Rabbi Tzvi Fishman, has been taking advantage of being grounded at home in Jerusalem by cranking out a timely new Kindle book called, “The Corona Bible – Coronavirus and Faith in Troubled Times.” In addition to offering the self-help guide as a free download on his tzvifishmanbooks.com website, he has posted seven other titles as Corona freebies. He hopes that to fill the long days and weeks in home quarantine, people will rediscover the joy of reading books, especially books with Jewish content. I asked him about his initiative.
“I think more and more people are beginning to realize that the Corona pandemic is something far beyond the realm of anything the world community has experienced in our lifetimes,” he explains. “People with a strong foundation of Faith and Trust in Hashem have a sturdy staff to lean upon in times of crisis and confusion like this. Even so, they too often need a potent injection of Emunah-Faith. For them, “The Corona Bible” comes to remind them of what they already know, but which has become routine for them over the years. A great many others, especially the “enlightened” non-believers which modern Western culture has bred, they need a guide, or guidebook, to reveal the Hand of Hashem behind the current Divine Visitation which is forcing a monumental change in human existence. Corona has the meaning of crown and kingship. The King wants mankind to recognize His total rule and mastery over the world.”
How is the theme of faith presented to make your book different from the many books about faith that already exist?
For one thing, my style of writing is different from other writers. And I have my own experience as a baal t’shuva from Hollywood upon which to draw. Once upon a time, I was a totally assimilated Jew, chasing after the American dream of fame and success until the Director of directors pulled the curtain aside to reveal the that material world was really a ‘Truman Show’ no more real than the Dodge City on a Hollywood studio backlot. At the same time that I quote the teachings of Rabbi Kook, Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, the Rambam, and the Ramcal, I use the Coronvirus as an example of how Hashem calls to us to recognize His Kingship, not because He needs our adoration, but for our own enlightenment and good. When a person reaches the gates of Heaven without having forged a genuine bond with his or her Creator, all of the money he left behind in the bank won’t help him bribe his way into Gan Eden.
You believe that Hashem has sent the Coronavirus to the world to wake up mankind to His existence and rule in the world?
Hashem may have a hundred reasons, but certainly, for starters, He wants us to know He is there. Many people, including the religious, accept that all of the miraculous events of the Old Testament, like the plagues in Egypt, the Exodus, and the splitting of the sea, all occurred, but they think that was the end of Hashem’s active intervention in the world, something confined to Biblical times, when in reality, as Rabbi Kook explains, the Redemption of Israel and mankind is a long, ongoing process, unfolding all the time. For example, World War One, he insisted, was another stage of this process, which brought, in the wake of the Balfour Proclamation, the scattered Jewish Nation closer to the Divinely-promised and prophesized ingathering of the exiles. Accordingly, World War Two was another apocalyptic stage of this Divine Process, bringing the uprooted Jewish People back to Israel en masse. In a similar fashion, during the Six Day War, the Old City of Jerusalem was recaptured and the Biblical heartland of the Promised Land returned to Israel’s control. Coronavirus is part of that ever-active world development toward they day when nations shall flock to Jerusalem, and to the rebuilt House of G-d, to learn the ways of Hashem from the Nation of Israel.
Why does the process take so long to unfold?
The Sages of the Jerusalem Talmud compare the Redemption of Israel (and of the world) to a dawning sunrise whose light spreads gradually, slowly, slowly, “a little at a time,” over the mountains, until the sun’s full, magnificent appearance in the sky. The faster we do T’shuva and return to following the pathways which the Master of Heaven and Earth has established for the Jewish People, and for mankind as a whole, the sooner the pandemic will stop. The world is waiting for Am Yisrael to lead the way. If we return to Hashem half way, He will reduce the epidemic in half. If we fail to hear the Call, He can inch the Corona throttle forward another wee bit and make the plague stronger, Heaven forbid. The way we react is what determines what will be.
What do you answer people who insist the Coronavirus was caused by people eating unhealthy meat in China, or because of a freak mutant gene, and that the solution lie is finding a vaccine and not in finding God?
Certainly we hope that medical researchers soon discover a vaccine soon, but is the invisible Hand of Hashem that brings about the discovery of vaccines, just as it hurls plagues upon mankind to lead us to a new, holier, more Torah-filled stage of existence, shattering the rotten shell of the past, the material, ego-oriented world of today, to a more idealistic and wholesome lifestyle founded upon righteousness and Divine justice and truth, as envisioned by the Prophets of Israel. If the path of a leaf that falls from a tree is guided by the Creator of Heaven and Earth, as the Sages of the Talmud maintain, then certainly a catastrophe of such international magnitude as Coronavirus, which has affected almost every corner and cranny of the globe, is also an act of G-d – and not a freak accident of Nature. Admittedly, the virus may have started as a bacterial aberration of some sort, or via the machinations of some evil conspiracy, but these also derive from God, working incognito behind the curtains of Nature and history, in order to bring about the next stage in what some people call “Tikun Olam” and others call “Redemption.”
Besides writing the book, “The Corona Bible,” have you tried alerting the world to your message in any other ways?
I wrote an op-ed to The New York Times with the suggestion that in addition to the current preoccupation with respirators and Corona tests, people start to pay more attention to God, but the editors didn’t print it. Not because the essay wasn’t written well. Apparently they felt the subject wasn’t fit to print. Maybe, if all of the world’s herculean efforts to defeat Corona come to naught, maybe then The New York Times will consider publicizing my letter. As our Sages teach, widespread awareness will come little by little, so that humanity won’t be blinded by the apocalyptic light that will shine when Hashem returns His Divine Presence to the world. Great “sovlenut” is needed. Patience. Slowly, slowly. A little understanding at a time. One thing is certain, as the Torah and the Prophets of Israel assure us, again and again – the Redemption will come.
What about your “Tevye in the Promised Land” trilogy which follows the “Fiddler on the Roof” milkman from Anatevka Tell us about some of the free-download books on your website.
“Days of Mashiach” is a collection of humorous and thought-provoking short stories about Jewish life in Israel and the Diaspora. A translation was published in France by a non-Jewish publisher and the storytelling was compared to Voltaire, Kafka, and Samuel Beckett. The novel, “DAD,” tells the poignant and comic story of a baal tshuva with five hyperactive children, who has to also take care of his mother with Alzheimer’s and an ailing and super-anxious father, not to mention his pregnant wife. The novel, “Fallen Angel,” tells the fun story of an angel who is sent to Manhattan to warn a spiritual conman and bestselling-author to mend his deceitful and whoring ways. “From Israel with Love” is a spicy, off-the-wall collection of blogs about the mitzvah of living in Eretz Yisrael and the hollowness of Jewish life in the Diaspora. “From Hollywood to the Holy Land” describes (with accompanying photos) my miracle-filled journey from being an assimilated Jew in America to my discovery of the Director of all directors and true Jewish life in the Holy Land.
and his daughters to the Promised Land to become pioneer builders of the Land, and freedom fighters in the Jewish Underground against the British?
I recently posted the three novels as Amazon Kindle books along with the original paperbacks. I’m busy at work on Volume 4. In the meantime, there is enough fun material on the website to give quarantined readers a break from their worries and the hope for a brighter and holier future.