The Rubin Report
18 October '10
What is more inspiring than good intentions? War, well it’s just bad and everyone should be against it. We should all love everyone from all countries and groups equally, with no special pride for our own nation (hasn’t it done a lot of bad things?). Nothing is worth fighting for. Other countries and societies are precisely the same as ours and their people just want happy lives. All problems can be solved by dialogue and efforts to understand others.
It would be wonderful if the world and human beings were like this. But they aren’t. What could be more brilliant than the way the basic problem keeping all humanity from being good was expressed by Rabbi Aryeh Leib of Shpola, who spoke to the Creator in the following terms:
“Master of the universe, what do you want from your children? You have, after all, placed them in a benighted world. A world where Satan himself prances amongst them, fanning their evil inclination; where all the things that provoke fleshly desires are ranged before their very eyes, while the warnings of retribution lie hidden between the covers of some moralistic tome. You can be certain that if you had arranged things the other way around–with the place of retribution right in front of their eyes, and all the fleshly desires hidden away in some learned old book, not a single person would ever do anything wrong!”
Alas, that is not so. Of course, we should recognize that all humans are endowed with both an "animalistic" side and a higher spirit. Life, then, is a struggle in which this balance of power is critical to determining an individual's virtue and a nation's success.
Those who fail to comprehend the difference between idealism and the real world pay the price, or others do for their errors.
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