Surfside Condo Collapse: Personal Imperatives

BS"D

We Ignore Tragedy at Our Own Peril
21 Tammuz, 5781 // Parshas Pinchos // July 1, '21
by Rabbi Noson Shmuel Leiter, Executive Director, Help Rescue Our Children, TorahJewsForDecency@gmail.com

{* The following is an adaptation of public addresses recently delivered in Monsey N.Y., regarding the ongoing search and rescue efforts in Surfside, Florida.}

"SURFSIDE UPDATE AS OF LAST WEEK : Mayor Daniella Levine Cava says another two bodies have been recovered at the site of the building collapse, bringing the death toll to 18. The total number of those unaccounted for is now 143. These two victims were children, aged 4 and 10." (VINnews, June 29)

Last Thursday's catastrophic condominium collapse in Surfside Florida is the latest tragedy to strike the Jewish community in particular, as well as the broader public. While heroic emergency-responders are racing against time to rescue survivors, scores of people are still missing, including many from the local Chabad community. Of course, the international Jewish community has been alerted to keep those in need in our prayers.

It is tragedies such as these that are to evoke the best in us. Perhaps, in our communal merit, lives will be saved. It would be arrogant on my part to purport to know why the individual victims and survivors were subjected to such suffering. Moreover, it would be even more arrogant to ignore the unequivocal Torah imperative, articulated by our Sages, to respond to communal tribulations such as this with introspection, and repentance (both individual and communal), as detailed in

Babylonian Talmud, tractate Berachos (folio 5a). When we are beset with afflictions, our Sages exhort us to engage in personal introspection.

How so? The premier Talmudic commentator, known as Rash"i (ad locum, s.v. "Pish'paish v'Lo Mo'tzah") specifies the means by which we may identify the Divine wake-up message the tribulations are intended to convey - via the correlation between the affliction and the sin. Rabbeinu Chaim of Volozhin OB"M, in his famous Mussar treatise "Nefesh HaChaim" (4:29), as well as in his "Ru'ach Chaim" commentary on Pirkei Avos 4:11 (in some enumerations, it's Mishna 13 or 14), writes similarly.

There, the preeminent disciple of the world-renowned Gaon of Vilna sheds light on the vital role that the Divine principle of "Middah Keneged Middah" ("Measure For Measure" - something which applies to all Mankind) plays in enabling each one of us to properly benefit from our own suffering. We are directed to carefully observe the specifics of our afflictions, and thereby identify correlated sins that may have played a causative role in the former (akin to the popular expression "the punishment fits the crime").

Rav Chaim OB"M explains there that HaShem (G-d) operates in this world based on the principle of "Measure-For-Measure" -- in order to enable us to understand what particular message He is sending us via those particular tribulations. The Rambam (Maimonides), at the beginning of Laws of Fasts (in his 14 volume "Mishneh Torah") writes about the obligation to take communal suffering as an imperative for communal repentance. Failure to do so, he writes, risks inviting even more Divine Retribution.

Thus, according to the Torah, we are to understand that it's incumbent on each of us to respond to such disasters as Divine wake-up calls to sincerely repent, and specifically to repent for the sins which He, in His Infinite Compassion and Wisdom, is prompting us to rectify at this time. Rav Chaim explicitly writes in Ru'ach Chaim that repenting from other sins (although necessary - NL) will not shield us from the tribulations at hand.

This particular tragedy is at least the third recent disaster involving multiple Jewish victims of falling or collapse. The previous two include the Karlin-Stolin bleachers collapse prior to Shavuos that killed three, and the recent cable-car collapse in the Italian mountains that killed over a dozen tourists, including several Israelis. This particular type of tragic demise is akin to the punishment of "S'kilah" (commonly known as "stoning"). "S'kilah" was one of the four forms of capital punishment employed by courts operating under Torah Law prior to the destruction of the Bais Hamikdash. This punishment is, by Torah Law, reserved for those who brazenly [i.e. after explicit warning by qualified witnesses] perpetrate some of the worst violations of Torah Law, including, but not limited to, the acts of Idolatry, Incitement to Idolatry, Blasphemy, Sodomy, several other forms of sexual immorality, Sorcery (a.k.a. "Witchraft," which itself includes a panoply of occult acts), and other divinatory occult acts (Mishna Sanhedrin, folio 53a).*

