A lot of people have expressed, I think fairrly naturally, questions of faith in the wake up the murder of Eyal, Gilad and Naftali.
It happened after the disengagement from Gush Katif as well.
It is not unexpected. When people are told to daven to thwart the decree, they question when so much davening and act of kindness are performed but the decree moves ahead anyway.
I don't have such questions of faith. Not that I am a man of such great faith, but I dont seem to expect that the tefillos and acts of kindness must force God's hand in some way. Hopefully influence, but we usually don't have the full picture, so if we dont get the answer we wanted, it doesn't shake me.
What does bother me is something else,
Throughout the ordeal, and I think it happened in Gush Katif as well, and in many other situations in which the religious community felt it must get the decree turned around, is the great rabbis, and I dont say that flippantly, who said that they can see from this or that that the boys are alive, they are in specific places, and things like that. Whether it was the performance of the goral hagra, or other rabbonim who said such things, and there were plenty of them - what business did they have giving such false hope?
Do they have ruach hakodesh, that they should know such things, or do they not? If they do not, don't make it up. and if they do, why were they wrong? Are they false prophets? Were they making it up just to keep people optimistic?
Without weighing in on whether or not performance of the goral hagra requires a level of ruach hakodesh, it seems Rav Shteinman knew what he was talking about when he refused to perform it, considering the false results of the goral hagra that was employed.
That is what bothers me. Saying daven and hopefully we'll get good results - that doesnt bother me when we dont get those results. When rabbis act as if they are prophets and then give information that turns out not to be true - that bothers me. That makes me question things like daas torah and the "powers" of the rabbis..
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