Rabbi's Blog

Dear OZ family,

Last week’s Lag B’omer tragedy has demonstrated what a close family we all are. I remember a rally in Jerusalem some years back in the summer, where tens of thousands of Israelis packed practically the entire length of Rechov King George, to show solidarity with a young boy who was kidnapped. His mother spoke with a broken but resolute voice of how she felt everyone present was a member of her family. Yeshivat Sha’alvim, where Donnie Morris of Teaneck was studying has hosted the beginning of the shiva and streamed the levaya to tens of thousands of Jews. Azi Koltai’s parents, Rob and Sue, lived here on the West Side for some time before making Aliya. Their lives have been overturned, but they know that thousands of Jews grieve with them.

The sudden grief that overcame Aharon when his two sons died, was immediately met with perhaps the only viable response, silence, “Vayidom Aharon” (Vayikra 10:3). The Gemara says that “Igra D’bei Tamya Shtikuta”, the proper behavior at a shiva home is silence  (Brachot 6B). Proper behavior while paying a shiva call is to remain silent until the mourner speaks first. This is derived from Iyov’s three friends who waited for him to speak before consoling him (Iyov 2:11-13). They started their shiva call the right way, but then quickly turned on Iyov. Iyov opened his words with what could arguably be considered philosophically questionable in terms of our understanding of God. He questions God’s omnipresence, omniscience and omnipotence. Chazal give Iyov a pass because e of his incredible pain and suffering. But Iyov’s friends were sure that his suffering must be a function of his own sins. They were sure that if his children died they must have sinned as well. They were sure that if Iyov lost all his possessions, that he must have been sinful in his business dealings. They were sure of so many things that the reader knows were false.

The arguments of Iyov’s three friends can be encapsulated in the three words of one of them, “Ha’enosh M’Eloah Yitzdak?” “Shall man be more righteous than God?” (Iyov 4:17). Iyov’s friends spend practically the entire book justifying God and placing the full blame of man’s suffering on man’s own actions. At the end of the book, God addresses Iyov’s friends and warns them that they will die unless Iyov forgives their treachery.This is so because they did not speak well of God the way Iyov did (Iyov 42:7). This doesn’t appear to be so. Iyov’s friends did nothing but justify God. It was Iyov who questioned His judgements. The message is clear. We have no business pontificating on these issues while we don’t see the universe form God’s standpoint. We don’t have all the answers and we should refrain from behavior like Iyov’s friends. It does not speak well of God.

What does speak well of God is the amazing heroism of the families sitting shiva. They are helping to console a grieving nation. I have always wondered how my father could lose all his siblings and his mother on one day, at the age of 19, and then to lose his father a few weeks later, to spend two years surrounded by murderous enemies who want to kill him, with no food, shelter or warm clothing, to survive two Northern Polish winters, and then to be told after the war, not to dare return to his home or he’ll be killed, to survive four years in Russia after the war, and to make it  to America to raise a successful, religious, and productive family. It’s the same strength we exert to make it through what happened to our people this past Lag B’omer on a smaller scale.  We are all family. He had an aunt who moved mountains to get him here. That’s what family does, and again, we are all family.

Be safe. Be healthy.  Be excellent.

Rabbi Allen Schwartz

Rabbi Allen Schwartz

Congregation Ohab Zedek

118 West 95^th Street | New York, NY  10025-6604

Phone 212.749-5150, ext 200 | Fax 212.663-3635

E-mail ras@ozny.org

Website:  www.ozny.org