The terror associated with anthrax spreading across America
has opened up a second wave of mass panic, following the
major terrorist attacks on New York and Washington several
weeks ago. The American citizen is learning from his own
experience, unfortunately, about the evil designs of
terrorists. Minds perverted by hate conceived of the cruel
idea of flying passenger aircraft into skyscrapers packed
with people, and brains no less perverted are busy
developing bacteria -- the very concept evokes utter horror
-- in order to spread terrible diseases amongst innocent
people.
The modern world finds it difficult to absorb all these
events. The emotional difficulty of becoming adjusted to a
terrible reality stems from a feeling that all the rules
are being broken and that we have entered a situation of
instability and lack of personal security. From now on
nothing is unexpected anymore and nobody can foretell
future events.
But there is also another reason.
The culture of the last few generations has inculcated
modern man with an admiration for technological progress
and material might. Everybody is impressed with the
achievements of modern science, architecture, and industry,
but then along come a handful of fanatical terrorists who
utilize this same wisdom and power in order to commit a
type of lethal and sophisticated mass murder, which could
not have happened in the past.
The day after the attack on the Twin Towers, Motti Shapira,
a pilot for an airline flying in and out of New York
published an article in which he expressed his feelings
from his unique point of view as a pilot. He wrote that as
a pilot he is more afraid than ever. "It is not the machine
that bothers me. I am not afraid of that, but of other acts
of man. Not of men who fulfill the dream of growing wings
and keeping this marvel of 400 tons of metal and fuel in
the air and bringing the masses of humanity safely to their
destination, but of those who chop off the wings and take
us in these marvelous machines to the destination of their
dreams, to catastrophe."
These mechanical "great birds," the "wonders of the
twentieth century" became a calamity as soon as they were
used for evil purposes. This mass of hundreds of tons of
metal and fuel, looking so impressive and powerful, turned
into a weapon of mass destruction enabling the murder of
several thousand people within a few minutes.
Many people have also started having a different attitude
to skyscrapers, which are common in every major city worthy
of the name. One of the newspapers wrote, "The attack on
the Twin Towers has severely affected the prestige of high
buildings; the idea of a room in a multi-story hotel or an
office in a skyscraper suddenly seems so much less
attractive." It seems that the `race to the sky,' in which
Tel Aviv also took part following in the footsteps of New
York, China, Hong Kong and other places throughout the
world, has suffered a serious setback. The owners of the
Twin Towers have already announced that they will likely
build four 47-story buildings in the area, instead of the
two 110-story towers. In Israel the Dutch Embassy has
abandoned its plan to rent office space in the Azrieli
Buildings in Tel Aviv and other multi-story projects are
also encountering marketing difficulties.
Was there a more impressive sight several weeks ago than
those skyscrapers in Manhattan, where you would stand next
to one and have to stretch your neck to see where it ended?
Who could fail to be amazed by those two buildings
containing a population equivalent to that of other whole
cities? As it turned out, this concentration of humanity
allowed base terrorists to wreak havoc and bereavement on
thousands of families.
Biological terrorism too, which is managing to terrorize
hundreds of millions of people, is the fruit of an
additional "mutation" of technological progress. Those same
medical laboratories which isolate and preserve bacteria
cultures for the purposes of producing inoculations and
drugs, have in recent years served as bases for the
manufacture of horrendous weapons of destruction. The
terrorists use highly developed medical research and
equipment from the most sophisticated laboratories in order
to produce bacteria and to spread them amongst healthy
human beings!
Even Osama bin Laden himself, the man behind the murderous
"religion of terror," personally utilizes modern
communication technology for fulfilling his sinister
desires. He operates dormant terrorist cells from the
deserts of Afghanistan using secret messages on computer
networks. His son told a British newspaper that his father
had gone into a protected cave in the Afghan mountains
accompanied by a convoy of 60 lorries packed with computers
and satellite equipment. "He said that this technology will
help him in his fight against the United States."
Many people find it hard to absorb this terrible paradox:
terrorists with a murderous imagination find today's world
a more convenient and efficient "working environment" than
ever.
