Sudden Downfall

There is a very popular Rav here in Israel who has a lot of videos one can see on the Internet where he is mobbed by followers who give him the honor accorded normally to a gadol bi-yisrael. I saw one video where he entered the hall, the music blared ימים על ימי מלך תוסיף - may the king have added years, and people went beserk. He then gave a shiur and people were hanging on every word and eating it up. Before and after his shiurim the faithful crowd around him and kiss his hand like there is no tomorrow.

A King indeed. One of the richest rabbis on the world, great yichus, thousands of fawning followers, a mini-empire.

One minor detail. He was found guilty of illegal financial dealings and is going/ already went, to the slammer.

Unbelievable.

One day he is the "King", the next he is a prison inmate who must spend the next year locked up and doing forced labor. It doesn't help that last year he was diagnosed with cancer רח"ל....

It haunts me.

For that is life.

What do I mean?

Nobody sings to me ימים על ימי מלך תוסיף. Besides my mother, wife and children, I don't know too many people who care so much whether I have long years or not. Nothing personal. People are just busy with their own lives and families. Sometimes, when I walk into a room the band is playing music but that is only because I am attending a wedding and the music is not in my honor. In fact, I am not looking for honor. I have received much honor in my life, far more than I deserve on too many occasions, and I can attest to the fact that it is all hot air. Really. Nobody really cares how important you are. It does nothing for you. Very often, the people giving honor are just humoring the person but don't really mean it anyway. And at the end of the day, I have to pay rent, and being shown honor and be awarded honorific titles doesn't pay the rent. So the issue is not the honor.

The reason I am haunted is because in this world things can be one way and in the next world it will be completely different. This world is COMPLETE SHEKER while the next world is COMPLETE EMES. This man's downfall is a paradigm for the greater picture.

I have been gifted with a sixth sense to understand people and see beyond the facade. Sometimes I want to say to people - "Who do you think you are fooling?" At other times I just want to tell them their personality defects of which very often they are completely ignorant. But I am polite and never want to hurt someone's feelings so I keep it to myself.

But one day all of the truth comes out and we receive reward and punishment based on who we really are. EVERYTHING people think about us in this world is as relevant as an aged, yellowed, ripped piece of newspaper from China in the mid 1950's. Garbage.

I am haunted because it all can end in a second and then we are thrust from our fake illusionary reality into something real. Then the real me will be exposed and that is scary. I see personality defects in other people but I see even more when I look in the mirror.

So my personal conclusion [you can draw your own] is that we have to drill into ourselves the one immutable truth.

איז דאך אלץ הבל הבלים אין עוד מלבדו - Everything is complete vanity and all that really matters and all that really exists is Hashem.