In the early 1900’s when street lamps were first being installed in Israel, one of the first to be installed was done on the street of the tzadik known as the Chazon Ishe. One evening as he was walking home with his students, he stopped and abruptly said, “You see, we can all learn something from these new lights.” The students were intrigued to hear what he meant by this. He said that when you are far away from the lights, your shadow is very big, but as you move closer to the light, your shadow shrinks until it is totally gone. The Chazon Ishe said that the same is true with Torah. When you are far from it, you think you are big; you think the Torah is small and there isn’t much to it. But the more Torah you learn and the closer you get to it, the more you realize how big it is, how small you are and how much more there is to learn.
This story came to me this week when I began to review the troublesome story of Shechem, Dinah and ultimately Shimon and Levi killing out the entire city. I came into the story with many questions that I had hoped to explore and find answers to. But because the Torah is so huge, I ended up exploring an entirely different question. Here it goes:
The Torah tells us that Yaakov and his sons were outraged with Shechem and his attempt to take Dinah. Shimon and Levi plotted together to get Shechem and his city to undergo a Brit Milah so that they would weaken, allowing them to be killed more easily. That in fact turned into reality, and on the third day after the Brit, Shimon and Levi went ahead and killed Shechem, his father and the entire city. The question that I never asked myself was, why didn’t anyone come to the aid of Shechem and his people? Shechem was a popular and powerful individual and it must have taken some time to kill all of the men in the city. Why didn’t intervene to fight off Shimon and Levi?
An old friend of mine, Jeff Kirshblum, in his book, “Thinking Outside of the Box” suggests a sad, but novel answer. He says the unfortunate reality is that throughout Jewish History, we have had to look out for ourselves since none of our neighbors are willing to lookout for us. Despite terrorist acts against the Jews in Israel, the world continues to ignore us.
Just last week with the killing of Ezra Schwartz a”h, despite him being an American citizen, the President of the United States did not come out publicly to denounce the attacks. Even for a U.S. citizen? his how the world works and we as Jews have to recognize it, so that we continue to look out for each other and ourselves. Perhaps with this we can understand why no one came to the aid of Shechem and his people. Once they took the step to have a Brit Milah, the rest of the world saw them as on the road to being Jews, and thus had no interest in helping. It is a sad reality, but history has proven it to be true.
As we go into Shabbat, let us remind ourselves and our children, that we must continue to lobby for Israel and for Jewish causes. Yet, let us not expect the world to be there to help us. We need to support Israel, our army and every Jewish cause that stands up to world in the effort of protecting each and every one of us.
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