Must Read from R' Pinchos Lipschutz

Here.

Excerpt:

The ominous messages have been coming fast and furious over the past few weeks. We have received Divine hints, shocking, stunning warnings, that all is not as should be.

The gezeiros have targeted those we hold most dear, tzaddikim and children. In frighteningly rapid succession, we lost senior roshei yeshiva. We then experienced the frantic search for a young Boro Park boy and the awful news of his fate at the hands of a fellow Yid. And now we have experienced something unseen since the time of Gedaliah ben Achikam, with the cold-blooded murder of an internationally renowned tzaddik, to whom thousands turned for advice, support and brachos, at the hands of a Jew.

Once again, we are numb and at a loss for words.

We have sought to explain this most recent tragic act in purely natural terms. We would have liked to explain it away as the wanton act of a crazed murderer, as the climax of a life of an ill person who tormented his neighbors and was well-known to all as a dangerously violent person. However, as with the murder of young Leiby z”l just two weeks ago, this murderer was an individual without a significant history that could lead us to blame the violence on his personality.

Apparently, he was a teacher, who delivered shiurim, who people thought well of. He was a student and follower of the man he killed so cruelly. Last Thursday, he asked people to daven that Moshiach ben Yosef shouldn’t be killed. He asked people to pray for him. He went to the rov, as he had so many times before. He entered Baba Elazar’s chamber alone, kissed his hand, and then killed him. He is, after all, a murderer, but it was as if he was overtaken by the Soton, selected from up Above for this particular mission. No, he is no tzaddik, and he is surely imperfect and troubled, but not to the degree that would have us understand murdering a rov, his rov, in cold blood.

It just doesn’t make sense. It defies all logic. It boggles the mind.

Continue at Matzav.