in Mishpacha magazine, entitled "Who is Responsible for Those Sins"
It starts by the woman describing her clothes from years ago, a shirt with "no other half", she was wearing it the day she walked through Meah Shearim for the first time. There she stopped to listen outside the Toldos Ahron shul. As she stood there, a man approached her, an aged chassid who, while looking at the floor, said, "Could you please wait a moment? My wife will be here any minute?"
The article describes a girl who grew up on a kibbutz, married at 16 to a volunteer from South America. They lived on the kibbutz and then in Tel Aviv. Two years into their marriage her husband went back to SA for a visit and returned to Israel with the shocking news that he was not Jewish. The divorced a month later, Lee (the woman) in a deep depression and Enrique, her now ex-husband, in the throes of a serious identity crises.
Two years later Lee's psychologist told her to go to Jerusalem, buy some clothes, walk around. That is how she, a very secular and broken woman of 22 came to be standing in the street in Meah Shearim when someone's kindness changed her life. The man and his wife "adopted" Lee after that day, when they invited her in for tea and biscuits. On her second visit to the Rabbi and Rebetzin's house Lee asked why the Rabbi had approached her. The Rebbetzin answered that she saw Lee and said to her husband "Look at that girl! Soon there is going to be a riot here!" The rebbetzin could not run, because of her stiff leg, so that rabbi ran and asked the girl to wait for his wife. In the process of explaining to Lee why a riot could start simply because of her presence they tell another story, of a neighbors son, turned zionist who came to the neighborhood without a kippa. The rabbi brought him in and gave him a kippa.
Lee quotes the rebbetzin as sating "People come here because some spark has become kindled within them, and they feel an urge to relive the old days. If someone would, G-d forbid, who knows how many more sins they would commit, only to purposely spite and take revenge on the insult they suffered by the rebuke?"
Lee says "Who is responsible for those sins! They're not the only ones that's for sure."
"And whoever saw me then would never have imagined that I would one day look like this. Once I became a baalas teshuva many things became clear to me. Today I understand why the Rav ran after me in his slippers and brought me into his home so quickly. Even you, who knowmy background now, cannot fathom how broken I was inside. If someone would have yelled at me, he would have probably destroyed me forever."
She adds that we cannot judge another person, because we never know what is going on inside a person.
The article really brought home something I think about and deal with often- how to treat people who are acting "wrong". Especially when they have no clue that their actions could be problematic. Even when they are aware, we don't know how broken their spirit can be, how even if our words are gentle it could hurt them.
