More from Rav Pinto about what is causing the COVID-19 pandemic
“Whoever harms the chachamim (Torah scholars), should be considered as though they are muktzeh (i.e. forbidden to touch or come near).”
These are the words of Rabbi Yoshiyahu Pinto, shlita, that we shared with you on two separate occasions, HERE and HERE.
In his latest message to the wider kehilla, Rabbi Pinto elaborated on who this particular Talmud Chacham is. The whole world is suffering from the Coronavirus pandemic, because of the disgrace, shame and terrible treatment that has been meted out to this person.
All the lockdown and isolation, all the sick and dead, all the terrible problems with parnassa, that will impact all of us, sooner or later, with a million people now unemployed in Israel alone – a quarter of the working population!
And people don’t know where all this is coming from, nor what they can really do to get it to end. In the following clip (translated below into English), Rav Pinto explains why all this happening, and what we can do to turn things around.
Rabbi Pinto said:
“The angel that has been created from all the bad in the world, from all the lashon hara, from all the ‘accursed is one who strikes his fellow stealthily’ (Devarim 27:24), from all the shame that one person heaps upon another, from all the pain that one person causes to another.
Let us take this bad angel, that we created over many years, and made it grow big, and nurtured it, and made it grow fat, and strengthened it….
Each time that a person hurts his friend, a person sits in his house and suddenly, his friend writes something bad about him, and hurts him – this creates evil! This adds something more to the evil angel. A person is sitting, and not doing anything to you, and suddenly you hurt him! You just gave more koach (power) to the evil angel.
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HaKadosh Baruch Hu can wait for a person for tens of years.
A person can do all the evil in the world, and Hashem still continues to guard him, and to guard him… HaKadosh Baruch Hu has a type of patience that is totally unparalleled. There is no other reality in the world of the type of patience that HaKadosh Baruch Hu has.
But, if you continue to pile one sin upon another, suddenly in a single day, everything can turnaround, and there can be a churban (destruction) that is unparalleled.
So, a person needs to be smart, and to reduce the power of this evil angel, that was created over the course of many years, by way of all the evil that we did, and all the ‘bad’ that the world did.
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All of us, every single one, has a share in this.
Each time that we enjoyed the suffering of another person, each time that we laughed, when something pained someone else. Each time we enjoyed it, when it wasn’t good for someone else. We need to break our hearts [over this], to thoroughly break our heart.
And each time each of us breaks our heart, and we accept upon ourselves to learn more Torah, and accept upon ourselves to live more simply, and accept upon ourselves to be more submissive. And we take it upon ourselves to close our ears to the lashon hara about tzaddikim, and to lashon hara about talmidei chacham (Torah scholars).
And to know that there is no such thing as this. Anyone who is a Talmid Chacham, anyone who is a master of spiritual light, we are obligated to honor him with a very great honor.
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What is going on today?
I am close to this rabbi, so I hate this other rabbi…
I am close this Rav, so I’m against that Rav…
This is assur! (forbidden).
Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai were two of the biggest opponents in the whole of the Shas. They were big opponents in the Beit HaMidrash (study hall), but when they left the Beit HaMidrash, they would marry each other, and they loved one another.
A machloket (dispute / disagreement) for the sake of heaven, this is the machloket between Hillel and Shammai. A machloket that is not for the sake of heaven, this is the machloket of Korach and his congregation.
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A person needs to be very careful not to get caught up in a machloket.
Don’t get involved in a machloket between gadolim (lit: great ones). Machloket, paining others, bad things and bad words – these things caused this massive disaster.
The holy Torah says that plagues / pandemics come to the world because of slander and distorting the law.
What distortions of the law, due to our many sins, we find today in the world!
[Referring to Rabbi Berland]: A person who didn’t do anything (bad), but they still take him to prison! And humiliate him, and persecute him, and disgrace him!
The person didn’t do anything! And they still take him in a shameful way in the morning from his home, and spill his blood, and spill the blood of his family. They are killing people in the prime of their life, they are judging people in the prime of their life.
Each thing like this just adds fire to the huge fire that created this evil angel.”
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The “Media Circus” Continues – Rabbi Berland Arrested During A Daf Yomi Shiur
