When Is A Pogrom Not A Pogrom?
Tech Tribe Dispatch #225
💡 Think:
Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev once complained to G-d,
”Master of the Universe, the structure of this world is stacked against us! The pleasures and temptations of the world you placed for all to see, yet the pleasures and inspiration of the Torah, you put inside the books which people need to struggle tos tudy! Why not put the temptations in the books, and the delights of the torah in the open?”
Indeed, this structural need for darkness feels stacked against us. Last week’s Dispatch explored why: Our sojourn here on earth, the very experience of the distraction —and destruction— of this world, gives us the power to reveal the greatest light… to make the most meaningful impact on the universe.
But the question can still gnaw at us.
The Rebbe once noted1 that as a child, his teacher told him that he found a hint in the Torah for the pogroms caused by the Ukrainian War of Independence then tearing through Eastern Ukraine — including the Rebbe’s own home town of Ekaterinoslav (today, Dniepro).
”What good is that,” the Rebbe asked him, “a pogrom is still a pogrom!”
”When a person experiences something difficult, and knows that it was foreseen in the Torah, it gives a sense of comfort,” the teacher answered.
That may be true, the Rebbe noted some fifty years later, but a pogrom remains a pogrom.
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Simchat Torah, 1962. תו"מ חל"ה page 140 - thank you to my friend Motti Wilhelm, editor of Anash.org for sharing this source with me.