Featured Post

Free The Hostages! Bring Them Home!

(this is a featured post and will stay at the top for the foreseeable future.. scroll down for new posts) -------------------------------...

Feb 11, 2019

it is always someone else's fault

At the funeral for the victims of the horrific bus accident yesterday, Rav Meir Kessler, rav of Modiin Ilit, exhorted the crowd in what type of behavior they should work to improve upon. Rav Kessler pointed out two problems that need improvement and work:
1. the women talk on their telephones while on the bus, loudly and with no shame, and they talk about everything, even personal matters and shidduchim, and the entire bus has to hear it all. As well, he called upon the women to improve their level of modesty in dress.
2. The men were exhorted for allowing their children to talk lashon hara and evil gossip and get involved in machlokes - parents must scold their children for getting involved in machlokes. It is a tremendous danger that destroys the entire environment around us.
source: Kikar

Rav Shalom Cohen, in his shiur, related to the bus accident and seemed to blame it on the bus line in Tiberias operated on Shabbos by Mayor Ron Kubi - we have to scream against this as Shabbos is the source of all blessings and if we desecrate the Shabbos, how can we have any blessings?
source: Haredim10

While perhaps it was implied, but Rav Kessler does not seem to be blaming the bus accident on these issues, just using the opportunity to exhort the public on points in the community that need work.That is the rav's job. It is interesting that the women have a problem and the children have a problem but the men seem to be perfectly ok..even though the kids talk about the machlokes that the men are actually involved in. The machlokes is fine, it is the talking about it that is the problem.

Rav Cohen seems to use the concept of arvus. The Jewish community is all connected, so blatant chilul shabbos in one place can affect other communities negatively as well. Besides for wondering how anyone can know definitively the reason or cause for anything happening in this world, I have no problem with a rabbi using a tragedy to try to strengthen Shabbos observance - that is the classic job of the rabbi.

That being said, wouldn't it be more fruitful and productive for a rabbi or teacher to tell his students and listeners in what they could improve and strengthen their observance, and not just talk about other people's problems?

Can we really improve our society by always pointing out other people's faults and never looking at our own?


------------------------------------------------------
Reach thousands of readers with your ad by advertising on Life in Israel
------------------------------------------------------

3 comments:

Related Posts

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...