IS CORONA A CURSE?
By Roy S. Neuberger
I recently received an email which referred to the current worldwide plague as a curse: “We [will] get together when this [cursed] business is over.”
Is Corona a curse?
I would like to examine the situation more closely. We owe it to ourselves to make every effort to view current events through a Torah lens.
Corona is clearly a makka, a worldwide plague.
The seminal event in Jewish history is Yetzias Mitzraim, the Exodus, which was initiated with ten plagues which destroyed Egypt. It was necessary that Egypt be destroyed because that idolatrous country was ensnaring our ancestors and the time had come for us to be liberated so that we could accept the Torah.
The entire world was created in order that Am Yisroel should accept the Torah; either we had to be liberated from Ancient Egypt or the world would have ceased to exist.
My friends, what is happening today is a replay of those ancient events.
It is not an accident and it is not a curse; it is the Hand of Hashem. The entire world today has become the New Egypt, submerged in an empty culture which rejects Hashem. By definition, such a culture is also anti-Jewish, since the very existence of Am Yisroel is based upon acceptance of the sovereignty of Hashem. The current worldwide culture and the Nation of Israel are inherently incompatible. This is why anti-Semitism is mushrooming. It is all coming to a climax.
And now the time is near, as in Ancient Egypt, for Hashem to take His People out and proclaim the Age of Moshiach, the Era of the Final Redemption. This worldwide plague is part of the collapse of the current idolatrous culture which will make way for the Age of Moshiach, at which time it will be clear that “Hashem Echad ushmo Echad … Hashem is One and His Name is One.”
I am aware that these are shocking statements (although you have heard this from me before). It is not easy to discuss the collapse of the culture in which we have all grown up and which surrounds us on every side, but that just indicates the similar nature of the massive events which took place in Ancient Egypt and why they were so challenging for our ancestors. We needed a Moshe Rabbeinu to lead us to that Redemption, and we need Moshiach ben Dovid to lead us to the coming Redemption.
We are now in Chodesh Elul, a time for teshuva in preparation for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. My friends, could we have contemplated last Rosh Hashanah the magnitude of the changes which would transpire in 5780? Could we have imagined Corona and the new American “revolution?” The world is in shock, and it’s not going away.
“On Rosh Hashanah will be inscribed and Yom Kippur will be sealed how many will pass from the earth and how many will be created, who will live and who will die, who will die at his predestined time and who before his time, who by water and who by fire, who by sword, who by beast, who by famine, who by thirst, who by storm , who by plague ….”
We contemplate our mortality at this time, and prepare for Hashem’s judgment.
That is why, during the month of Elul, we examine our lives with great honesty, refining our thoughts and actions according to the standards of the Torah. Then we endeavor to diminish the bad and build up the good.
We should not be afraid of what is going on in the world. As the Torah says in last week’s Parsha, “Tamim ti’ye im Hashem Elokecha … be wholehearted with Hashem,”[1] which Rashi tells us means, “Look ahead to Him …. Walk with Him with wholeheartedness …. [and] whatever comes upon you, accept with wholeheartedness ….”
Just as we are preparing for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, so Hashem is preparing for the Age of Redemption. “Do not fear, for you will not be shamed. Do not feel humiliated for you will not be mortified …. For the mountains may be moved and the hills may falter, but My kindness shall not be removed from you and My covenant of peace shall not falter, says Hashem, the One Who shows you mercy.”[2]
1 comment:
Amen.
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