Initially when the Rav presents the answer to the what question concerning yissurim, so in os yud aleph of the first section, he writes הייסורים באים כדי לרומם את האדם, ולטהר את רוחו ולהקדישו, ולנקות את מחשבתו ולצרפו מכל פסולת השטחיות וסיגי הגסות, ולעדן את נפשו ולהרחיב את אופק חייו. כללו של דבר, הייסורים תפקידם לתקן את הפגם באישיותו של האדם.
In the section that we were learning together yesterday, so there was a very clear emphasis, almost exclusive, on fault, inadequacy in the bein adam l'chaveiro. ואת זו היא התשובה שניתנה על ידי בורא עולם לאיוב.
And then in os aleph of section beis, skipping to lower down in that paragraph, אולם חסרה לך אותה מידת החסד הגדולה בשני מובניה. מעולם לא נשאת בעול הציבור ולא השתתפת בצרתו וביגונו, לא הרגשת ייסורי היחיד הסובל.
So we're no longer talking in very general terms, no longer painting in broad strokes about just generally and generically whatever is פגום באישיותו של האדם, but very, very focused with laser precision davka on the tchum of bein adam l'chaveiro. So that shift happened, and we didn't... we discussed this os, but we didn't focus on the fact that there's a shift. If you go back to os yud beis, the last sub-section in section aleph, so the opening sentence, היהדות העמיקה את הרעיון הזה. Yiddishkeit deepens this idea, deepened this idea בצרפה את עניין תיקון הסבל והעלאתו עם תיקון החסד והעלאתו,
by connecting, by associating, combining. Redeeming and elevating yissurim with elevating chesed. And the key line here to understand this transition, it’s around eight lines from the end of section Alef. כי יש והאדם נתבע לתקן על ייסוריו מה שפגם ביצירה בשעה שהקדוש ברוך הוא נוטה אליו כנהר שלום.
Meaning initially, initially the Rav explains that the why question is futile because not only in Olam Hazeh but even in Olam Haba, a finite being can never fully understand the chochma of Hakadosh Baruch Hu who’s infinite. The what question can be answered correctly and productively. And the what is that yissurim point, yissurim highlight deficiency, inadequacy. What deficiency, what inadequacy? Do a cheshbon hanefesh and identify what those areas are. Will you ever know definitively if you arrived at the right answer? You don’t need to. You just need to know the answers are in what. משל למה הדבר דומה. Let’s say a person has a certain aches and pains. So he goes to the doctor. And the doctor takes an MRI and this test and that test and he finds various problems. Significant substantive problems that are known to be to cause pain. Does the doctor know absolutely definitively that this is the source of the pain? Lav Davka, there may be other sources that he hasn’t uncovered. But it’s not important that he know whether this is the right answer as long as he knows that it’s not the wrong answer, that it’s a right answer. And the same thing is true whether it’s an individual cheshbon hanefesh or a collective cheshbon hanefesh. A person doesn’t need to know that he’s uncovered the right answer. He just needs to know that he did it in a religiously healthy way, the cheshbon hanefesh, not in a neurotic way. In a religiously healthy way and that as a result the answers that they yield are correct answers. Are they the absolute exclusive correct answers? A person never knows but doesn’t need to know. So initially and again Lav Davka that the answer or that what a person’s got to uncover is in bein adam lechavero. They say that besof yomav Rav Moshe Feinstein had yissurim. He was doing a cheshbon hanefesh. He was doing a cheshbon. Rav Moshe was I think he was niftar, he was around 90 years old. So besof yomav, I don’t know if it was the last year