We live in a
very fateful generation. It’s a twilight
generation, something akin to bein hashmashos.
The period of
radiance has passed, and we already hear the sounds of what is to come. Moreover, we are living in a period when even
looking out the window can be dangerous.
Someone who
is wise can already hear a voice calling out from Shomayim.
These are the words
of Rav Shimshon Pincus z”l, and whether or not he had even heard of the
Internet when he said them, he was already seeing past it.
In EmunahSpeak:
The Call of the Hour, we quoted
HaRav HaGaon Moshe Wolfson as saying that every generation has its mitzvah,
and that ours is emunah. This is where the battle lines will be drawn
between every Jew as an individual and the Satan/Yetzer Hora in whatever form
it chooses to manifest itself at any given time.
And
the main thrust of that piece was that it is not a coincidence that a number
of very serious seforim on emunah in English have been published in the last
few years by some very great people. One of the common threads running
through all of these works is the sensitivity of their authors to what they
perceive to be the call of the hour. All of them, including Rav Wolfson,
as articulated in his shiurim on emunah, concur that the tenacity of the
Satan’s thrust at the emunah infused jugular of every Jew will put us to the
same challenges with which Hashem tested Avraham Aveinu.
They
have independently come to the conclusion that it is a matter of pikuach nefesh
for this last generation before Moshiach to seriously strengthen its emunah in
order to stay the course for what’s coming our way.
Simply
put, we’re headed for a very bumpy ride, and if we don’t buckle up with emunah
we risk being thrown from this world.
We also noted in
EmunahSpeak:
Living With Hashem, that
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.
Our tachlis, as
seen through eyes of Emunah, is to turn into
destiny the fate that is subsumed in what
Rav Pincus z”l has referred to as this very fateful generation.
Hashem changes
the times, and in consideration thereof Rav Pincus held that we must be
cognizant of what is going on around us so as to be able to devise corrective strategies.
And he didn’t
mean keeping on top of the news because he constantly spoke out against wasting
time reading newspapers and such.
Being cognizant
of what’s going on around us
as per Rav Pincus refers to those times when Hashem shows His hand, be it ever
so subtly.
As we also said
in EmunahSpeak:
Living With Hashem, 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.
In other words,
what are our marching orders?
It’s essential
to ratchet up the staying power of our Emunah so as to brace ourselves to stand
firm come what may, no matter how difficult the circumstances. But it’s not enough.
We must go
on offense.
Our marching
orders, as per Rav Pincus z”l, are that we should do Teshuva and swing the
whole world to the side of merit.
So why are we
leaving Hashem out of the cheshbon?
He reminds us
that the foundation of Judaism that was laid down at the giving of the Torah
was the creation of a relationship. So
why are we not leveraging that relationship by crying out to Hashem to morph difficult
circumstances into something more benign?
From the words
of Rav Pincus z”l, as recorded above, it is clear that he was looking into the
same abyss, the only difference being that unlike the others who could feel the
coming storm in their bones, he could already see it and hear it, and therefore
his approach was more proactive because when Someone’s knocking one has to
answer the door already.
