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Melachim II 011: Jewish worship of the Ba'al in the times of Izevel
David Goldman asks:
I cannot understand how it was possible for there to have been literally
several thousand neviim and kohanim of the baal within such a relatively
short time that Izevel was married to Achav. I mean, if the yetser harah
for avodah zarah was so strong, then it would not have required Izevel to
import her Baal religion from across the border a few miles away! On the
other hand, if prior to her the Jews were so loyal to Hashem despite the
yetser hara, then what does it mean that thousands were able to fall into
baalism within literally a few years (Achav married Izevel and was king for
only 22 years)??!! Did these Jews suddenly say, "Ah, this is just what I
was looking for all this time, and thanks to Izevel I found it." Or were
they already disloyal to Hashem even BEFORE the arrival of Izevel?
------------------------------------
The Kollel replies:
1) The Sefer Chasidim #1159 describes how the Ba'al prophets managed to
gain such a hold over the people. They used to prepare an idol statue for a
Jew and practice magic on him. Then they would make something similar to a
wax image of their victim and afflict him with suffering. When the sick
person would come to the magician to be healed, the magician would tell the
patient that if he will go and worship Avodah Zarah, he will be recover.
Once the Jew bowed down to the idol the magician would break the image of
the victim and he would recover from his illness.
2) The Sefer Chasidim asks that it appears from the above description that
the victims of the Ba'al magic potions were not so much to blame for what
happened to them. It sounds like there must have been a "Gezeirah Min
ha'Shamayim," that the victim would be made to suffer by the Ba'al prophets
and it was only to alleviate his suffering that he started worshipping the
Ba'al. If so, the Sefer Chasidim asks, why were the people punished for
worshipping the Ba'al?
3) The Sefer Chasidim answers by explaining an important concept, that of
"Megalgelin Chovah Al Yedei Chayav" (see Bava Basra, beginning of 119b). If
a Gezeirah is decreed on someone, this suggests that there was a reason
that this happened to the sufferer. The Sefer Chasidim writes that if
someone possesses a perfect heart, such a Gezeirah would not be decreed
upon him. He cites the Gemara in Chulin 7a that says that Hashem does not
cause a disaster to happen even to animals that belong to Tzadikim. Such a
thing would certainly not happen to a Tzadik himself.
4) So the adoption of Ba'alism by so many people was speeded up by these
magic coercion techniques. The people who got swept up by it did not
usually want to do it in the first place, but on the other hand the
Heavenly decree that caused this process would not have happened had there
not been some kind of prior tendency to this way of life, even if
subconsciously.
Kol Tuv,
Dovid Bloom
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