What By Fire
In 1242, King Louis IX of France forced the Jewish communities under his control to give up their copies of the Talmud and had 24 cartloads, over 12,000 volumes, of Jewish books burned in the square in front of the Louvre in Paris. For his efforts, the Church canonized him as a saint in 1297. (Yes, he's the namesake of the famous American city, Saint Louis, of the Cardinals fame.)
Bear in mind that before the invention of the printing press, each page of Talmud (2,300 pages in just one set!) was hand-written. Hence, this was a colossal loss for the Jewish communities of France, which was the home of the greatest Torah centers of the time. This was considered a huge tragedy for the Jewish people, one from which they never recovered. Shortly thereafter, King Louis followed this up with an expulsion of the Jews from France, after confiscating all of their possessions.
One of the great scholars and mystics of the time, "the Maharam," used an ancient, mystical form of divine prophetic communication via a dream called a "Shay'lat Chalom" to ask G-d why the Jewish people had to suffer this terrible fate. The answer he received was the cryptic opening words of this week's Torah portion, "Zot Chukat HaTorah..." Which means, this is a divine, heavenly decree, which the Jews need to accept and not understand. Nevertheless, the leading Rabbis of that era attributed it to divine retribution for the recent public burning of the books of the Rambam, whom the rabbis of that time mistakenly considered to be a heretic. (Hard to believe, but that's what they erroneously believed!) This happened on the Friday before this week's Torah portion was read, and to commemorate this tragic event, an annual public fast day of reflection and repentance was instituted on every Friday of this week, before this week's Torah portion, Chukat, is read. This fast was observed for hundreds of years.
This week we sent off our 14-year old son to a camp in NY. He traveled on a mini-bus with 11 other Clevelanders. Two hours into their journey they smelled smoke and were led off the bus by the bus driver to wait things out by the side of the highway. Standing 50 feet away from the bus, they heard an explosion and watched the bus go up in flames! Thank G-d, nobody was hurt and everyone got to camp safely. Much of the luggage, including a few pairs of tefillin, were unfortunately destroyed.
I'm not sure what the connection is, but in my mind, these two stories kept swirling together. The week of Parshat Chukat, the burning of holy books and Tefillin. One intentional, one unintentional, one a huge tragedy and one a more minor but nevertheless a sad, senseless loss. The common denominator: When negative things happen to us, while we are reminded that ultimately we are quite limited in our ability to understand divine mishaps, we believe that everything happens for a reason, and it is our responsibility to attempt to do some soul searching and ask ourselves, "Why might this have happened to us?" "Is there a divine message here?"
At the same time there is a Jewish concept to publicize a miracle, and to express gratitude to G-d for having been saved. So while we try to ponder the sobering message, we also gratefully turn to those who have helped: the quick-thinking bus driver; the camp, for their swift and incredibly compassionate response; and ultimately, G-d, for his kindness!
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