Community Magazine June 2003

16 COMMUNITY MAGAZINE s ” xc Hazal (Our rabbis of blessed memory) say that this dramatic turnaround even defies the logic of the Satan. The Satan is patient and usually works very slowly. It will never try to convince a reli- gious Jew to one day all of a sudden become a Buddhist. He wears down his targets. He will invest fifty years of tricks, schemes and subtle coaxing if he thinks he can make a Jew sin at the end. The Gemarah says: “This is the way of the evil inclination. Today it says ‘do this[small transgression]’ Tomorrow it says, ‘do this [other small transgression]’ until slowly you come to worship other gods.” It is designed to be a gradual progression. But in the case of the Golden Calf, the Jews seemed to fall almost instanta- neously into the most egregious of sins as the Torah states “They swayed swiftly from the way.” Actually, the incident with the golden calf started out with noble intentions. The Jews miscalculated the day of Moshe’s return from Har Sinai. They thought that Moshe wasn’t coming back and they panicked. He was their connection to Hashem and in his absence they felt a need to establish a substitute to serve as an intermedi- ary between them and Hashem. The calf was a figure that had spir- ituality to it; it was modeled after an image they saw in Heaven when they left Egypt. But it quickly led to disaster as the episode progressed, because none of it was sanctioned by Hashem. But how can we explain the breakneck speed with which they descended to such a dreadful sin? Reb Chaim Shmuelevitz offers an enlightening if not chilling one-word answer: depression. They thought they lost their leader. The Satan used the clouds above to portray an image of Moshe’s coffin. It was a dark day and they thought that they fell from Hashem’s good grace. Once a person falls into that state of gloom, they are vulnerable to almost any- thing. What normally takes the Satan 50 years to accomplish, he can do in an instant when a person is emotionally unbalanced. Missionaries have also learned this principle. It is no coinci- dence that they are known to focus their energies at airports. Targeting people that are down, stressed out, and trying to get away from their lives their easiest targets are people traveling to funerals, visiting sick relatives, running away from home and so forth. Any existing emotional fragility can render a person vulnerable to irra- tional decisions and subject to be swayed by a preying missionary. Many people can point to tragic mistakes they made in the course of their lives while they were feeling down—divorcing their spouse, selling a home, quitting a job, or dropping out of school. There are also many precedents pointing to this tendency in the Torah. Kayin, the son of Adam (the first man), pioneered the practice of bringing a sacrifice to Hashem. In his brilliance, Kayin thought of the BY: RABB I EL I MANSOUR T he Satan himself could not have dreamt such an achievement to bring the holiest generation of the Jewish people to the most severe transgression. Those Jews who witnessed the most incredible and revealing manifestation of Hashems hand in the miraculous events of the Exodus from Egypt, the split- ting of the Red Sea, and finally, Hashem himself addressing the nation on Har Sinai reached such a spiritu- al high that it is written even the common maidservant among them experienced a greater level of prophecy than Yehezkel Ben Buzi, who received the greatest revelation among the later prophets. Yet a mere 40 days after experiencing the awe-inspiring encounter with the Almighty in his splendor and glory, these very same people resorted to worshipping the Golden Calf. How could a nation go from the high of hearing the voice of Hashem, to the absolute lowest of the lowsidol worship, in such a short time? CONQUERING Spiritual Depression DEDICATED IN MEMORY OF JACK AH & MARCELLE AH SHASHO BY ELLIOT SHASHO