Dear Friends,
This week, with your permission, I will address my letter not to you, but to G-d.
Dear Ribbono Shel Olam,
I’m just asking:
Chazal tell us in Tractate Gittin 55b that “Because of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza, Jerusalem was destroyed.” O.K., you know the story. By mistake, Bar Kamtza was invited to a dinner instead of Kamtza, and therefore Bar Kamtza was turned out and humiliated, and no one protested.
But Ribbono Shel Olam, that was a long time ago…. And it’s a pity you don’t have Facebook, because if you had, you would see how many wedding-hall owners from the north and center of the country have opened their doors gladly, hosting weddings and other family celebrations for people from the south. And that’s without knowing them at all – rather, just because we are all brothers.
Dear Father, we learned in Tractate Yuma 9b “Why was the First Temple destroyed? Because of three things that existed at that time – idol worship, immorality and bloodshed… But the Second Temple, when they were engaging in Torah and Mitzvot and acts of loving-kindness, why was it destroyed? Because there existed baseless hatred. This teaches one that baseless hatred is equivalent to the three [cardinal] sins: idol worship, immorality and bloodshed.”
But that was a long time ago, dear Father… because today – and it’s a pity you don’t have WhatsApp – everything has changed. You must have seen the tens of thousands that came to pay their last respects to the soldier Nissim Sean Carmel HY”D. Someone wrote that he was a lone soldier, but he was not a lone one at all, for twenty thousand brothers and sisters came to his funeral in Haifa.
So I’m just asking, G-d in Heaven, what more do we need for Mashiach to come?
And more: in Tractate Bava Metzia 59a it says: “Rabbi Elazar said: from the day that the Temple was destroyed, the gates of prayer have been locked, and even though the gates of prayer are locked, the gates of tears are not locked, for it says, ‘Hear my prayer, Hashem, and listen to my outcry; do not be mute to my tears.’ Of course they aren’t locked. You’ve had a flood of tears up there in the past few weeks. Tears of empathy, both in times of joy and times of sorrow, tears of national unity and baseless love. It really is time for the full and complete Redemption.
Am Yisrael Chai!
Shabbat Shalom,
Zalmen Wishedski