We still haven’t atoned for the period of the Shoftim
Excerpt of a shiur given by Rav Eliezer Berland, shlita, Purim night, 5768
It’s written in the holy books that Jews have been burned in all the cataclysms, in all the holocausts, throughout all the generations, everything that happened, it’s only because we still haven’t atoned for the fact that throughout every day of the Shoftim (period of the Judges) and Malchim (period of the Kings of Israel and Judah), we were putting our children in the fire.
All of us are reincarnations of the people who lived in the days of the Shoftim and the Kings, and we still haven’t atoned for [that period of time], supposing that there isn’t a tzaddik who knows how to sweeten this.
So, to put it simply, we still need to atone for what we did then, when we put our sons and our daughters, and our fathers, and the old people before [Moloch], and we burned everyone up, 2-3000 years ago, at the time of the First Temple, and at the time of the Shoftim.
And now, these holocausts, these cataclysms, are meant to come again.
And that’s why each time, they put us to the fire, and renew this, and all of this is because we didn’t atone for the period of the Shoftim.
This was a period of time which lasted for 350 years. It’s written that [King] Menashe just by himself used to slaughter a thousand people a day for his idol, and to throw them into the fire.
MY goodness!