Two stories that haunt me:
1] A Gadol Bi-torah, student of Rav Chaim Ha-levi Soloveitchik, author of about 25 important sefarim, was exiled to Siberia by the Communists for the sin of learning Torah. His son became a Communist-Atheist-bareheaded-Professor-Of-Goyish Literature [and owned about 20 thousand books]. He had a high IQ like his father but didn't use it for what his father did to say the least.
How the father must have felt. What searing pain!! Someone relates that he once witnessed father and son learning gemara together, the father with his large rabbinic kippah and the son with his large bald head. [This Rov has a great grand daughter who works for the BBC רח"ל!].
The Communists exile him to a labor camp and his son becomes a Communist. His whole life was about spreading dvar Hashem and then has a son who denies His very existence.
נורא נוראות.
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2] To preface: I am not judging the people involved. I will leave that up to Hashem. But there is an important point that must be made.
R' Chaim Rothman was the last of the victims of the terror attack in Har Nof one year ago. After being in a coma for a year [his brain stem was crushed] he finally succumbed to the angel of death. He had earlier suffered the tragic death of his teenage son who died in a bicycling accident a number of years ago.
Alas, those weren't the end of his tzaros. His daughter decided that she doesn't want to keep mitzvos and turned secular. How much that must have pained her father. The paradox is that she deeply-deeply loved and revered her father. She would go on her facebook page and ask everyone to daven for her father. She described how much he loved her and never rejected her despite her life choice. After his death she publicly lamented that fact the he would not attend her wedding when the day comes.
I have some news for her - her father would not have enjoyed her wedding. Her father - Ben Torah and Ohev Torah that he was - would have experienced such tremendous anguish seeing the little, pure bais yaakov girl whom he raised to marry a tzadik and talmid chochom, instead marry a mechalel shabbos, ochel neveilos while dressed like a prutza [as is the custom for the non-religious brides to dress at their weddings] ומקוה מאן דכר שמיה.
I again repeat - I am not judging her. Maybe she has little or no bechira. Maybe she was abused as a child. I don't know. What I am almost certain of though is that what the Arab ימ"ש did to the rest of her father - she did to his heart and soul. It may sound harsh, but if you speak to parents of kids who stray from the path, you will find out how true it is.
Maybe one day when she is a parent she will understand this. My bracha to her is that she return to the holy path of Sarah, Rivka, Rochel and Leah and give her father's neshama great nachas in the place of indescribable reward where he now finds himself.
If one dies על קידוש השם - the reward he receives cannot be equalled by a thousand years of continuous Torah and mitzvos. His soul will go to an even better place after his daughter returns.
Lesson: Your actions affect those around you.
Man is not an island.
