Unlike those guys from yesihva Torat Hachayim, I wasn’t happy that Sharon was punished. I admired the man most of my life. But how can a faithful Jew not recognize that Sharon was punished, collapsing as he had done so shortly after the deportations?
I live in a spiritual and intellectual universe in which Divine Supervision and an ongoing dialogue between the individual and God are a given. I completely believe that I deserve the painful things that happen to me, and that it’s my job to figure out what I’ve done wrong and how to fix it. It’s not a hard and fast world of black and white; my moral world is chock full of nuance. But some acts of brutality and violence bear a lot less ambiguity than you might think.
To be clear: I’m not suggesting that I’m a prophet who can declare that I have it on good authority that Sharon was punished by God for Gush Katif. But I’m completely entitled to my opinion—which I know I share with many thousands of my fellow observant Jews—that there is Judgment in the world, and there is a Judge.
If you ask me, the very essence of galut is to censor our expression of faith in God’s rule because of what others might think. Those “others” intimidated an entire religious Jewish community after Rabin’s murder, making all of us responsible for the act of a madman because we hated the Rabin government’s repression and brutality and said so. They can’t intimidate us unless we hold on to our “pintele galus,” the little bit of diaspora in our psyches.
And I tell you that of the two, Interior Minister Yitzhak Aharonovich vs. God, I choose to fear God more.
May Ariel Sharon’s memory be blessed.