Mishpacha newspaper (Hebrew) this past week reported on an unusual situation in Bnei Brak that I thought you might find interesting.
It seems there is an apartment building in which five residents have contracted diseases from which they quickly died within the past year, the most recent being within the last week.
The residents, understandably, are extremely concerned and worried about their safety. They have not been able to figure out what might be causing it, so they have turned to various Rabbonim and Gedolim to try to obtain segulahs and forms of protection for the building.
Upon the advice of the Rabbonim, they have established a regular shiur in the building on the topic of shmiras ha'lashon, and they have performed some sort of ceremony as per instructions from some kabbalistic works. They also circled the building 7 times while blowing shofar, giving tzedaka and saying slichos.
Rav Gershon Edelstein told them that the way to stop the plague is by improving in one's good deeds. Rav Edelstein said, "All of Israel is repsonsible one for the other, and the righteous are punished for the sins of the generation. Today there are so many accidents and afflictions, people need to know that the first thing to do is to improve one's behavior and relations between people...."
The article did not specify what the contracted diseases were that these people were dieing from. I hope they looked for cellular antennas that are sometimes installed secretly in buildings. In RBS there was such an antenna installed by a cellphone company in a building a number of years ago and shortly after, three children from different families in the building contracted various forms of cancer.
Rafi, anecdotal evidence is not evidence. Now I did not do any research on cellular antennas, but just because that occurred does does not mean causation.
ReplyDeleteAs far as segulas are concerned and kabbalistic stuff, that is a whole other can of worms, as it seems to be the du jour practice in charaidi Israel to run after these segulas. I will leave it at that, however its noteworthy that less scientifically and culturally advanced a culture is the more superstitious it becomes. (This is a minor plug for rational based Torah Judaism - after all we are still accepting "convert")
I did not mean to say that cellular antenas are proven to do that. There are studies that "prove" both sides of the argument.
ReplyDeleteAnd I did not mean they must have a hidden antenna somewhere.
I just meant that maybe there is something they are not aware of in their building/immediate vicinity that is causing these problems and they had that checked out as well.
The antenna anecdote was just an example. Maybe they have high live wires. Maybe they have something else going =on there. I just hope they checked out the physical aspects and not just the kabbalistic.