Written on Yom HaShoah, a day of remembrance and reflection on the suffering and murder of six million Jews—one third of our people.

After these years of war and ongoing terror attacks in Eretz Yisrael, we are left with a painful and constant question: how are we meant to understand what is happening, and what are we meant to do with it?

We are not trying to explain it in a full way. We do not have that kind of clarity. The more we live through it, the more we see that the real question is not why it is happening, but how we are meant to respond while it is happening. There is no clear system that gives answers. We live day to day with war, threats from many sides, and fear that does not settle into understanding.

Why is this happening? Why again? Why still?

We ask, but we do not get answers that satisfy us. And the truth is that we are not meant to build our lives on full answers to this question. We are meant to build our lives on responsibility.

This is not a new question. We have carried it through many generations—through exile, pain, and destruction we cannot fully understand. It reached a terrible peak in the Shoah, when six million Jews were murdered and whole communities were erased. Even there, there was no clear answer. The question stayed, and we were still left with life after—fragile, but still going on.

In Parashas Tazria, the Torah speaks about tzara’as, which Chazal connect to harmful speech (Arachin 16a). At first it seems like something that should appear in every generation. Yet we do not see tzara’as today, and that itself needs thought.

The Midrash says that the word “vehayah” is usually a word of joy, but here it appears in the laws of tzara’as: “vehayah be’or besaro lenega tzara’as.” Rabbi Moshe Alshich explains that tzara’as was not only a punishment, but also a form of clear message. A person who was very sensitive in spirit would see even small mistakes in speech in a clear, physical way. Nothing was hidden. The message was direct, and it could be fixed.

In that time, mistakes were clear. They stood out, and a person knew exactly what needed repair.

Today we do not live with that kind of clear signs. We do not see direct links between actions and results in that way. Life is not written like that anymore. We live with unclear situations, where many things are not easy to read.

What once was seen outside is now left for us to work on inside.

Because of this, we must be careful not to think we can explain what is happening. We are not given that ability. What we are given is something else: the ability to respond.

Not to try to explain what G-d is doing, but to look honestly at what is in front of us—how we speak, how we treat others, how we act under pressure, and what kind of people we are becoming in hard times. Tzara’as once gave a clear sign that something needed fixing. We do not have that today, so the work is inside us, even without clear signs.

We are meant to build responsibility in how we live through these times. Responsibility is not a big idea. It shows in daily life: in how we speak, how we react when we are stressed, how we avoid anger and blame, how we help others, how kind we are, how we thank for good, how we accept G-d’s rule, how we learn Torah, and how we keep mitzvos in real life.

We are not meant to have full answers about why things happen. We are meant to live with responsibility in how we go through them. We do not understand everything, and we do not need to pretend that we do. But we know we are still here, and that itself is a duty.

We are not asked to understand everything that happens to us, but to make sure that what happens to us does not leave us the same.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)