[*Note: S'kilah involved throwing the condemned party from a height of two stories. Only if the convict survived the fall was he subjected to actual stoning. Our Sages exhort us that even though human application of aforementioned death penalties had been discontinued, Divine application thereof has not. Thus, someone guilty of these types of violations is liable to Divine Justice in the form of a demise akin to the corresponding punishment that had been meeted out in aforementioned Torah tribunals in ancient times. For example, brazen acts of Idolatry may be followed by the perpetrator falling to his death. Again, it's important to emphasize that we mention this here in the context of identifying Divine messages for our own self- improvement, not to point fingers at individual victims, about whom we know nothing. In fact, in some cases - for reasons beyond our very limited human understanding - we find that righteous individuals are taken from us to atone for sins of the community (as was clearly the case in the Meron catastrophe of Lag B'Omer).]

Whatever the reasons for the various tribulations we're enduring now are, it's indisputable that we urgently need to examine our ways. It's also incontrovertible that to ignore major communal shortfalls would be hazardous. Of course, there are many communal faults that need rectification. And several of them involve violations of Torah Law which precisely fit the aforementioned profile of offenses liable for S'kilah, including Sodomy, certain forms of Idolatry (popularized via New-Age influence within traditional religious communities), and Incitement, for example. Accordingly, we would all benefit by questioning how we ourselves fare in avoiding complicity in not only committing such terrible sins, but also in regards to avoiding enabling and legitimizing them, actively or passively.

Even though most of the readers aren't guilty of committing such sins, how many of us can claim that we're not somehow at fault for allowing others to violate them, or, even worse, to succumb to the societal legitimacy bestowed on them? For example, can we honestly claim that we're properly combating the contemporary legal recognition and even celebration of the act of Sodomy? (See https://savehischildren.blogspot.com/2021/06/the-mass-murder-of-marriage.html, or
Www.jerseyconservative.org/blog/2021/6/24/the-de-definition-of-marriage-the-de-definition-of-definitions.)

Our Sages exhort us (e.g. in Talmud tractate Shabbos, folio 54b, Rash"i) that those who could protest the transgressions of others and fail to do so are held accountable for those violations. There is still much that concerned individuals can and must do, especially regarding the following:

1) safeguarding - or salvaging - Education from the youth-exploitive LGBT agenda, especially homosexualist and transgender indoctrinational exploitation of children;

2) combating homosexualist Drag-Queen Grooming-Hour stunts in libraries, perpetrated by pedophile aspirants and their enablers;

3) fighting Change-Therapy bans, as what they are: legislative forms of child molestation;

4) exposing and thereby defeating the panoply of contemporary molestation-enabling measures known as transgender "bathroom bills."

° Forming local parent groups is an ideal way to operate on the local and state level (like the Left does so effectively), which is precisely where most of the change is needed.

° In any case, our overall communal shortfall in pushing back against the broader LGBT agenda - including the infamous De-definition of Marriage - is certainly one of those failures that is in need of immediate rectification, regardless of one's view on which particular punishments it has precipitated. However, we must also realize that we do have the ability to expose the sheer evil of the LGBT/Planned Parenthood/ Human Trafficking-Abortion Cartel - if we maintain the will to do so, especially since there are multiple ways to expose their sheer evil in ways that could impact even many of their sympathizers (e.g. see Jersey Conservative: https://www.jerseyconservative.org/blog/2021/6/17/taking-pride-in-genocide).

° It should go without saying that such tragic events as Surfside should not be exploited to grandstand by making public pronouncements of feel-good platitudes, such as empty genuflection to "unity." To the contrary, authentic unity - which requires taking responsibility for the physical and spiritual wellbeing - including transgressions - of others - is precisely what's needed in times such as these, not inspirational diversionaries. True harmony cannot coexist with tolerance of Evil (cf. this week's Parsha, Pinchus, (Num.) 25:10-18).

° Furthermore, to the extent that the Jewish community strives for repentance, we can hope that that will reverberate throughout other communities as well. That in turn would benefit our own communities, inasmuch as well are all influenced by the society around us. (In fact, one recent Torah sage, explaining Rashi on Achrei Mos (Lev.) 18:3, argued that a premier technique of the Evil Inclination (the Soton) is to degrade the morality of the (surrounding) non-Jews by whom we are most influenced, in order to degrade the morality of the Jewish community.) Perhaps in that merit, survivors will be still found, and future tragedies averted, G-d willing.