In EmunahSpeak: The Call of the Hour we said that Rav Wolbe states in his sefer, Ali Shur, that emunah is a reality, not a concept. It is the purpose of creation and the foundation of existence. It’s our life preserver to which we cling with a vice like grip.
And it’s also as close as we’ll ever get to Jewish body armor because a life with Emunah is a life that is not affected by death, by difficulty or by challenge. There is always the knowledge that it’s with Hashem, and therefore it can’t be that bad.
In fact, Emunah is actually a way of thinking. As Rav Wolbe also teaches us in Ali Shur, a person who looks at the world with the mindset of Emunah looks for the Hashgacha Pratis in everything. He sees Hashem in “Nature” and in every historical event.
And as Rabbi Moshe Hauer puts it, if Emunah is the way we see the world in the tog taiglach of our every day existence then it will be there for us when we really need it, and the proposition that we are all going to need it sooner than soon was, after all, the premise of EmunahSpeak: The Call of the Hour.
Rabbi Hauer also tells us as per Rav Kook that the perspective of Emunah is the opposite of blind faith. It’s a perspective of being able to see things with a perfect clarity because Emunah is not an intellectual conclusion. It’s not even a regesh. There is a live connection (Neshama) inside each of us that is part of Hashem that Hashem blew into us. And that piece that is in us knows that there is Hashem out there. It feels it and it knows it viscerally. Navuah (Navi) means to be able to see Hashem, and Emunah is a piece of navuah.
It comes out that a ba’al Emunah is a person that knows with a certainty that Hashem is here, which culminates in a palpable feeling of living with Hashem. Given Emunah’s spiritual essence, he eschews the use of physical eyes and material yardsticks because a person can’t achieve Emunah in this world if he is holding up Hashem to material tests, nor should we measure our success in life by our physical experiences which tend to collide with Emunah.
Emunah also brings us to an understanding that this is not a happenstance world in which things occur solely by chance in an unending procession of “accidents.”
Appearances aside, we are not stuck in situations, we are placed in them. We are where we need to be. The question asked by the ba’al Emunah is not, why this is happening to me, but rather what should I do now that it is.
The tachliss of this world as seen through eyes of Emunah is to turn fate into destiny.
Rabbi Hauer adds that when you walk around looking for Hashem, Hashem meets your gaze. By seeking Hashem, and only Hashem, you are acknowledging Ein Od Milvado, that there is nothing other than Hashem. And those who believe Ein Od Milvado in their bones will be provided protection when, in difficult times, they say Ein Od Milvado to maintain presence of mind.
Such are the rewards of those who walk this earth with the palpable feeling of living with Hashem.
