Closer to the End

One of the questions that used to have me tossing and turning in my sleep was how such horribly ‘bad’ things could happen to such ‘good’ people, and it could still be somehow ‘OK’.

This question popped back into my head this week, following hard on the heels of some pretty horrible situations That happened in recent months. I’m sure you all heard about the Satmar chassid who got horribly murdered in Williamsburg; and about the family that got killed in a gas explosion in Jerusalem, and about the other Jerusalem family who had their small kids poisoned to death.

Horrible, terrible, dark happenings. So how do we square this with a kind, compassionate, loving Creator? There’s a few answers to this. One, and probably the most fundamental, is to understand that we don’t understand anything. We are limited, spiritually one-dimensional human beings who can’t see the big picture, and can’t understand how these things are ‘kindnesses’. That’s where our emuna has to kick in, because it’s not something you can argue logically.

The second way to try to understand all this, in whatever limited way we can, is reincarnation. Unlike in Islam and Xtianity, reincarnation is a standard belief in Jewish thought, both revealed and hidden, and it’s one of the prime ways we can understand why seemingly ‘bad’ things happen to seemingly ‘good’ people.

Reincarnation has literally been going on for millennia. Do you remember Job, the man who suffered so much that he became the archetype in the bible for when ‘bad’ things happen to a good person. If there was no reincarnation, it would be really hard to understand what was going on over there.

But before he was the righteous Job, Job had actually been the anything-but-righteous Terach, Avraham Avinu’s idol-worshiping father, who clearly had a lot of things to atone for, as the premier idol-maker of his generation.

A belief in reincarnation also pops up in the preamble for the bedtime Shema, when we make the following declaration: “I hereby forgive anyone who angered or antagonized me, or who sinned against me, whether against my body, whether against my property, against my honor, or whether against anything that is mine, whether they did so accidentally, whether willfully, whether carelessly, or whether purposely, whether through speech, whether through deed, whether in deliberation, or with fleeting thought, whether in this reincarnation (gilgul) or whether in another reincarnation…”

It’s true that this time round we’re all good, amazing, holy people (particularly if we’re reading articles on Breslev.co.il AND liking them on Facebook…) – but we weren’t always like this. The simple fact is that if we’d got ourselves fully fixed, and mended all the breaches in our souls the last time we were down here, we wouldn’t be back. If we’re here, it’s a very clear sign that we still have an awful lot of things that need work.

Let me share another story to make the point. There’s a very famous Baal Shem Tov (BESHT) story, where the BESHT sent his student, the Maggid of Mezeritch, to climb a tree next to spring, and stay there for a day. The Maggid did, and he saw a soldier come along, drink, and forget a purse of gold coins there by the fountain.

Next came a boy who drank, found the coins, and went happily on his way.

Last was an old, decrepit man, who came to drink – and then got beaten up by the soldier for stealing his purse of gold coins (which clearly he hadn’t).

What injustice!

The Maggid came back to the BESHT for an explanation, and the BESHT explained that he’d just seen Divine justice meted out to two litigants, and the judge, in a previous lifetime.

The judge (the old man) and the first litigant (the soldier) had conspired to defraud the second litigant (the boy). In this lifetime, G-d set the record straight by causing the crooked litigant to lose his money; the double-crossed litigant to get a windfall; and the bent judge to get beaten up.

If we’d read about that story in our local paper, we’d be absolutely appalled: ‘How could someone beat up a poor, innocent old man for nothing???’ But that’s because we can’t see what G-d can see. We have to remind ourselves of that a lot, especially these days, when there appear to be so many ‘bad’ things going.

As we get closer to the ‘end’, G-d has to square all the accounts off, which is why ‘today’ feels so tense, so intense, so packed, so heavy, so eventful. Each day feels like it lasts a week, a month, or even a year, because there is so much going on. And that’s how it’s going to be, until all our ‘back debts’ are cleared off, and we’re ready to greet Mashiach.