Labor Pains

Not long ago, I observed on these pages that most of the commentary in the frum media on the recent resurgence of anti-Semitism was focused on the perpetrators of the violence, or on what law enforcement or government or the media were or weren’t saying or doing. Precious little ink has been expended, however, on taking the uptick in Jew-hatred as a prompt to turn the lens inward, toward communal and individual introspection.

I cited the famous first Rambam in the laws of Ta’aniyos, setting forth that the Jewish response to tragedy and persecution is to engage in soul-searching, and that when that doesn’t happen, the troubles just repeat themselves until the message is received. I also related that once, during a very difficult time for Jews, the Brisker Rav was sitting with a group of people, each of whom sought to ascribe their travails to yet another cause.

Then the Brisker Rav spoke: “The ship Yonah Hanavi was fleeing on was filled with wicked idolaters, and when a storm kicked up at sea and threatened to sink the ship, he could easily have attributed it to their behavior. But instead, Yonah said to his fellow shipmates, ‘Cast me into the sea and the sea will quiet, for I know that it is because of me that this great storm has come.’ That is the hashkafah of a Torah Jew: “Because of me, this great storm.’”

But there’s another type of common reaction to difficult, confusing times like the ones we’re all living through right now. When unprecedented, cataclysmic events like the ones now shaking the globe occur, there’s a tendency to speak of them as portents of Mashiach, sure signs that the geulah is nigh. And indeed they may well be just that. The upheavals of ikvesa d’Meshicha and the disorienting dislocations of chevlei Mashiach are certainly addressed in authentic Torah sources. What, then, could possibly be amiss in linking them to events in our world?