There goes a story of a town that went mad: It happened that within this town there lives a man who could see the future in the stars. He witnessed through his powers that the new crop of wheat was a defected one, and that all who ate from this crop would surely go crazy. The diviner ran to the rulers of the town, and shared with them what he had saw. The rulers examined the situation with much scrutiny. There was surely not enough wheat from the previous crop to suffice the entire town. The new crop would surely be needed if the town were to eat. One ruler suggested that the rulers take the good wheat for themselves and give the defected wheat to the townspeople, so that at least the rulers themselves would remain sane. Another ruler protested however. He pointed out that if they were to remain sane, and everyone else were to go crazy, all of the townspeople would most assuredly conclude that it was they the rulers who were crazy, and would kill them. It was concluded thus, that the only solution would be to eat the defected wheat along with the rest of the town. One ruler made a suggestion however. They would first put a mark on each other’s forehead, that way, once they ate the wheat and went mad, they would at least be able to look at each other and see the mark and remember that they were mad, and were once sane. Keeping Torah would be quite simple and straightforward if we lived alienated and secluded from society and the “craziness” of the world.. However, simple, is not the way that galus , exile goes. Exile goes, that we must toil to extract and refine the truth that is hidden deep in the layers of this world, whilst buried in the midst of it ourselves. The key however, is to never stop noting the “sign” every so often in this mad extravagance, the sign, being Torah, reminding us that truth DOES exist, and the chaos experienced in exile is not sanity, it is not truth. Our job is to remember that, and remind some of our other “townsfolk” (i.e. our fellow Jews) that their true role is as rulers of the town, leaders, who’s task it is to bring all of the town once again into sanity, through recognizing the “mark” on our fellow’s forehead. p>
