We are often taught and given the impression through stories that people in earlier generations were so much better than people nowadays. Somehow their piety and Mitzvah observance was magnitudes greater than people today.
I was teaching a Gemara this morning (מועד קטן י"ב עמוד ב) in which it tells that Rav Ashi had his workers chop down a forest בשלנייא during Chol HaMoed. The conventional understanding of בשלנייא is that it was the name of the town where the forest was located. However, the Aruch, a Talmudic dictionary written in the 11th Century, has a slightly different version of the text. He says that it was a forest כשלנייא, which he understands means that it was a forest that was a מכשול, a stumbling block, as it was a place where it was convenient for people to sin.
He doesn't elaborate on exactly what the sinning was. Were there teenagers sneaking off to make out there? Were they married adults who found it a convenient place to have liaisons with someone other then their spouses? Whatever it was, we see that 1,000 years ago one of the Rishonim had no problem assuming that people in Talmudic times were engaging in some sort of sexual impropriety to the extent that Rav Ashi found it necessary to bulldoze a forest.
My point is not to find grounds to criticize the ancients, rather it is to point out to those alive today. If you feel you have done something inappropriate, or if others are accusing you of such, that doesn't mean that you have acted in a manner that should disenfranchise you from being a member of Klal Yisroel. People have always done things that they "shouldn't" have been doing. It is part of the human condition as well as part of the Jewish condition. That doesn't make it right, just Jewish and human.
I was teaching a Gemara this morning (מועד קטן י"ב עמוד ב) in which it tells that Rav Ashi had his workers chop down a forest בשלנייא during Chol HaMoed. The conventional understanding of בשלנייא is that it was the name of the town where the forest was located. However, the Aruch, a Talmudic dictionary written in the 11th Century, has a slightly different version of the text. He says that it was a forest כשלנייא, which he understands means that it was a forest that was a מכשול, a stumbling block, as it was a place where it was convenient for people to sin.
He doesn't elaborate on exactly what the sinning was. Were there teenagers sneaking off to make out there? Were they married adults who found it a convenient place to have liaisons with someone other then their spouses? Whatever it was, we see that 1,000 years ago one of the Rishonim had no problem assuming that people in Talmudic times were engaging in some sort of sexual impropriety to the extent that Rav Ashi found it necessary to bulldoze a forest.
As Shlomo HaMelech said, אַל תֹּאמַר מֶה הָיָה שֶׁהַיָּמִים הָרִאשֹׁנִים הָיוּ טוֹבִים מֵאֵלֶּה כִּי לֹא מֵחָכְמָה שָׁאַלְתָּ עַל זֶה. "Don't say, 'What happened? the earlier days were better than these days.' For this is a question that is not founded in wisdom.
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