What's absolutely mind-boggling to consider is if the judge had not been such a zealot, and sentenced him to, say, 16 years (which would have been both (i) far more consistent with comparable sentences and (ii) not more than the 25 years the prosecutors had asked for!), the outcry would not have been as big, the support to free him not as widespread, and the unity among klal yisroel not as strong.
It was
precisely because of the unprecedented 27-year sentence that he's out after "only" eight, and not sitting for double that.
I think there's a relevant lesson here. Not often are people in this world afforded the opportunity to see the maxim of "gam zu letovah" come to vibrant life, that if the hand of God is moving, it is only doing so for the best.
An analogy that has always struck me is embroidery. As you may know, the bottom of an embroidered picture is a chaotic, haphazard mess. However, from the perspective of the creator, everything is in deliberate, beautiful, harmonized order.
Too many times in life we look up, shake our heads, and wonder "How could this happen?" "What did we do to deserve this?"
In those trying times, think of Shalom Rubashkin and the embroidered picture, and know that although it may look ugly from
our humanly vantage (from the bottom), that is not so in true reality--from above, this, that, or whatever, is deliberate, beautiful,
and for the best.