The Beauty of דין

Recently in the big corporate company that I work for (that I often snubbed as being a typical example of the voracious, cheap, careless approach of capitalistic consumerism and it's embedded micro-level corruption/irresponsibility which so often finds therein a home a.k.a the בהמה רביעי of דניאל which is אכלה ומדקה ושארא ברליה רפסה) fired a handful of employees (peons and mid level managers alike) for a corruption they were doing in the company. Some of those employees being people I thought nicely of, friends I'd even say, suddenly in one single day gone. I was really happy.

Not because I don't feel the plight of those workers tempted to dip their fingers in a little extra cash that they probably feel makes up for the many injustices in salary that come with the average minimum-wage job.  Not because I ignore the implications of their loss of income and support to their families, community, etc.   But truly because I was so happy to see in life some Order. Justice. Supervision. Accountability. Care. Not simply in this isolated situation per se, but as a part of Creation. There is Justice. There is Right and Wrong and someone/something in Creation will make sure to enforce it. יש דין ויש דיין.

And so the insight that I realized is that what it takes to be someone who is מצדיק עליו את הדין, or a רבי עקיבא saying שמע ישראל as he's being torn apart, is not necessarily a function of a personality bending itself and submitting itself and subordinating itself to a higher power per se but maybe rather it's a function of someone who loves דין, who knows that the present world we live in is too screwed up through-and-through to not require sweeping radical action that will often affect and hurt villains and bystanders alike (in differing measures though, of course. Someone who's willing to pray for the destruction of an organizational מלכות הרשעה, as in  ומלכות הרשעה מהרה תעקר ותשבר וכולי, even while knowing at one and the same time that that may be an organizational structure that he himself is living and depending on!  The Goldman Sachs' Greg Smith's of our time wanting the fall of the systems and structures that provide them their very wealth and life, if but only to see Justice and דין and Goodness in the world, the way we all know deep down existentially it ought to be. THAT is really the beauty of דין and how beautiful and meaningful and lovely it makes our often screwed up, unfair, chaotic world.   ברוך דיין אמת.

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