Just as communal tragedies are a religious wake-up call, so also is communal abandonment of Torah norms
The radio and TV ads and the huge billboards make it very clear: The new online supermarket that promises deliveries all over Jerusalem is “Open on Shabbat and on Yom Tov.” The timing, during the Sefirah season, was most unfortunate, adding only to the intense sadness of this period. Israel had just suffered 45 killed in the Lag B’omer tragedy, and innocents killed and wounded from thousands of Hamas rockets. In the midst of all this, it was especially distressing to learn about this blatant public desecration of the holy Shabbos, especially while Jews around the world were anticipating Shavuos, the Giving of the Commandments at Sinai.
The timing was unfortunate for another reason. One would think that with thousands of enemy rockets raining down on our heads, coupled with tragedies like Meron, this would not be the most propitious time to thumb one’s nose at the Fourth of the Ten Commandments and its Author, and that even nonobservant Israelis would search for behaviors that might find favor in the upper reaches of Heaven.
In truth, in our times we are no longer taken aback by public desecration of Shabbos, even in Israel. But the flouting here is especially painful, because there is a world of difference between an establishment passively remaining open on Shabbat, and one that shamelessly boasts about it. In halachah, there is a huge contrast between violations b’tzin’ah (in private), and those b’farhesiah (in public); between violating because I can’t help myself and succumbed to temptation and about which I am not proud, and open public defiance.
A private violation is just a violation, a public violation is rebellion. Public violations tear away at the fabric of the law, weaken communal observance of the law, declare publicly that the ways of Torah and halachah and Jewish tradition do not in the least matter: We do as we please. In this case, the offense was intensified in their print ads by the lampooning of sacred Jewish maxims — which would be insulting were they not so crude.
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