Ha'aretz correspondent Arye Kaspi writes about the
distressing truth: "If Osama bin Laden had lived at the end
of the 19th century the attack on the Twin Towers would not
have happened, simply because they did not exist then. It
is not just those buildings. The Twin Towers were a symbol
of developments in the world over the last century,
developments which made this attack possible as well as
similar acts in the future."
He points out that the modern world with its skyscrapers is
filled with huge population centers that did not exist
until the twentieth century. Millions of people crowded in
just a few square kilometers have become an easy target for
acts of mass terror. At the same time the world has
undergone a process of immense technological development,
which has provided man with almost unlimited means of
destruction. Incidentally, the writer points out, as food
for thought, that some of these means of destruction are
not perceived as such; for example, every year as many
people are killed in traffic accidents throughout the world
as the population of Tel Aviv.
At the same time, the price of weapons and means of mass
destruction is going down all the time. They enjoy a mass
circulation and there is a constant supply of them flowing
from developed countries and reaching the hands of
organizations that do not abide by the accepted norms of
international behavior.
Our technological society provides a significant number of
nerve centers as targets for terrorists. An attack on them
would be as deadly as the one on the Twin Towers. They
include the international media, the White House, atomic
weapon supplies, large airports, railroad command systems,
and factories manufacturing drugs or popular food products.
An attack need not be limited to a bomb: it is perfectly
possible to poison a common drug, to broadcast news of a
fictitious event in the media, causing mass hysteria, or to
create a sophisticated computer virus. Kaspi summarizes:
"The world has become a more concentrated and more
vulnerable place."
Modern technology is a mixed blessing in other respects
too. Computerized communication technology has forced the
business world to become uniform and centralized. If you do
not use the correct technology and the correct
communication systems you do not stand a chance of
surviving. "You exist if you are online," Kaspi writes.
One consequence of this is the heavy price of exposure to
breakdowns. There is a very heavy price to be paid for any
faults in these centralized systems, regardless of whether
they stem from intentional interference or technical
faults. In modern circumstances, it is not only murderous
terrorists who can create mass destruction.
Reckless young men or plain human error can paralyze
universal economic systems, something unknown in the past.
For example, he points out that today any bug in the
Windows program has huge ramifications for the world
economy. A lot of damage is caused by even a slight
exposure to computer viruses. A computer virus is usually
adapted to a specific operating system. The modern economy
boasts of having created a uniform coordinated operating
system, but the truth is that if there were dozens of
operating systems on the market the damage caused by each
virus would be more limited and could in many cases be
prevented altogether. In the current situation computer
saboteurs can cause billions of dollars worth of damage,
and sometimes endanger human life, if a virus infiltrates
the computers of hospitals, rescue teams or army systems.
Kaspi points out that "the next act of mass terror will not
necessarily resemble the previous one. Terror has an
unlimited potential for diversity. It has creative options
that we cannot even imagine." The modern world makes it
possible to put morbid and cruel ideas into practice in a
manner nobody would have conceived of in the past.
Incidentally, while on the topic of centralization we
should mention an apposite statement attributed to Rav
Chaim Brisker zt"l. He once explained why the
gedolim were opposed to the establishment of a
"supreme spiritual authority" resembling the Sanhedrin
during our years in golus (and for the same reason
they opposed any ideas of a "world spiritual center" and so
on). In the distant past, he said, every household used its
own candle for light. If the wind blew out one person's
candle, his neighbor's house did not become dark because of
it. Nowadays we have electrical power stations and if a
failure occurs, whole cities are plunged into darkness.
The meaning of the parable is obvious: in golus the
Jewish nation is led by a moro de'asro in every town
and every country. If a moro de'asro of a certain
location makes a mistake chas vesholom, it will
remain a local problem. If there were a "world spiritual
center" or a new "Sanhedrin," on the other hand, if members
of such an institution would chas vesholom err in any
of their rulings, it would create a problem for the whole
nation.
Even before the use made of modern technology by terrorist
groups, many people wondered where technological progress
was taking them and what would be its results. Had the
world become a better place? Had humanity made any
progress? And if so, towards what?
Any observer of the modern condition will be struck by a
basic fact, which is difficult to ignore: it seems that
there exists a kind of law according to which there is an
inverse relationship between material progress and moral
decline. Technology makes giant steps forward, whereas the
moral level of humanity reaches new lows.
