Rabbi Yitzchak Adlerstein
Charedi yeshivos began the winter zman a week early. Two of my grandsons learn in Yeshiva Nesiv HaDaas, colloquially called “Kaplan.” I have a seder there a few times a week, and decided to be on hand for the opening of the zman, which was followed a few hours later by an opening shmuess by its eponymous founder, R Naftoli Kaplan. Typically, the opening shmuess would be an inspirational paean to the glories of learning Torah. That didn’t happen. Rav Kaplan is both a master educator (American by birth) and a devotee of mussar – of developing the character and internal environment of students.
Instead, he announced that he would be addressing the current tragedy. To do this, he said, he would first have to take them on a tour of some essentials about Hashem’s providence, all taken from the Ramchal. Synopsizing it would dilute it beyond recognition. Let’s just say that he dealt with issues of divine justice, its cleansing power, and especially the topic of Tikun Kelali, and the role every individual has in bringing about the Perfected Community. He stressed repeatedly that no one can account for the way that midas hadin, Hashem’s attribute of justice, works. There is a place for midas hadin; we will never understand in this world why it strikes this person or group rather than another. Nor does it matter whether the people were young or old, secular or religious. Clearly, midas hadin was operating on Shemini Atzeres.
It would be expected that R Asher Weiss would provide words of chizuk to the entire community, and he did not disappoint. The thrust of his words was emunah: not to let the images and cries we heard shake our bedrock belief and faith in Hashem. He mentioned that the Kloizenberger Rebbe had told him about his own travails in private conversation. The Rebbe saw a wife and eleven children murdered in the Holocaust, survived a long stay in Auschwitz, and went on to become a powerhouse builder of institutions in Israel. He told Rav Weiss that never once during those years of darkness did he question Hashem’s ways.
The Rebbe also provided a powerful vort that marks out for us the path we must take going forward, said Rav Weiss. We all cover our eyes when reciting the first line of the Shema. Why? Shulchan Aruch says so that we won’t be distracted while proclaiming our belief in and allegiance to Hashem. If so, asked the Rebbe, closing our eyes would be sufficient. Why cover them?
The Rebbe offered this explanation. Covering our eyes is a demonstrative statement. In the Shema, we would refer at the begin to both Hashem and Elokeinu, i.e. to the attributes of both compassion and justice. Sometimes in life, we would find plenty of that compassion. At other times, however, we would encounter the pain and suffering that come with His justice. We cover our eyes to tell ourselves not to look at whether we can see chesed around us, or only the harshness of din. That is irrelevant to us. We declare our belief in Him, and our conviction that Hashem echad – that both chesed and din are ultimately parts of His Ultimate Reality of chesed.
