A few short weeks later, on Yom Kipper, the Arabs attacked Israel. David, home for Yom Tov, ran off to join his unit. He never came back. Eight months later, his wife gave birth to his first and only child, a girl.
Also killed in the Yom Kipper War was 19-year-old Meir, a former classmate of mine who was handsome and very, very smart. His parents were also Holocaust survivors, and his father was a beloved rebbe in our day school. Meir’s father had lost a wife and child in the Shoah, but his faith never wavered and he remained frum, teaching a new generation of Jewish children about their faith and heritage.
I remember being beside myself with rage and grief – and confusion – when I heard the news. Had not their parents gone through Gehenom during the Shoah? Did they not live daily with the excruciating pain and grief of the loss of their loved ones?
Recently I heard through a friend about a woman who is going through a very difficult time. “She just doesn’t seem to catch a break,” my friend said to me. “It’s one thing after another. She has to put up with a very critical husband; she has a single daughter who is in her mid-30’s; her married son is struggling financially and two of her grandchildren have serious learning disabilities. And she is the sweetest, most giving person. How much more can she take?”
She is one of thousands who are struggling with various “back-breaking life-burdens.”
In the Shema, arguably the holiest expression of faith in Judaism, it says, “V’ahavta eit Hashem Elokecha bckhol l’vav’cha uv’chol naf’sh’cha uv’chol m’odecha. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” The Jewish people aren’t exhorted to fear God, but to love him.
The reason why is obvious. It is actually quite easy to fear a powerful G-d, but to love one who is seemingly okay with disease, violence and indifferent to the unbearable suffering of so many of His children is a bit more challenging.
I know there are some misguided souls who insist that the Holocaust was caused because the Jews sinned, and that anyone now who is beset with tragedy “must have deserved it.”
So does that mean that Shmuel Zundell and his wife “deserve” to have a dying child? Or those gedolim who never had children deserved to be infertile? Or that the beloved kiruv rabbi described in a recent column in the Magazine who died of cancer at age 26 deserved it?
Those self-righteous fools who claim to know Hashem’s mind are clueless. But I think I understand their mindset: They say what they do because they are desperate to bolster their own shaken emunah and bitachon! Lest any hint of troubling doubt cross their thoughts, they comfort themselves by insisting that Hashem is just and good and the hapless souls enduring a huge tragedy or major setback – be it health problems, parnassah issues, shalom bayit and shiddich issues – ultimately “deserved” it.
We will never understand Hashem’s ways, never. But as long as there are tzaddikim like the Zundells to declare their unwavering faith and love for Hashem, there is hope for those whose faith is faltering to get a life-enhancing infusion of spiritual life support – and chizuk.