The Forgotten City: A Hasidic Parable by MC Complete

A long time ago, in the days of Avraham Avinu, there was a very unusual city.

The people of the city were great baalei chessed.  They took care of the widows and the orphans, the sick, the elderly and the poor.  They were gentle and honest, and crime was almost unheard of.  Discord and quarrels were rare.  They had high standards of tznius.  They were happy, humble, hard working, and intellectual.  Of course, all the people of the city believed in Hashem and hated idolatry.

The people of the city had only one problem, namely, everyone else.  Everyone else in the world was obviously very different from them.  The surrounding culture was full of violence, oppression, promiscuity, and, worst of all, idolatry.  So it was very important for the people of the city to keep out all negative influences, in other words, tumah.

Unfortunately, keeping out the tumah proved to be an almost impossible task.  As we know all too well in the modern age, tumah is like the wild animals of the ten plagues.  If you close the door, it comes in the window.  If you close the window, it sticks its arm in through the ceiling and unlocks the door.  

Eventually, the people of the city had no choice but to sever all contacts with the outside world.  They knew they would endure some hardship under a subsistence economy, but they knew they were doing the right thing and they trusted in Hashem.  Also, Hashem had blessed them with a great deal of extremely fertile land within the city limits.  It was almost like the Garden of Eden.  So they weren’t too worried.

Unfortunately, cutting off the outside world did not help much, for a very simple reason: the outside world didn’t get the memo.  Idolaters kept visiting, bringing their tumah with them.  The people of the city tried putting up a big sign:

MONOTHEISTS ONLY
NO TRESPASSING

But the idolaters just ignored it.  They simply had no respect for the values, traditions and customs of the city.  So the people of the city had no choice.  They added another line to the sign, which now read:

MONOTHEISTS ONLY
NO TRESPASSING
VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED TO THE FULL EXTENT OF THE LAW

For some reason, the people of the city chose a strange and abominable punishment for the crime of trespassing.  Eventually, Hashem got sick of watching them administer this bizarre punishment to the trespassers, and He destroyed the city.