The Chovos Halevovos wrote about this hundreds of
years before the computer was invented: "Then the evil
inclination beguiled them to neglect the cultivation of the
world, which would have led to their salvation, and thus
they departed from the way of their forefathers who limited
themselves to what was necessary and to the extent that it
was necessary, and were content with what sufficed for
their livelihood. But in the eyes of their descendants, the
evil inclination made hoarding and increase of this world's
wealth seem beautiful, and enjoyment of its pleasures and
self-aggrandizement in it desirable, till at last they sank
in the depth (tehome) of the seas [of indulgence].
The evil inclination then forced them to suffer the pain of
[being tossed by] their billows . . . the more the world
was improved, the greater was the destruction of their
understanding . . . as it says, `Beware, lest you forget
Hashem your G-d . . . lest when you have eaten and are
satisfied, and have built fine houses and dwelt therein,
and when your herds and flocks multiply . . . then your
heart will be lifted up and you forget Hashem your G-d'
(Devorim 8:11-14). The more their lusts increased and
strengthened, the weaker became their understanding, and
the more it delayed attaining the proper course." (Shaar
Haprishus chs. 2,7).
Rav Dessler zt"l writes the following about this
topic: "Such are the fruits of modern civilization, which
have taken the course of negating the Torah's way: panic
increases and there is an escalation of corruption and
murder. Each person guards himself from his fellow man, and
there is no security or peace of mind. Outside there is
danger of a terrible war breaking out which would destroy
all life in olom hazeh chas vesholom; the air,
literally each breath, is filled with danger (Michtav
Me'eliyohu, vol. 4, the article on "The Curse of Kayin
and Modern Civilization").
In another place (Ibid., Vol.1, In the article,
The Increase of Materialism and its Wisdom Leads to
Destruction) Rav Dessler, based on the above Chovos
Halevovos, states that a humanity, which invests all its
resources in the external material development of the world
and neglects any internal moral content is likely to
deteriorate to the lowest levels, and that modern
technological developments will only aggravate the
situation by providing our corrupt society with new and
powerful tools:
"Humanity in its arrogance thinks that the more it develops
this world and improves its knowledge of it in order to
make new inventions to perfect it and to partake of its
pleasures, the better a place it will become. But this is a
big mistake. All these improvements actually lead to
further decline. The more civilization becomes developed
the more does it destroy itself, but they do not want to
understand, for their faulty character traits blind them to
reality. If human beings would be `givers,' this world
would be in a better state. But the problem is that they
are `takers' who grab, quarrel, and fight. Consequently
they use all their inventions for destructive purposes.
"For example, bringing territories closer together by means
of land and air transportation has clearly resulted in more
destruction: whereas previously all wars only wrought
destruction on a local level, now any destruction is on a
worldwide scale. Chazal have already said, `A gathering of
the righteous is a pleasure for them and a pleasure for the
world, but a gathering of the wicked is bad for them and
bad for the world.' Although any invention and development
has the potential to serve good purposes, this is only if
righteous people use it. The view that people's characters
will automatically improve is one that is unworthy of even
the greatest fool. Only when the Melech Hamoshiach
comes and the world will be full with the knowledge of
Hashem as the waters that cover the sea and people will be
givers -- then, and only then, will this world become
perfected."
He adds that this outlook on the wisdom of this world can
be seen in the Torah's attitude to "the first inventor,"
Tuval Kayin, "the forger of every cutting instrument of
brass and iron." How would we have reacted to this new
invention at the time? We would presumably have been elated
and excited. Until that time people were forced to till the
soil with their bare hands, using sticks and stones. Now
this distinguished inventor comes along and makes their
labor significantly easier by the discovery of iron and its
manifold uses.
However, Chazal commented that the Torah considered this
development to have brought more destruction to the world.
Tuval Kayin had increased the potential for destruction:
"Tuval Kayin, who `spiced,' i.e. improved (tibeil)
the craft of Kayin by making weapons for murderers."
(Rashi, Bereishis 4:22).
