Rav Dov Kahan, mara d’asra of Khal Rayim Ahuvim-Arlington and av Bais Din Maysharim, spoke with The Voice to offer divrei chizuk and nechamah to the community following the tragic crash last week.

 

The pain is too deep and the loss too enormous to wrap our heads around and give proper consolation and chizuk to the families.

But to share some thoughts for the community at large: First, the nature of the crash was totally beyond the niftarim’s control, unavoidable, and was not their fault in any way. This gives us the clarity that it was totally the yad Hashem. Sometimes the yad Hashem is masked, and it’s difficult to see unless we work on our emunah and bitachon. But here it’s clear that none of the niftarim were at fault. It was simply the Ribono Shel Olam taking four pure neshamos.

A tragedy once occurred during the days of the Ramban, and an acquaintance of his fell victim and was dying. The Ramban asked the man if, after he passes away, he could return to him in a dream and explain the reason for the tragedy, which even someone as great as the Ramban could not comprehend.

After the man died, he indeed came in a dream to the Ramban. In the dream, the Ramban asked him, “So what’s the terutz of why this tragedy occurred?” And the man responded, “Up here, there’s no kushya.” In shamayim there wasn’t even a kushya and terutz. It was so clear that there was no question to even ask.

The cheshbonos in shamayim are so vast, and we only get to see a small snippet of what’s going on. The sefarim say that virtually all the neshamos today are gilgulim from the past. Every gilgul has something to be mesaken, and once that happens, that person no longer needs to be here; he has earned his rightful place in shamayim.

We all know the story of the Ger Tzedek of Vilna, who was killed al kiddush Hashem—he even declined the Vilna Gaon’s offer to save his life through the powers of Kabbalah, choosing to die al kiddush Hashem instead.

Sometime after the Ger Tzedek was killed, a baby in Vilna was born and then niftar. Losing a baby seems like a particularly incomprehensible and cruel tragedy.

The Vilna Gaon told the bereaved parents that the Ger Tzedek, as pure a tzaddik as he was, had been missing one thing: He had not been born a Yid. And this baby, explained the Gaon, was a gilgul of the Ger Tzedek. Now that he had been born a Yid, his neshamah’s mission was complete, and it could return to shamayim.

We, here on Earth, see such a small sliver of what’s really happening that we can’t even attempt to figure out. Can you figure out a mathematical problem if you’re only given two of the 10 digits? It’s simply impossible.

We are ma’aminim bnei ma’aminim; we know that Hakadosh Baruch Hu has it all figured out and it all makes sense. And we just have to try—as hard and painful as it may be—to accept it the best we can.

With that said, when tragedies occur, we’re supposed to look inside ourselves for ways we can improve. And certainly at a time like this, when the community is so shaken up by this tragedy, we can all try to be mekabel something to improve upon.

As we all know, there was a similar tragedy just a few months ago, in which three bachurim were killed in a crash that was beyond their control.

If we’re looking for some way in which we can improve on ruchniyus, I would like to suggest we do something in the area of road travel.

To be clear, I’m not implying in any way that this is the reason these crashes happened. But if we’re looking for something to improve on, maybe this would be a good area to look at, and that can give us an extra shemirah during our travels.

For example, maybe we can do more chessed with our cars. We can look to deliver packages for people who need them. We can pick up people looking for rides not only in a way that’s convenient for us but go out of our way to take them where they need to go. Perhaps we should be more easygoing about lending out our cars. And when things get stressful on the road, when we’re in traffic and we think someone cut us off or didn’t let us merge or is going too slow, we can have better middos when dealing with our fellow motorists.

And we can use our traveling time more productively. Many of us spend hours on the road each week. Instead of wasting this time listening to politics or entertainment or worse, this valuable time can be used listening to shiurim. There are so many shiurim out there, for every age, learning level, and area of interest. Using our time on the road more productively can give us hours more of limud haTorah every week.

We all need the shemirah of the Ribono Shel Olam to survive. May the Shomer Yisrael protect us all so that these tragedies no longer happen.