[Avodah] How Sin Changes a Person

[Ben Bradley]

R Schwab's essay raises a number of questions.

Firstly, galus was not an accident. It was a response to the spiritual state of the Jewish people. R Hirsch, as R Schwab would have been very aware, consistently claims that the purpose of galus was so the Jewish people would learn that the Torah and not the land is what sustains us, and return to its mitzvos (see Iyar 1 for example in RSRH The Jewish Year).  Now, it is clear that being everyone absorbs values from those around them. If we absorbed non-Jewish values from those around us, is that really our fault? Seems an inevitability once in galus. The mashal of the prince deposited with a purse outside a brothel seems apt. R Schwab seems close to proposing a flaw in Hashem's plan.

Second. We learned to hate in galus? Surely the reason for the current galus was sinas chinam, How can you claim we only learned to hate in galus? And the first galus was for the three Big sins or murder, sexually immorality and idolatry. We did that all by ourselves with no outside influence. More basically, the origin of galus was with catastrophe of the ten spies. In the desert. No external influences there. Chazal state 'We want to do your (Hashem's) will. But what prevents us? The yeast in the dough (the yetzer hara) and shibud malchiyos'.  Ie there are two basic causes of sin. One, shibud malchiyos, has to do with galus, but may or may not be to do with influences from the nations. I suspect the term implies more the pressures of being ruled by others. But the other, the yetzer hara, has nothing to do the outside world. So why lay the exclusive blame there?

Third. Who said we didn't pick up some positive influences? I think it's possible to identify some positive traits which are strong amongst those living in the anglosphere. Work ethic, critical thinking, the kind of respect for difference which enables democracy. These owe much to us in the first place but are stronger amongst those who lives in nations where these are strong values. More fundamentally, it seems clear that the most introverted and socially isolated groups amongst the Jewish people have greater prevalence and acceptance of bad middos than more exposed groups. This does not fit with R Schwab's thesis. It is simply not tenable to pin bad behaviour, or even warped values, on nothing but outside influences. The yetzer hara is inherent and autonomous, and sometimes it's frum.

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Original post:

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."

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