of his life, maybe he was only 89 at the time. So he was doing a cheshbon hanefesh, what this. So he reminded himself that 70 years earlier, maybe it was a little more than 70, but pashut 70 years earlier he thought he said something to a chaver that wasn’t so sensitive. So the answer may or the answer may or that should be juxtaposed to Rav Shlomo Zalman’s hesped for his Rebbetzin where he didn’t ask mechila. And said that you didn’t need to ask mechila from me and I don’t need to ask mechila from you because we lived together how we were supposed to. It was a smichus haparshiyos between those two stories. What characterizes Gedolei Yisrael is not only genius. So lav davka, maybe the answer will be 70 years ago, something kind of like that, but maybe it won't be. But then in Os Yud Beis, so the Rav says, but sometimes there's a sequence. Sometimes if, when a person now looks back in retrospect, he sees that the sequence, that there was a progression, that initially either he individually or the tzibur collectively were the recipients of tremendous bracha, of tremendous chessed Hashem. And then on the heels of that, they suffered terrible yissurim. When a person identifies that progression, so then the yissurim are not just a general and generic indicator of הפגם באישיותו של האדם לנקות את מחשבתו לצרפו לצרפו מכל פסולת השטחיות וסיגי הגסות,
then it clearly indicates deficiency in the ben adam lachaveiro because when a person, again either individually or a community collectively, are recipients of bracha, so that bracha has to be shared. And if on the heels of that bracha, rachmana litzlan, come yissurim, so then we have an indicator that the what of the yissurim is not just in general terms הפגם באישיותו של האדם, but it's in particular in the realm of ben adam lachaveiro. And that accounts for again the shift in terms of how the Rav is discussing what the response to the what question is, what the mechayev of yissurim is. And that's exactly the case in Sefer Iyov, right? At the beginning of Sefer Iyov, so we have the description of how successful Iyov is, how he's thriving on every level, and then in the aftermath of that come the yissurim. And that's what the Rav is saying. So here again this Sefer Iyov exemplifies the subset of the Torah's approach to yissurim. Did you hear what I was saying? So the question we posed yesterday of how do you square the Rav's discussion here with for instance the famous Yerushalmi in Pe'ah that the same way that תלמוד תורה כנגד כולם, so too ביטול תורה כנגד כולם? So that's the answer, that in section beis, the section about Sefer Iyov, so the Rav has moved from the general parsha of yissurim to a subset of that parsha of yissurim, of yissurim that come in the wake of, on the heels of bracha. Because when you have that progression, so then the mechayev of yissurim is not just in general, generically to look again for everything again whether individually or collectively that needs to be corrected, needs to be redeemed, etcetera, but then there's an indication that it's specifically with again almost an exclusive emphasis in the realm of ben adam lachaveiro. Mention in the inyen, it's also very important to have correct perspective. The Mishnah in Bameh Madlikin: על שלוש עבירות נשים מתות בשעת לידתן על שאינן זהירות בנידה ובחלה ובהדלקת הנר.
Apropos of this Mishnah, so the Gemara has many many statements in Tannaim that correlate certain onesh with certain avonos. They're very, I don't know, I guess scary Gemaras. But just for a sampling: תניא רבי נתן אומר בעוון נדרים מתה אשתו של אדם. רבי אומר בעוון נדרים בנים מתים כשהן קטנים.
