The world is sliding down a slippery slope greased by the
yetzer hora.
Fifty years ago, it seemed that the West, and especially the
United States, was a society that was fairly moral in the
specific sense that it upheld the Seven Laws of Noach. The
largely Protestant country was free of avoda zora,
there was a very developed legal system that enforced laws
against murder in all its forms, 80 percent of all households
were headed by a married couple, and all public, acceptable
behavior upheld reasonable moral principles. People were not
perfect but public standards were high and they were not
under constant assault.
In those days, when the norm was that human life generally
should not be ended by other humans, HaRav Yaakov Weinberg
zt"l shocked us all by suggesting that the efforts to
legalize abortion that were starting then would lead to mercy
killing becoming socially acceptable. People felt that he was
making a point about attitudes towards human life by
exaggerating.
How things have fallen since then!
Formal avoda zora has, so far at least, not
reappeared, but all the excesses of its one-time
practitioners have. Acceptance of murder has spread far and
wide, as "assisted suicides" are shown in the mass media, and
they are perfectly legal in many places. Human life has
become so cheap that some people place no value on their own
lives and the lives of their children, believing that it is
understandable and worthwhile to give up their lives for no
higher purpose than ending the lives of as many other people
as they can. Murder and mayhem is prominent in the content of
matter that is sold as entertainment for the masses.
Giluy arayos is promoted by people who feel that they
are contributing to the world when they shatter another moral
"taboo" in public, or portray some morally reprehensible act
in a mass medium that has not previously been shown there, as
is common nowadays. Social movements champion the right to
engage in perversions and to tell the world about so many
things that are best left private. The family is shattered
and almost a third of all children are not born within
families in the United States.
Lately the corruption has very visibly spread to financial
matters. Theft and fraud on a grand scale have been taking
place at the highest echelons of the business community.
There seem to be no principles that limit the actions of
businessmen; it is all just a matter of getting away with
whatever then can.
The yetzer hora, it seems, has completely won. He has
no new frontiers to conquer. Everything is his. If there is
anything that he has overlooked, it should be no problem to
take it over as well.
There is one corner left, one last representative of Hashem
in the world: the Jewish people. They have become respectable
and acceptable over the last half-century, since the
Holocaust dealt them a blow that horrified everyone, and
particularly those who lived a life based on the fundamental
rules of Hashem.
This may well be what is behind the latest wave of
antisemitism that is led by Moslems but has attracted
sympathy and understanding in large parts of the Western
world. It is just the progressive control of the yetzer
hora that has found the last substantial area outside of
its control, and now is trying to overwhelm the Jewish people
as well.
If that is so, then no conventional effort can be fully
effective. No public relations effort will win over the
hearts of the masses, and no behavior on the part of the Jews
will make the masses like us or even fully tolerate us.
We can only rely on our Father in Heaven and strengthen our
efforts to lead lives of Torah and mitzvos that are dominated
by the yetzer tov.
