Description
Living Higher: On A More Miraculous Level of Reality – By Rabbi Pinchas Winston
The Black Plague, also known as the Pestilence, the Great Mortal
ity, or the Plague, was the deadliest pandemic recorded in human history. It resulted in the deaths of 75-200 million people in Eurasia and North Africa, peaking in Europe during the four years from 1347 to 1351.
Jews were often used as scapegoats, and accusations spread that they had caused the disease by deliberately poisoning wells. This seemed likely because they were clearly less affected than other people. Adding to the suspicion was the awareness that many Jews chose not to use the common wells of towns and cities. To prove their guilt authorities coerced them through torture to confess to poisoning wells.
By washing their hands frequently, the Jews may have also reduced their risk of catching and spreading disease.
The point is that the Jewish population for some mysterious reason was noticeably less affected by the deadly plague than the gentile population. The question is whether the reason was natural or supernatural.
In 1898 the famous American humorist, satirist, writer, and lecturer Mark Twain wrote an article for Harper’s Magazine entitled “Concerning the Jews”:
If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one quarter of one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous puff of stardust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly, the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contri-butions to the world’s list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also very out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a mar-velous fight in this world in all ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself and be excused for it.
The Egyptians, the Babylonians and the Persians rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greeks and Romans followed and made a vast noise, and they were gone; other people have sprung up and held their torch high for a time but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, and have vanished. The Jew saw them all, survived them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert but aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jews; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?
It is quite an observation and quite an openness by a famous non-Jew to talk so inspiringly about a people that has been reviled, resented, and rejected for a good part of its history. Did Mark Twain really mean it? Is it really true?
True?
Since the beginning.
Kabbalah explains that when it came to the Avos, just about everything about them was supernatural from the very beginning. Enough about them looked natural in order to throw off the public. But people who paid close attention or were given reason to notice, like Avimelech for example, saw something other-worldly about the Jews.
Now it came to pass at that time, that Avimelech and Phicol his general said to Avraham, “God is with you in all that you do.” (Bereishis 21:22)
And Yitzchak said to them, “Why have you come to me, since you hate me and you sent me away from you?” And they said, “We have seen that God was with you…” (Bereishis 26:27-28)
There are many examples regarding the Avos and their children. As Mark Twain observed, the phenomenon was true not only for the Avos but for their descendants as well, and not just for good but also for bad. Living supernaturally is a double-edged sword, and to adapt a well-known expression, “The higher they go, the farther they fall.”
