Hashem Gives Wisdom

We have a tradition that all of our Yom Tovim (including Chanukah and Purim) are more than mere markers on the calendar to commemorate events from the distant past.  They are all alive and kicking in real-time with their historic significance being transposed into the present.

In the same way that the first Pesach was all about our freedom, those days on the calendar that we refer to every year as Pesach are infused with the attribute of freedom.  And so on for all the other Yom Tovim.

On the chag of Shavuos that we celebrated yesterday and the day before (in chutz L’Aretz), we were once again zoche to the hashp’ah of receiving the Torah as we are every year at that time.

Rav Shimshon Pincus z”l, says that the truth is that every time we learn Torah we are experiencing a Mattan Torah.

And then he asks the obvious question:

“Then what’s so unique about Shavuos?”

Based on a Shavuos ma’amar by Rav Pincus, Rabbi Yerachmiel Goldman answers in his name as he tells us that it’s Chag HaShavuos that makes it possible for us to receive the shefa of Torah all year round.  It’s the shoresh for all of our Torah.

From that yesod, Rabbi Goldman then reveals to us in the name of Rav Pincus z”l, the unbelievably holy and mystical process by which all of us learn Torah.

For starters we are reminded that Mattan Torah also means a matana, not in the sense that we were incredibly fortunate to be given such a gift but rather that it was impossible that we should have been given such a gift because Torah is beyond human comprehension.  Unlike chochmah b’almah where we are hard wired to be able to receive Hashem’s Siyata D’shmaya in understanding the Second Law of Thermodynamics and such, Toras Hashem comes to us by virtue of a wireless hookup because we are only able to understand it because the Shechina is here with us.  Without the active work-a-day presence of the Shechina we would have no chance of understanding Toras Hashem.

By definition that means that if you learn Toras Hashem, the Shechina is there with you.  And as a caveat that means that Torah has to be learned as Toras Hashem, not as just another chochmah, chas v’shalom.

But Rav Pincus z”l, doesn’t stop with the Shechina.  The process of our learning is even on a more rarefied and personal madreiga because we are told that any Jew sitting and learning Torah is receiving it from the Mouth of Hashem Yisborach. 

Or put another way, every time you sit and learn you are learning b’chavrusa with Hashem.

Rabbi Goldman tells us in the name of Rav Pincus z”l, that if Moshe Rabbeinu had to learn from Hashem all the more so us.  If the learning of Torah was up to us it would be constricted by our own limits.

When learning with Hashem there are no limits because it’s Hashem that gives wisdom.

It’s Ours for the Wanting

Shabbos is the day of Hashem. 

The Ramchal tells us in the second paragraph of the first chapter in the Mesillas Yesharim that:

Our Sages of blessed memory have taught us that man was created for the sole purpose of rejoicing in G-d and deriving pleasure from the splendor of His Presence; for this is the true joy and the greatest pleasure that can be found.  The place where this joy may truly be derived is the World to Come….

There is a teaching of Chazal that Shabbos is a taste of the World to Come, and just like dveykus with Hashem is the bottom line of our hoped for existence in the World to Come as per the Ramchal above, so it is with Shabbos.  For as Rabbi Shimshon Pincus z”l, tells us, Shabbos is a relationship, with the relationship being one of attachment to Hashem.

So how do we get from here (Shabbos) to there (attachment to Hashem)?  As Rav Pincus z”l makes clear, the starting point is Emunah.  We acquire Shabbos through Emunah, and through Shabbos we acquire Hashem.

It’s as simple and as difficult as that. 

Kedushas Shabbos is different from all other kedushas in the world.  Unlike other forms of kedusha, which either exist or do not exist, the existence of Kedushas Shabbos is conditional in the sense that one has to plug into it. Without some activity on our part it remains in sleep mode vis á vis us for the 25 hours that connect one week to the next.

The irony is that the only thing interposed between ourselves and Kedushas Shabbos is us, by our failure to manifest the actions and attitude that would pull back the curtain so as to enable us to saturate our senses with the Kedushas Shabbos that was there all along.

So how does a person merit Kedushas Shabbos?  And exactly what actions and attitudes are we talking about here?

With big kavanahs?  Maybe toiveling in a mikvah on erev Shabbos?  Or perhaps the recitation of special tefillahs appropriate for the time in conjunction with a seder in Hilchos Shabbos?

We merit Kedushas Shabbos by preparing special foods for Shabbos and shining our shoes.

That’s it?!

Almost.

Rav Pincus z”l reveals to us that all a person can do to merit this kedusha is to desire it.  Only those who want the gift of Shabbos get it.

You have to want it, and if you do it’s there for the taking because someone who desires Shabbos and who makes a big deal out of Shabbos merits Kedushas Shabbos.

So Who are You Relying on? (part 2)

In EmunahSpeak: So Who are You Relying on… we said that The avodah of bitochon is to train oneself to rely only on Hashem. 

No small statement, this.

After a chapter and verse recitation of a number of things that we do in fact foolishly rely on, we quoted Rabbi Chaim Malinowitz’s take on the view of the Chovos Halavovos as put forth in the Sha’ar HaBitochon:

The avodah of bitochon is that we should rely on Hashem that the store will be open on time, that the milk will be fresh, that the cars will stop at the red light etc..  Bitochon and relying are active verbs.  We are relying on Hashem that the bank will have our money, that our boss won’t fire us. We are relying on Hashem to bring us customers, not the size of the ad that we place in the media.

