In EmunahSpeak:
Seeing the Good we spoke about bringing
the concept of gam zu l’tova down to street level by seeing the good in those
things that happen to us that at first glance would seem to be anything but
good as that term is generally understood.
Whereas the seeing
the good that was mentioned above was in the context of life’s travails, it’s
not the only game in town. It conceptually
applies no less to people and we get there by way of first seeing the whole.
Rabbi Moshe
Weinberger tells us that a person who sees the whole understands how precious
every Jew is, be he a Sephardic Jew, a Hesder yeshiva student, a Chasid, a
kollel yungerman or a secular Jew. He
sees the greatness of every Jew because he is looking at the place of
greatness.
This is what Rav
Kook z”l called a unifying perspective, and Rabbi Weinberger let’s us
hear that a person who has internalized this unifying perspective as
part of his hashkafic toolset responds to tragedy with the thought that Hashem
is telling him to go help others. Although
he was referring to a person responding to his own tragedy by helping others, this
unifying perspective is no less susceptible of being internalized by those Jews
who are standing outside the line of fire peering in.
And we need look
no further than Tropical Storm/Hurricane Sandy for a case study of this
principle in action.
By what other
means should one describe the manifold activities of Achiezer in the Far
Rockaway/Five Towns area along with the many volunteers that they marshaled to
do what ever needed to be done or the Boro Park Shomerim who were so active in
the wake of the devastation that engulfed Seagate?
And what about
the bus loads of volunteers that shlepped from Baltimore to wade into the flooded basements
of Seagate to pump out the water, carry out the debris, and clean up the mess
that was left behind?
Moreover, Rabbi
Weinberger takes us a step beyond to reveal in the name of Rav Kook z”l that as
a person’s unifying perspective grows deeper, stronger and clearer, it
penetrates all the more into the depths.
As a consequence thereof he sees reality more and more in the way that
the true tzaddikim look at reality.
And what does he
see?
In particular he
sees the unity of all Jews.
Rabbi Weinberger
points out that a tzaddik sees that every Jew belongs to the whole – that every
Jewish child is the child of every Jew.
Or as the Lubavitcher
Rebbe zy”a answered when asked why he reached out to non-religious Jews:
And what if
they were your children?
