I was asked to make mention of some possible thoughts about the terrible tragedy that happened in Meron on Lag B’Omer. B’ezrat Hashem, we will try to come away with some perspective on this.
We have no way to fathom G-d Himself, but we can understand slightly from the way He reveals Himself to us in the three different dimensions.
Revelation number one is Creation itself. Hashem created the world with plan, purpose and design, and we see His tremendous wisdom from the smallest of creatures to the largest. That’s one area where Hashem revealed himself, and it’s the subject of Hovot HaLevavot’s Shaar Bechina, where we learn to find G-d in Creation.
The second time G-d revealed Himself was at Har Sinai, when He gave us the Torah. To this very day, every time we sit down to learn a pasuk, a mishna or a gemara, the Will of G-d is being revealed to us, and we make some connection to Him, through His Will, as it is expressed in the Torah.
The third way G-d reveals Himself is in the running of the world, which we call Hashgacha Peratit/ G-d’s Divine, specific supervision, as He is involved in every step of our lives.
Sometimes we see it a very open way; we can see that Hashem is running our lives. At other times, we can’t see it, and we don’t understand the runnings of the world.
These are the three ways that God reveals himself to us.
The first two out of three are clearly impossible to understand on our own. Regarding creation, we know that without a microscope, it is impossible to reveal the RNA and DNA of a cell. Without an x-ray machine, you can’t possibly diagnose a fracture. There are wonders of the body and wonders of creation, but without the proper tools, we are all at a loss for what is going on. Certain things just remain a mystery unless you have the proper tools.
The same is true in the area of Torah. Sometimes Torah is very deep and extremely hard to understand, and it takes many commentaries such as Rashi and Tosafot and other Rishonim. Some men admit that without their Artscroll, they cannot get through a Gemara.
All of this means that the Torah needs commentary, translation, elucidation, and teachers, in order for us to understand a piece of Gemara.
So this is another revelation of God that needs explanation. Without the proper explanation, and the proper tools, we can’t possibly understand it.
But the third area where God reveals Himself, the way in which He runs the world, is the area in which people think that they should be able to understand what is going on. And this is our point:
Somebody once asked the Chazon Ish, how we are to understand the Holocaust; the horrors, the 6 million Jewish lives lost, shuls destroyed, communities destroyed, years of torture etc. How are we to understand that? Why did
G-d act this way?
The Chazon Ish answered that the Holocaust is like a difficult Gemara without the commentary of Rashi.
Just this past Shabbat, we were learning a quite simple Gemara in our morning class, and there were four instances where we read the Gemara, and the Mishna, and we thought the Mishna was saying one thing, until Rashi told us it was saying something else. That was an easy Mishna, and a quite easy Gemara.
When you get to a difficult Gemara, and there is no Rashi, you are in trouble. You have to do a lot of work and then you still might be stuck.
The Chazon Ish is telling us that life is a difficult Gemara without Rashi. There is no Rashi, no Rishonim, no Aharonim.
When a terrible tragedy like this happens, there really is no way to understand what is happening.
We just have to believe that it is Hashem doing it.
This message shows up on Mizmor L’Yom Shabbat, when we talk about
G-d’s creations.
מה גדלו מעשך ה׳
How great are Your actions!
How deep are Your thoughts!
It continues on to say what the fools don’t understand, when the wicked flourish.
Just like we don’t understand the human body, or the depths of creation, we surely don’t understand the way God runs the world.
What we are are supposed to take away from this tragedy is a different story.
There is a rule that when a person sees suffering and tragedy, it is a call from God to do Teshuva. We don’t know why it happened, and we can’t say anything, but it is a call for teshuva.
What are we supposed to do? I’d like to quote Rav Shach on this, because there are always people that will say you have to do, X, Y, Z.
But Rav Shach quotes the Gemara that says that in the times of the Bet HaMikdash, when the land was destroyed they asked the Chachamim why, but they had no answer. Then they asked the prophets, but they too had no answer. The angels didn’t even know.
Finally, they had to ask God Himself. Only God was able to say what the sin was.
Rav Shach asks,
If this sin is something that the wisemen don’t know, that the prophets don’t know, and that the angels don’t even know, and that we needed God to reveal, how can we hold the people responsible for not doing Teshuva?
He answers that each person knows what they have to fix. God gave you that ability. As it says, “it is in your mouth and in your heart to do.” The Sforno says it’s not necessary to run to the ends of the world to ask prophets or rabbis. In your heart, you know what to do.
Everybody knows what they have to fix. After a year of Corona, it was finally Lag B’Omer, Meron was open, and everyone was going to celebrate in the proper way. These were good people, doing everything in the proper ways, and such a tragedy strikes, in such a way that everybody knows about it.
This is talking to everybody, and each person has to ask himself, “What can I do?”
We should not just be satisfied with a Zohar that someone found that says that 45 people will pass away, as if it decreed, so that we shouldn’t worry about it. Sometimes that just pushes off the responsibility that each person has. We have to take personal responsibility and make personal introspection, and ask what we can do. What can I do to make myself a little better? What is a little better? Everybody knows what a little better is for themselves.
And that’s the point- to take some time to think about what your “little better” should be.
B’ezrat Hashem, we will no longer see any sorrow.