The Tashlich ceremony we just performed on Rosh Hashanah had some added poignancy this year. The Matteh Moshe, as cited by Rabbi Daniel Sherman of West Side Institutional Synagogue, notes that the fish in the waters of Tashlich live a contradictory experience. On one hand, they swim freely in the water, but (authors note: assuming fish have awareness and emotions on some level, below sea level) fish near human habitation are also in constant fear of being caught in a net. After what happened on October 7, people are concerned about the lurking possibility of not only being attacked by terrorists, but also by worries about being captured by terrorists and turned into hostages.
Similarly, as we face Yom HaDin, our Judgment Day, we can recall what King Solomon said in Kohelet, “And a man cannot even know his time. As fish are enmeshed in a fatal net (9:12).”
As clueless as the fish may have been — or not — most of them were still ahead of the leader of Hezbollah and his followers, who lost their heads and other body parts, in part or in full, by means of the pager attacks and more conventional, but still unanticipated, unprecedented and unfathomed seemingly Waze-guided ways. Almost immediately after the detonations, people began to worry about retaliation to cell phones in possession of Israelis or others. Now that the anti-Zionists know about the capabilities of such technologies, might they begin to use similar tactics? Would it have been better not to have used this tactic at all for fear of “copycats?” This calls to mind the Daf Yomi that was read and studied worldwide at the beginning of the exact week during which the pagers and walkie-talkies were detonated (Bava Batra 89b).
After discussing what shouldn’t be done in manufacturing receptacles for measurements (like, for example, thickening the walls of a measuring cup); after explaining why such measures could render the measuring receptacles inaccurate; and after discussing what shouldn’t be done with even an acceptable receptacle in the measuring process (like how to exactly “fill” the cup) because such actions could render the measurements inaccurate, Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai exclaimed, “Woe to me if I say them [if I point this out in my teachings], and woe to me if I do not say them. (“Oy li” if I do, “oy li” if I don’t —a more elegant Talmudic way of saying, “D—— if I do, d—— if I don’t.”) If I say them, perhaps unscrupulous people will learn (methods of cheating that they hadn’t thought of on their own), and if I do not say them, then perhaps unscrupulous people will say that Torah scholars are not well versed in our handiwork.” Rav Shmuel bar Rav Yitzchak said that Rav Yochanan ben Zakkai ultimately decided to give the full shiur and to share the information, based on the classic pasuk, “Yesharim darchei Hashem v’tsadeekeem yailchu bam uposhim yikashlu bam-—For the ways of HaShem are right, and the just walk in them; but transgressors stumble over them” (Hosea 14:10) (Bava Batra 89b).
The rabbis clearly concluded that if any information gets into the wrong hands it could cause harm, but that doesn’t mean that devices or information for the benefit of humanity — or for the protection of innocent people — should never be invented, activated or shared, even if there will be collateral damages. How many more American and Japanese soldiers would have died in Japan during World War II had America not had an atom bomb nor detonated it to end the war when it did?
Perhaps it’s like the offer of the coin flipper, “Heads I win, tails you lose.” No matter what happens, the people in the right (not necessarily the people on the right) will always win (whether in an obvious “revealed” way in this world or in an eventual greater way in the next); furthermore, the people with indefensible values will always lose (whether they will stumble and fall or fail in this world, or whether they will not very happily meet their Maker in the next).
The writer wrote, edited, and/or supplemented books about people who used their powers of creativity for the good, even though some would-be imitators tried to use some of their approaches for purposes that the protagonists would not have considered appropriate.
