A herem [excommunication] does have an effect. When the Chatam Sofer [Moshe Sofer] was a disciple of Rav Natan Adler, the students learned Torah on the second floor. The first floor was a hall for weddings and other festivities. One Thursday night, a bridegroom was making a party for his friends and making so much noise that the students upstairs could not learn. Two went down but received insults to themselves and to Rav Natan Adler. Later Moshe Sofer and others also went to quiet down the party, and blows flowed and a fist fight. The insults were along the lines that ''learners of the Talmud were lazy good for nothings.'' Those students went to Natan Adler, and he answered that it would be proper to put that crowd in herem because of insulting learners of Torah. The students interpreted this as a instruction to do so, and in fact went through with it. Later that night, the bridegroom and a friend walked home. The bridegroom slipped and hit his head on the sharp end of a wall and died. The congregation were sure that the death was the result of the herem, but Rav Natan himself mourned at the funeral. The herem of the Gra has had a different kind of effect [insanity], but no less devastating. [It is hard to miss this fact]
