughout the world.
In that article, I was fortunate to be able to write about the immense anxiety Jews shared throughout the country upon hearing of the Baltimore child who went missing in a forested cave in Arizona. However, I was also able to share the exhilarating news of the rescuing of the boy. What was terror turned into ecstasy. The beginning and the end of the story revealed how the Jewish People are one and unique indeed.
This week, unfortunately, we have seen on display how Jews are indeed one Nation on Earth. There are no people like us. But this week the story is purely tragic.
We as a nation were so hopeful that we would get to see the release of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an American Jew, among other hostages to be released by Hamas shortly. Instead, Hersh and five others, including two women, were found by Israeli soldiers to have been executed by the barbaric Hamas with two shots to the head each. I would rather not write any further details that have emerged.
My family chat, understandably, had a lot of trouble coming to grips with this tragedy. So did I. Didn’t we invest so many heartfelt t’filos in their behalf? Could not Hashem have had some mercy on these innocents?
After some exchanges on the chat in trying to make sense of Hashem’s judgment, I mentioned a very important directive from Chazal. In Pirkei Avos (4:18), Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar bids us “not to try to comfort a person when his deceased is lying in front of him.” The obvious explanation is that a mourning person before burial is too steeped in grief to accept any words of sympathy or understanding. The Bartenura in his commentary on the Mishnah writes that when Hashem witnessed the destruction of His Temple, the ministering angels attempted to offer comfort to Hashem, so to speak. “Don’t even try!” Hashem said. He was too distraught to receive any words of understanding.
We are faced with the same situation. The wound to our soul is too fresh to begin to make sense or logic of the situation. At this point, we just must accept Hashem’s judgment.
A few years ago, a certain well known rosh yeshivah tragically lost a young child, hit by a car as the child was crossing the street. At the time, I paid a shiv’ah call and found myself in the company of countless other men and women. Owing to the immensity of the tragedy, there was complete silence in the room. Unwisely, I did not follow Chazal, who say that no consoler should speak up until the mourner speaks first. Yet, I felt the ice had to be broken. So, I did say something.
I mentioned that which my father zt”l said numerous times in the name of Rav Soloveitchik zt”l. The Rav said that the reason an onen (a family member freshly in mourning before the burial) is exempt from doing mitzvos that day is because Hashem understands that the grief-stricken person is too upset with Hashem’s decision to be expected to serve Him at that time.
I did not expect the reaction that engendered from the rosh yeshivah, but I deserved it. He gave a sudden thunderous clap on a table that shook the room and declared “Chas v’shalom! Not for one minute did I question Hashem’s decision!” That taught me a lesson. Don’t be smarter than Chazal. If they said do not speak first, they knew what they were talking about.
It so happens a few years later that someone from the family told me that the rosh yeshivah confided privately that indeed he had a lot of difficulty reconciling Hashem’s decree. It was too painful. Of course, that does not get me off the hook.
We also need to take away that we truly are one like no other nation. Who ever heard of Hersh Goldberg-Polin or any of the captives before last October 7? Yet we treat his loss as though it was the loss of our own brother or son. No nation on earth produces such a family. In a sense, that itself should offer some comfort. We are all the children of G-d. Sometimes we don’t like the way He disciplines us. But He is our Father Whom we love. We are His children whom He loves.
Rabbi Yoel Schonfeld is the Rabbi Emeritus of the Young Israel of Kew Gardens Hills, President of the Coalition for Jewish Values, former President of the Vaad Harabonim of Queens, and the Rabbinic Consultant for the Queens Jewish Link.