Skipping ahead almost a full Blatt: בעוון נבלות פה צרות רבות וגזירות קשות מתחדשות ובחורי sonei Yisrael, sonei Yisrael is leshon sagi nahor, מתים יתומים ואלמנות צועקים ואינם נענים. Kahena v'kahena. אסכרה באה לעולם על המעשרות. רבי אלעזר ברבי יוסי אומר
al lashon hara. So there are two, you're talking more than that, but at least two very important points to that need to be understood. Number one, all these maamarei Chazal are totally consistent with the Rav's what/why distinction. When Chazal associate a particular onesh Rachmana litzlan, a particular catastrophe with a particular cheit, they're not posing and answering the why question because as we explained yesterday, if it's the why question, so it's not really a it doesn't really answer the question. I mean why should why should this horrible middas hadin be forthcoming for Rachmana litzlan for this for this cheit? And why is it that sometimes it doesn't happen and sometimes it does happen? So Chazal were not intending, they weren't posing the why question and they weren't intending to respond to that. They were saying in terms of the what, so we'll give you a head start. Instead of check check this, check for this first. A, B, unfortunately these maamarei Chazal are misquoted, misunderstood and misquoted. B, Chazal never intended that that one should invert what they said. בעוון נדרים בנים מתים does not mean, does not mean that whenever Rachmana litzlan banim meisim that that points to ba'avon nedarim. It's not, it's not reversible. The fact that that if A then B doesn't mean that every time you have B it's due to A. So we know for instance, we know for instance that that Rachmana litzlan the onesh of misah bidei shamayim or kares can be the reason a person dies before age 50 or before age 60. We absolutely do not believe that any individual Rachmana litzlan who dies before age 50 or age 60, it's an indication that that person was חייב מיתה בידי שמיים or chayav kares. Some of the greatest of the Ba'alei HaMesora אשר מפיהם אנו חיים ומימיהם אנו שותים died very, died very young, whether in the tkufah of Acharonim or all the way back to Chazal. So none of these statements are to be inverted. It doesn't mean, and based on that a person can never, never presumptuously claim to know why something happened even if it's one of those onshim which are mentioned in these Ma'amarei Chazal. Because Chazal never ever said, Ramchal was 39 years old. The Rama was a young man when he died. We don't go a day without, we can't live without Ramchal, we can't live without the Rama. Rav Meir Shapiro was in his 40s. He was a young man, he was a young man. The greatest Chasidei Elyon, some of them died very, very young. No one ever, ever, ever, ever said that any of these statements in Chazal can be inverted. They absolutely cannot be inverted. And when people quote these Ma'amarei Chazal to say that I know why something happened, it's just amratzus. It's not a Maimar Chazal, it's a distortion of a Maimar Chazal. Might that be why something happened? It might be, in some cases it might be, but a person never, a person never knows. And it's very, very important to recognize that. The other, another factor to be aware of when a person contemplates commenting on tragedies. Again, in addition to the fact that the Ma'amarei Chazal should be correctly understood as whats, not whys, that they're not to be inverted so a person never can say so definitively. אפילו אם תמצי לומר that after both of those caveats notwithstanding, a person in his heart of hearts thinks that at a particular meimra Chazal is relevant to something that happened. The Gemara says in Yevamot that כשם שמצוה לומר דבר הנשמע כך מצוה שלא לומר דבר שאינו נשמע.
A person rachmana litzlan should never ever distort Torah. A person should never ever misrepresent Torah. Never ever, rachmana litzlan. If a person is in a certain setting with a certain audience where people lack the depth of emuna, lack the maturity, or whatever it is, to correctly understand and appreciate divrei Torah, particularly divrei Torah, there are times when you just don't volunteer it. Not everything that a person knows, even even when a person does know it, again ein l'eil, whether in this parsha, a person ever does really know, but even when a person really does know something, a person has to weigh whether or not his audience has the wherewithal to understand it or whether because they don't have the wherewithal to understand it, it's just going to generate cynicism about the Torah. Again, not, that's not being embarrassed, it's not lacking the strength of conviction. It's being smart and sensitive in terms of kavod haTorah. Given how today with social media and all the other organs of broadcasting and posting things that whatever a person says, regardless of who his live audience may be, two minutes later his audience may be maybe the whole world, so a person has to weigh very carefully what's davar nishma, what's davar she'eino nishma, and whether what he's saying will be a to'elet, whether it's going to be something constructive or whether it's going to be something rachmana litzlan which has the opposite effect. There's no mitzvah to say things which will be misunderstood by large numbers of people and because of that distance people rachmana litzlan from Yiddishkeit. Sometimes whether it can be said is a function of how it's said and it can be the right thing if it's said the right way and it can be the wrong thing if it's said the wrong way and sometimes the audience that a person is talking to just isn't ready to hear it. They're not ready to hear it, so don't. No one thinks that Torah is being censored if you're teaching chas v'shalom Gemara to fifth grade and they're not ready to hear a Rebbi Akiva Eiger's kasha. No one thinks that you're censoring divrei Torah by not telling them. When they'll be ready to hear רבי עקיבא איגר'ס קשיא, we'll tell them רבי עקיבא איגר'ס קשיא. Okay, so we'll stop here for this.