Time Machine

Har Sinai

I like ujm’s answer, but given that we were all at Har Sinai, my answer would be in the days of Bayis Rishon during the rule of a righteous king.

We’re accomplishing our tafkid in our time; our generation has its purpose, challengea, and special set of goals.

If i were alive in previous generations, I’d fall prey to the yatzer hora, like rav ashi learned from menasheh.

Aaq,

I don’t think a time machine would help you change time

I would go back to the point I became cognizant of my surroundings… and redo everything I goofed!!!

I want to check out all the missing years in history.

I would go to Sarajevo, June 28th 1914. Would park my horse on Archduke’s path to the assassination, possibly preventing terrible WWs. Nobody would say thank you, but that’s ok.

Doing so would probably erase a majority of frum Jews who are alive today from existence.

Survivors of the Holocaust who moved to Israel and America would probably still be Europe today had the Holocaust not happened. As such, many of the marriages that took place in the post-Holocaust years would not have happened (as these spouses would have never met in the DP camps, America, Israel or wherever else they moved to). Their descendants — their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, would not exist today. They would be replaced with an entirely different population.

Oddly enough, I would probably still be here, as all of my great-grandparents were already in New York City by 1915. However, my wife wouldn’t be here, nor would our children.

I’m not saying, God forbid, that the Holocaust was a good thing. Of course not. But I’m not convinced that undoing it at the expense of millions of lives that currently exist is a moral and proper thing to do either.

The Wolf

WWI contributed to WWII, Germany and Hungary wanting to get back the territory lost and reparations to pay. They attributed it to the Communists and Jews. See Treaty of Versailles and Treaty of Trianon.

Yes, it did. That was my main point. If you stop WWI from happening (and to be honest, I’m not sure that saving the Archduke really prevents WWI) then WWII probably doesn’t happen (or, at least, almost certainly not in the same way) and most of the Jews alive today never end up existing.

The Wolf

What are you saying, isn’t the opposite true, most of the Jews not alive today would have ended up existing?

AAQ, your logic by me does not follow because my father married after liberation the sister of his first wife whom he lost in Aushwitz with two children, so he was only able to marry her because of his loss. The basherte came later. Are you saying that they had to die anyway to be able to marry her?

What are you saying, isn’t the opposite true, most of the Jews not alive today would have ended up existing?

That’s absolutely true. But I’m not convinced that it’s morally and ethically good to sacrifice the millions of people that currently exist for the millions of people that could have existed.

Were that the case, you could never make a marital decision in your life. Sure, marrying my wife helped my kids come into existence, but it also precluded the large number of alternate possible other children that might have existed had I married any one of the thousands* of other available women. But we have to make choices in the here and now and cannot be concerned about the unknowable possibility of lives that might come into existence if we took a different action.

The Wolf

* Not that there were thousands of women who would have wanted me, but you get the point.

alternate possible other children

Ugh… I used four words when one would have been enough. I need to better edit myself. 🙂

The Wolf

I want to be able to observe my father, and other older people I know, as a child.

FTM, I want to see a godol (any) when they were young and in the making.