Seder

Rav Yerucham Levovitz in the introduction to his sefer on Chumash, Daas Torah, elaborates on the importance of seder.  This is a very basic principle of the mussar school of Kelm in which Rav Yerucham studied.  The language of Rav Yeruchim is so extreme as to say that one who lacks proper seder isn’t even a human being!  For anyone who has a sense of Kelm inside of them it would behoove them to read it in its entirety.  I will just pull out of couple of highlights from this piece.  

  

When the Alter of Kelm came to visit his son, who was learning in yeshiva, the first thing he did wasn’t to ask his son how he was doing or ask him about his learning, he made a beeline for his son’s bedroom to make sure everything was in its proper place and folded properly.  I keep in my desk drawer a newspaper clipping from the FJJ a couple of years ago (I don’t remember the author.)  They are discussing the importance of seder and cite a story from Rav Chaim Shmuel Lopian.  Once the Alter of Kelm came into the room of a talmid and saw one of the boy’s slippers was not in line.  He immediately went into the Beis Midrash and delivered a shmuess stressing how everything Hashem made in the world has a seder.  As he continued he became further agitated and burst out how could it be that one slipper is not in line with the other.  [It sees if the Alter of Kelm would set foot into any current yeshiva dorm he would throw everyone out of yeshiva.]  The Alter suggested that the reason people don’t feel the effects of the Yomim Noraim is because they don’t have the proper seder of simcha on Sukkos and that destroys the feelings felt on the High Holy days.   

The fate of the dor hamabul was sealed because of chamas.  Why was this worse than the arious that they violated?  The Alter of Kelm explains that a lack of clamping down on stealing is a corruption of the whole seder of society.  The moral decline was a result of this blatant violation of seder.  The Kli Yakar (6:17) explains how rain is a punishment middah k’neged middah.  The Gemorah Babba Basra (16a) says that each raindrop has its own path so that it doesn’t interfere with another drop.  Robbery is the opposite of that, its when one violates boundaries.  The boundaries set up in the world are the seder in which Hashem made the world.  Since the dor hamabul didn’t adhere to proper seder, the seder of the world was changed against them (see Rosh Hashana 12a.)