He adds that this was also the mistake made by the
generation of the Flood and therefore they were punished by
all the fountains of the great depths being broken up
first. This was a middoh keneged middoh punishment
for their desires and focus on the material development of
this world. They stuck to their misguided ways, as it says
in Medrash Tanchuma: "`The mercy of the wicked is
cruelty' -- this refers to the generation of the Flood,
which was cruel . . . at the time that Hakodosh Boruch
Hu poured out the fountains on them . . . they took
their sons and put them on the fountains to subdue them . .
. ."
The Aggodas Bereishis (ch. 4) adds: "They had many
sons, and everybody took one son, and put him on the
fountains and subdued them as patches to prevent the water
from covering them. Then the water increased again and they
took their other sons and put them on the fountains.
Consider their mercies -- the mercies of the wicked are
cruel."
Rav Dessler elaborates: "The more human beings invest in
developing this world, the more will their misfortunes
increase. Instead of realizing that they are drowning in
materialism they search for means of increasing material
progress even more, hoping that this will lead to a happier
life in this world. When they see that this is not the
case, they look for ways of ensuring that at least their
sons will achieve happiness in this world.
"It is amazing how people can fail to understand that they
are proceeding towards their own destruction. In our
generation too we see clearly how the invention of
industrial machinery has resulted in the unemployment of so
many people in every country, the rise in the "standard of
living" has increased anxiety and stress, and all their
attempts to use economic theories to improve the situation
have only made matters even worse.
"Nevertheless, everybody still thinks that soon the world
will reach a state of material perfection -- if not in this
generation then at least in the next one -- and so they
teach their children to devote themselves to materialism
and to develop it. This is why they put their sons on top
of the fountains so that they should not drown in them.
They refused to recognize that this was not for their sons'
benefit. However many patches they would put on them, they
could not withstand the destruction inherent in the
tumoh they had created. Taking pity on their sons
this way was cruelty, because it brought their destruction
closer.
"Happiness in olom hazeh only comes about as a result
of being content with one's possessions and by an intense
striving for spirituality, as Chazal said (Ovos 6,4):
`This is the way of Torah . . . happy are you in this
world.' "
This explanation outlines the correct attitude to the
modern world and technological progress. As long as man
remains on the lowest level from the moral point of view,
there is no value in the accelerated development of
materialism. Without Torah and yiras Shomayim, man is
likely to turn into a beast -- "Surely the fear of Hashem
is not in this place; and they will slay me for my wife's
sake" -- and then all the technological progress, the
concentration of material power will only serve to make the
tools of murder and destruction more sophisticated allowing
a handful of human beings to destroy thousands of people
within a few moments, something that could not have been
done and which would not have occurred to anyone in the
past.
In our time every believing Jew can see clearly how right
our rabbonim were to warn us not to feel inferior -- "and
we were in their eyes as grasshoppers" -- to those engaged
in the pursuit of modern scientific knowledge, which was
worshiped by the whole world.
Only bnei Torah make real "progress" by perfecting
man's soul towards lofty levels of spiritual elevation and
the improvement of middos, which are attained by
cleaving to the Divine wisdom given to us at Sinai.
Several years ago one of the granddaughters of the Chofetz
Chaim ztv"l came to Eretz Yisroel as a non-
religious immigrant from Russia. She told the following
story to some religious Jews who went to visit her in the
absorption center where she was staying in the south of the
country. I heard this myself from Rav Pincus zt"l who
was one of those present. He told the story in his speech
at the American Agudas Yisroel convention last year.
In her youth she had been swept away by the haskalah
and had gone to study at a university. Like so many other
youngsters of her generation who had followed "the spirit
of the times" she was unable to understand those who had
remained in the beis hamedrash immersed solely in the
arba amos of halocho. She went to Radin to
"rebuke" her grandfather for compiling books on "outdated,
nonproductive" topics and for his calls to youngsters to
learn in yeshivas. When she saw her grandfather steeped in
his studies she said to him insolently, "Zeidi, Zeidi, how
much longer will you sit here in the dark, come out and
taste the light of progress!"
The Chofetz Chaim answered her: "My child, you see the
airplanes of today? They will eventually make airplanes,
which will fly to the moon! You see the bombs they have
today? They will eventually make bombs, which will destroy
whole towns and countries!"
The Chofetz Chaim sighed and added: "That is what they
are doing. But we are making people, we are developing
man and creating people!"
