[Avodah] How Sin Changes a Person

[Prof. L. Levine]

Consistent with the concept that sin changes a person fundamentally,
the Rav (Rav Shimon Schwab) expounded on how living in a world full of sin has affected us as
a nation:

In galus the Jewish People have become very sick. As a result of our
dispersion among the nations and of our mingling with them, we have
learned non-Jewish values and mores. But they
mingled with the nations and learned their deeds (Tehillim 106:35).
Unfortunately, we did not similarly absorb some of the good middos that
are found among the nations.

First, we have learned to hate each other. In the world at large, there
is a great deal of ethnic and racial hate, and we have likewise absorbed
this. For example, Jews born in one country often look down upon those
from another country.

Second, we have lost two of the three distinguishing characteristics
by which a Jew has always been recognizable:

(being a bashful person, being a merciful person, and doing kindness).
As long as a sense of tznius existed in the world at large, we
excelled in this trait. But when the sense of personal modesty and
decency was lost among the nations, we, too, lost our bushah.

When
I was a child in pre-World War I Germany, no decent non-Jew would
swim in a mixed swimming pool. Men and women had separate
swimming facilities. After World War I, this sense of personal decency
was slowly lost among the nations, and unfortunately this trend found its
way into Jewish life as well. We lost the bushah, not only in our mode of
dressing, but also in our behavior and in the relationship between men
and women.

Being merciful: We have observed how cruel the nations are to each other-not
to speak of their cruelty to us-and, consequently, we, too, developed
cruelty. I do not wish to go into details about this. Jews did not kill; Jews
did not use violence; our nevi'im and leaders did not advocate violent
demonstrations. But, unfortunately, in galus, we have learned these
things from the non-Jews.

However, baruch Hashem, one characteristic, that of gemi!us
chassadim, doing kindness with one another, remains intact among the
Jewish nation even during the ga!us.

Generally, though, we have contracted the "sickness of the ga!us"
during our long exile. First, there was the desire to associate with the
"upper class" of non-Jewish society; the poets, the artists, the writers, the
philosophers, the intelligentsia of the world. The desire to assimilate with
the non-Jewish world then deteriorated into a desire to associate with and
copy the lifestyle of the lower element of world society. Unfortunately,
we now even have a "Jewish underworld."

Rav Schwab on Prayer, page 493

Professor Yitzchok Levine
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