Insulting God

Insulting God

The pictures at Ben Gurion Airport of last week’s migration of Jews traveling to Uman for Rosh Hashona to be in the city where Rabbi Nachman z’l is buried generated a mixed reaction in me.

On the one hand, to see close to 18,000 people traveling to one place to join together in celebrating the Jewish New Year is, as the Yiddishists among us might say, Gevaldik (i.e. loosely translated as “grand:).

On the other hand some male travelers chose to wear a scarf under their traditional hats, with nothing but the slimmest of slits for their eyes, while others made original use of airlines’ sleep masks to cover their eyes. The move, according to a report in Yedioth Ahronoth, was meant to “protect” their eyes from immodest views, read “women.”

The Hasidim involved went through the entire airport security check with the covers on or briefly off and looking down, followed by what can only be described as a mad dash towards the safety of the plane, as reported in local papers. The makeshift blindfolds were taken off only when they were seated on the plane. They were put back on when the female flight attendants began making the rounds with the food carts.

The Kiev airport saw a repeat performance, to the surprise of its security personnel, especially, of course, the females among them.

After the shock of seeing this mimicry of the Taliban, I thought about it a bit more and realized how insulted God must be by the behavior of those who, in the name of religion, tamper with His creations.

According to tradition, God created man in his own image (Genesis 1:27). Although, according to biblical text, man sinned very early in the game, as it were, the fact is that man remains created in God’s image albeit now with the ability to judge right from wrong, to make choices and to attempt to live the kind of righteous life that God intended. To live righteously God provided all of us with the tools necessary to make judgments and avoid temptations, so as not to stray off the straight and narrow as it were. Given all that has been bequeathed to us as human beings, why do we need to insulate ourselves further from supposed temptations by tampering with God’s work?

It seems to me that putting on a scarf to shield one’s eyes from looking at women, is nothing more than an insult to God and his work. After all God endowed us with the capacity to keep such things in perspective. By adding a scarf, for example, those who do so are basically saying to God “you really did not create such a perfect being and I am too weak to carry out your injunctions without such an addition to my clothing.”

No doubt those who chose to dress themselves in this manner will object to this line of thinking on my part. They may say that they are doing this in an attempt to observe God’s laws. But the obvious fact is that by dressing thusly, they are putting the final nail in the coffin of our people’s ability to observe God’s laws without multiple physical aids which, by their use, testify to their belief that man, as created by God, does not have the ability to live the kind of life that God intended for him.

What a sad commentary on the status of religious life today and what an insult to the Creator. How disappointed He must be in some of his children.