The charedi world tends to be passionate about proclaiming that disastrous events are messages from God. Fortuitously, these just so happen to always be messages supporting the charedi worldview.
There were many who made such declarations after October 7th. Rabbi Moshe Meiselman, rosh yeshiva of Toras Moshe, declared that since only secular towns were attacked, it was clearly a punishment for secularism and a demonstration of how it’s Torah that protects (see my post Theodicy or Idiocy). Another was Rabbi Aharon Feldman, who declared that October 7th was a punishment was a rebuke for abandoning Torah and engaging in secularism, which is why charedi yeshiva students were saved.
In my post “What is Traditional Theodicy?” I discussed the problems with such approaches. They tend to lack empirical basis - it’s simply not true that only secular towns were attacked on October 7th, and the reason why it was mostly secular towns is that those happen to be the towns next to Gaza. And there is simply no way to deduce that the message being sent is the one that these rabbis claim is the one being delivered. Furthermore, advocates of this approach are silent when the victims of the tragedy are charedi, such as with the Meron catastrophe.
As you can imagine, I am personally not into declaring that tragedies are messages from God. We are not prophets. But there are times when you don’t need to be a prophet to observe a very clear cause-and-effect. Meron is one such example; it was an accident waiting to happen, the result of a charedi attitude that laws about professional safety procedures (which would never have allowed for such an event, but which charedim used political pull to override) are for goyim.
But a particularly striking case occurred with this morning’s appalling terrorist attack in Jerusalem. Five of the six victims were charedi men, most of whom were yeshiva students. What is the significance of this? Nothing at all. It would be reprehensible and outrageous to suggest that this shows that they died as a Divine punishment for their being of the wrong religious persuasion. Yet it clearly refutes Rabbis Meiselman and Feldman, who made precisely this claim regarding the victims of October 7th.
And the view of Rabbis Meiselman and Feldman was clearly not shared by all the charedim who ran for their lives during today’s attack and did not rely on their being charedi to protect them. In fact, as I type these words, there is an incoming UAV siren sounding in Beitar, the “City of Torah,” and you can be sure that people there are running for shelters, not to the Beis HaMidrash.
But even more significant is the identity of the hero who neutralized the terrorists and prevented there from being even more victims. It was none other than an off-duty charedi soldier from Chashmonaim, the new charedi IDF division - which the charedi “Gedolim” have vehemently opposed and condemned! They claim that it is prohibited for charedim to enlist in such programs, and that the real way for them to protect Israel is to stay in yeshivah. Could there be any more stark refutation of their approach?
Now, a rabbinic mentor of mine who spent many years in the charedi world told me that he doesn’t think that this will make anyone change their mind. They will profess that human agency never counts, and that the terrorist would have died anyway, because that's the way Divine Providence works, and that for inscrutable Divine reasons a charedi traitor found the zechus to be the shaliach.
But I’m not sure that I agree. There’s only so much self-deception that people can engage in. I’m pretty sure that the vast majority of charedim are incredibly relieved that the charedi Chashmonaim soldier was there. And maybe they’ll realize that it’s these people, rather than yeshiva students, who actually protect us. And this will hopefully encourage them to think that maybe it’s a very good idea to have a lot more such people.
It’s just a pity that it would take a tragedy closer to home to straighten people out.
Wishing a refuah shelemah to those injured today, along with all the tens of thousands injured physically and psychologically since October 7th.
"They will profess that human agency never counts, and that the terrorist would have died anyway, because that's the way Divine Providence works,"
If the Chareidim were consistent they would say the same thing of the victims of the attack itself, that nothing really matters, "everything is Min HaShamayim" and they all were destined to be victims anyway. But nobody, not even the Chareidim, says or truly believes that, and there's little basis for it. See the Ohr HaChaim to Breishis, 37;21.
So when terrorists murder non charedi Jews, it's a punishment. But when terrorists murder chareidi Jews it's Divine Will?
Ok, sure. That totally makes sense. /s