Q:
I read in today’s Times that there is a resurgence of traveling locusts decimating crops in Africa and leading to deaths by starvation of thousands of African people. How can you explain the creation of this phenomenon by Hashem and what lessons can we learn from this?
A:
Now this question I’m going to rephrase: Catastrophes of nature, what is their function or what lessons can be learned from them? Because it’s not only a plague of locusts. The same is an epidemic, an avalanche, an earthquake or a flood.
And the answer is when Hakadosh Baruch Hu does something – and He does everything – there are multiple purposes. And it would be presumptuous of us to claim that we can explain all the purposes. But we certainly understand some.
Fundamentally, every misfortune is a shaking up of humanity for the purpose of awakening man from their lethargy. Because people tend to fall into a torpor when things always continue the same. But when there’s a misfortune, a general misfortune, then there’s a shaking up of the minds and it’s an opportunity for people to reconsider.
Now, if you would cite a misfortune that comes upon some African nation, it doesn’t require too much explanation for that. Because on the African continent there is a great deal of amorality. I’m not saying ‘immorality’; amorality means ‘lack of morality’. There’s a lot of wickedness in the African nations.
Now none of the gentile nations are perfect but there’s a very big difference between an average African nation and a European nation. The European nations, even Soviet Russia with its cruelty and it’s repression still has a very high standard of civilization. In African nations even today there is a callous disregard for human life.
Up till recently cannibalism still existed in the interior. Up until 1945 or 1946 there still was cannibalism. There’s a book called Congo Kitabu written by a Belgian social worker and he describes the conditions there: A great deal of heartlessness! Tribes consider it sport to maim and kill members of other tribes. There is a lot of wickedness.
The concept of helping the poor, of being fair minded, of treating strangers with hospitality, all these haven’t penetrated deeply into the African continent.
Mohammedans do have a high standard of civilization. There’s no question that their Koran has taken from the Bible very many attitudes that have helped to make mankind more decent. Wherever the Mohammadans came they stopped the murder of infants. When the Mohammadans came to India they stopped the murder of infants. Otherwise in India killing people was nothing.
You know the famous practice of the high caste Brahmin Indians, the Hindus, that when a man died all of his widows – he had a number of wives – were burnt alive. Up till recently! There was a certain king who had two thousand live widows and they were all burned alive on his funeral pyre. So wherever the Mohammadans came they stopped that.
When the British came, the Christians, they didn’t permit such things. The Christians came to China and they stopped the murder of female babies. In China infanticide was the practice all the time. There wasn’t a family that hadn’t killed at least one female baby.
And so these Biblical religions, those who imitated the Bible, certainly brought a blessing to the world. The Rambam says that by the way. They brought a blessing to the world.
Of course they also caused a barrier. Whereas many could have accepted the truth of the Torah eventually now they became committed to the competing religions and therefore it’s impossible now for a Christian or a Mohammadan to see the light, because they are hardened into the attitudes of hostility to Jewish people.
But there’s no question that on the black continent where you didn’t have Christianity and didn’t have Islam, certainly there’s a lot of wickedness and Hakadosh Baruch Hu punishes the nations.
To go more deeply in the subject however, which we’ll only do briefly, whatever happens to the nations is something for us to study. Like the Gemara says אין פורענויות בא אלא בשביל ישראל. The main purpose is that we should study it and we should think what Hakadosh Baruch Hu’s doing.
And that’s what He does not only to black nations or to brown nations, He does it also to Jews chas v’shalom. And He does it worse than a plague of locusts. There was a plague of brown locusts that came upon Europe. The Nazis were a million times worse than locusts when Jews began to throw away everything and to embrace the false gods of European culture instead of the Torah. And that’s a lesson we have to learn. It’s for our benefit. And we are the chief recipients of that lesson.
And therefore all misfortunes certainly have lessons.
There is more than that however. There is much more to be said and I don’t even presume that I’ll explain even a fraction. Although I could say much more than that but time doesn’t permit it.
TAPE # 330
