So often we look back on history and ask, “What were they thinking?” After seeing in hindsight what happened and what led to it, we can’t understand how they didn’t see it coming and avoid it instead.
For example, how did British Prime Minister Chamberlain take Hitler ysv”z at his word and think that amicable peace was possible with him? How did American President Roosevelt think that a pacifist approach to the European war would spare his country thousands of miles away? Had they stopped Hitler early, wouldn’t the Holocaust have been avoidable?
There are no “what ifs” when it comes to Hashgochah Pratis—Divine Providence, only bashert, it was meant to be. If something brilliant occurs, it is because God wanted something brilliant to occur. If people act stupidly, it is what God ordered. The only variable that our free will impacts, and it is everything, is whether we will get to be the brilliant or the stupid one.
The Torah says that Ya’akov Avinu wanted to reveal the End-of-Days to his sons, but God took the prophecy away from him (Bereishis 49:1). The Midrash says that he wanted to tell them about the eventual and final War of Gog and Magog, so we’d be ready for it. And the Midrash also says that when God decides it is time for it to start, he will put a ruach shtus into Gog to get him going (Bereishis Rabbah 90:2).
Basically, a ruach shtus is a spirit of insanity, or stupidity, basically the same thing. The Talmud says that a person only sins when a ruach shtus enters them (Sotah 3a). After all, who in their right mind would want to sin? Hmm. Seems to be a lot of ruach shtus out there…
Essentially what this means is that logic goes out the window when trying to figure out how the War of Gog and Magog will start. “They wouldn’t dare do that…” or “It would be crazy to start up with them…” just doesn’t hold true once God gives the War of Gog and Magog the green light. On the contrary, events will occur that will seem, at first, unlikely to be the cause of anything serious—until they are.
You literally have to be ready for anything, because anything can be it. The logic or practicality of anything will be secondary to the timing of what is happening or needs to happen. We don’t have prophets today to tell us what God is thinking, and no one really can tell us reliably.
There’s this game my family likes to play. Someone leaves the room and we choose a difficult word for which everyone, except for one person, has to come up with a false answer. Then the person returns to the room and we each give our respective answers as if they are the true one, while the person tries to figure out which is the right answer.
It gets funny because some of the answers are so well presented that they sound true, and more often than not, the person guesses wrong. So are we. We’re looking at the events of today and make evaluations about the impact on history based upon logic that makes sense to us. But who can account for ruach shtus?
Einstein purportedly said, “Two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, but I’m not sure about the universe.” We now know today that the universe is not unlimited but finite, but as for human stupidity…
We’d like to believe that the people we elect to office have the brains to act responsibly while in power. We’d like to think that the people we have empowered with billions of dollars will use their money to our benefit. And most important of all, we’d like to know that french fries in large quantities are very healthy for us. None of these assumptions are right or safe, but at least french fries you can monitor and exercise off.
Beware of the ruach shtus. On its simplest level it makes a person sin. On a far more impactful level it will trigger the War of Gog and Magog, and the end of history as we know it.