him that it was not appropriate for a commoner to have such an item in his house. “Go back and take something else — anything else, just not the Menorah.” Yosef Meshisa replied, “I can’t go back in.” They promised him that the income from the next three years of tax collection would be his, but he persisted. “I cannot go back in. Is it not enough that I angered my G-d and defiled His Temple one time, I should have to do it again? I can’t do it.” The Romans tortured him until he died. As long as he was alive, while being tortured, he mourned “Woe unto me, for I have angered my Creator”.
The Ponevezher Rav asked, “What happened here? What made Yosef Meshisa do Teshuvah? He was apparently a Jew who had no sensitivity whatsoever to Jewish values, and then he turned around and was prepared to die as a martyr. What transpired that transformed him from a wicked person to a righteous person?”
The Ponevezher Rav answered that the very fact that Yosef Meshisa entered into a holy place transformed him. He was exposed to holiness. He went into the Beis HaMikdash for the worst of reasons and with the worst of intentions — but he walked out a different person. There is something real about holiness and purity. Mere exposure to the presence of the Shechinah [G-d’s Divine Presence] can change a person for life.
That is what happened to Yosef Meshisa — he was exposed to something holy. This, says the Medrash, is an example of the ‘traitors’ that Yitzchak perceived. It is possible to have a Jew that is so removed from his G-d that he can willingly enter the Temple, help the enemy, and take the Menorah — and yet that same Jew can turn around on a dime, do Teshuvah, and say “No more. I have done enough. Kill me, torture me — but I won’t do it again.”
That power of Yaakov’s descendants, to raise themselves from the depths of lack of spirituality to its greatest heights, is the trait of the ‘bogdim’ that Yitzchak saw, that inspired him to give the blessing. This is what the Medrash relates. It is an amazing Medrash.
Lest one should claim that this power is unique to the Beis HaMikdash, lest one claim that today there exists nothing comparable which can so instantaneously turn a wicked individual into a righteous one, I will tell you a true story.
The story is about a Jew named Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929). Franz Rosenzweig recorded this true story in his book, The Star of Redemption. Franz Rosenzweig was a totally secular Jew. He was a prolific author and a great philosopher, but totally secular — to the extent that he was preparing to convert to Christianity as part of his engagement to a non-Jewish woman. He was a Captain in the German Cavalry in World War I, and was stationed in a Polish town on what happened to be the night of Yom Kippur. As an observer, he went into a Polish Shteible on the night of Kol Nidrei.
Franz Rosenzweig walked into the Shteible just to see what it was like, strictly out of curiosity. He walked out of there a Ba’al Teshuvah [a “returnee” to religion]. He broke his engagement and became a religious Jew. This was not in America in 1990 where it is a common phenomenon for Jews to return to their religion and become Baalei Teshuvah, but in Germany in 1915, where it was almost unheard of for a secular Jew to become religious.
What did it? What was it? It was the same as with Yosef Meshisa. He was exposed to kedusha. A person who is totally secular, or even anti-religious, or even a person who is prepared to adopt another religion, who goes to a shul — not to pray and not to participate, but merely to observe... Someone who is merely exposed to such a place of holiness, on such a night of holiness — that can do something to a person’s soul. It can change a person. It is real.
Holiness, kedusha, is real. Purity, taharah, is real. And through his exposure to kedusha and taharah, Rozenzweig became a different person. This does not require exposure to the Beis HaMikdash. It just takes a minyan of honest Jews praying sincerely to the Master of the World. That can change a man forever. (R’ Frand)
