It Was Never in Our Hands to Begin With

Incredible as this may sound the wave of anti-chareidi hysteria that has recently swept over Eretz Yisrael has actually brought some positive results. Once again we see that Divine Providence is ultimately in control of events channeling them to serve a higher purpose.

The following story will testify to the sublime truth that the Ramchal teaches us in Daas Tevunos: “The will of HaKadosh Baruch Hu is done in any case.” People bring about events as they like and He puts the events to work to bring about His goals.

Before I tell you about the positive effects of the prolonged uproar over Beit Shemesh let us note that in our Torah reading we’ve just completed Sefer Bereishis ending with the story of Yosef and his brothers. Yosef sums up the whole decades-long ordeal in one sentence: “You calculated to do me evil; G-d calculated it for good.” Events that you see only as the cause of pain suffering and anguish were in fact paving the way for something much bigger.

Likewise the Beit Shemesh story — with all its scandalous episodes of gender-segregated buses and the rest of the ingredients that the secular media brewed into a toxic mix that they call by the catchword “exclusion of women.”