[Avodah] Unpassable tests

[Joseph Kaplan]

R' Joel Rich asked:
> Does hkbh give one a nisayon that one cannot pass? I guess the
> answer depends a lot on how you define the terms but in its
> strongest sense doesn?t this imply that anyone who ever sins
> hasn?t tried hard enough?

I once spoke to a kohen who was a serious talmid chacham and a teacher of Torah (for reasons that should be clear I don’t want to be more specific), who told me that there is one halacha that he could not follow if, God forbid, the situation arose that his wife was (again God forbid) raped. He would not, in such circumstances, divorce her. He added that he would not thereafter duchan or take any of the kibbudim given to kohanim and he would stop teaching Torah to others, but he would not – or as I think I remember him saying, could not – follow the mandates of that halacha. For him, it was a test he could not pass. My guess is that if we thought long and hard about it, many others, if they were honest, could also think of at least one.

Joseph