And so it is.  But that’s not all it is.

The picture that Rabbi Malinowitz painted for us was but a broad-stroke lick and a shmeck of what it means to rely upon Hashem.  But the devil is in the details.

How about a cup of coffee? 

On a very basic level, along the lines of what we previously brought out in EmunahSpeak: So Who are You Relying on… we are relying on Hashem rather than the store that there will be coffee, sugar, cups, lids, milk, and stirrers.  This is Relying on Hashem 101, and it’s a very high madreiga, because most everyone else relies on Costco, the merkolit, or the corner bodega.

But if you would actually like to drink something then we have to take our reliance on Hashem to a more advanced level.

One who relies on Hashem does so to the exclusion of anything else.  In reference to our cup of coffee it means that we rely on Hashem period, not on Hashem in addition to the laws of physics or chemistry.  Therefore we are relying on Hashem that the cup won’t leak.

And unless you prefer iced coffee, you are relying on Hashem that the water should be hot.  And if you do, in fact, prefer iced coffee, you are relying on Hashem that the ice cubes should be cold. And moreover, you are relying on Hashem that those cold ice cubes will chill your coffee.

And if you do want your coffee hot, then rely on Hashem, not the Styrofoam cup, to keep it sizzling.  Use of the Styrofoam cup only gives us the right to rely on Hashem because without either it or something equivalent we would not have done the proper hishtadlus required to bring Hashem into the picture in the first place.

And those whose palettes desire something more than the taste of water rely on Hashem to give the brown liquid in their cup the taste of “real” coffee.  Those who rely on Starbucks to take care of the taste run the risk of getting decaf on the wrong end of a labeling mistake or something worse.

To the extent that we are hung up on taste we are also relying on Hashem that the sugar or its substitute will be sweet.  But that in itself is not enough to put us on a cavity watch, so we are relying on Hashem to that the sugar will sweeten the coffee.

This still won’t hack it because I’m also relying on Hashem that the coffee will mix with the sugar (and the milk) when I stir it.

All this for a cup of coffee.

Anyone for tea?

If I Forget You, O Yerushalayim,....

….may my right hand forget (its skill).  May my tongue cleave to my palate if I remember you not, if I fail to elevate Yerushalayim above the zenith of my joy.

The Midrash Shocher Tov (Midrash Tehillim) taught as follows:

If a man covers his house with plaster, he must leave a small place uncovered as a mourning reminder of Yerushalayim.  If a man prepares all that goes with a feast, he must leave out some small thing as a reminder of Yerushalayim.  If a woman is adorning herself, she must leave off some small thing as a reminder of Yerushalayim, for it is said: If I forget thee, O Yerushalayim, let my right hand forget her cunning.

And the Rama tells us that from the words, if I fail to elevate Yerushalayim above the zenith of my joy, we derive our custom of putting ashes on a chosson’s head prior to the chuppah and the breaking of the glass at its conclusion.

Rav Avigdor Miller z”l, took a very dim view of what has become of the breaking of the glass following the recitation of the Bracha Achrita under the chuppah.  He was of the opinion that rather than induce the intended tear and/or a longing for the Yerushalayim that was, it has been reduced for many years now, if not generations, to nothing more than a signal for mazel tov. 

 And even on those occasions when the music, and the dancing of the chosson/kallah out of the chuppah room are put on hold for a few minutes in deference to the singing of a few possukim from Al Naharos Bavel, it’s more often than not a moment of musical appreciation for the Shwekey et al. rendition of the possukim rather than one of introspection.

The same goes for leaving a part of our dwellings unfinished and the like.  After all, who lets loose with a sigh every time he walks past the unpainted portion of the wall next to his front door?  If one ever noticed it at all it has long since become part of the scenery.  And as for putting ashes on the chosson’s head, their symbolism is more often than not fighting a losing battle with the dominant thoughts that are already residing in the chosson’s head, not to mention all of the kavanah expended on being careful that a stain from the ashes should not trespass on the kittel.

Due to our many sins, the Yetzer Hora has gently nudged us in the direction of the customs that Chazal have bidden us to take on; those that are meant to keep the memory of Yerushalayim alive within us, while ever so subtly drawing us away from their source.

What meaning can these customs hold for us if the well from which they were drawn no longer quenches our thirst?  When we succumbed to the Yetzer’s sleight of hand and stopped reciting Al Naharos Bavel before bentching on weekdays, we tore all of the above mentioned simanim loose from the bedrock upon which they were moored.  No longer tethered to the possukim that spawned them, they ceased to invoke in us that fleeting but wrenching feeling of remembrance and loss that they once did.

The Mishnah Berurah cites the Shelah HaKodesh as the source for reciting Al Naharos Bavel before Birchas Hamazon.  The very same Shelah HaKodesh is not coincidently also the source for our custom to recite Shir Hamalos (Tehillim 126) before Birchos Hamazon on Shabbos, Yom Tov, Rosh Kodesh, and special occasions.  If you feel the weight of obligation to say one of them, as you do with Shir Hamalos, then why not the other?

Nu? 

The Shelah HaKodesh had an off day perhaps when he gave his psak concerning Al Naharos Bavel? 

The Yetzer Hora will encourage us to break glasses and burn ashes haint biz morgen.  He’ll even let us sing If I forget thee, O Yerushalayim…, along with a small choir to the accompaniment of a twenty piece orchestra.  But the last thing he wants is that we should actually read the words.

By the rivers of Babylon there we sat and also wept when we remembered Tzion.

What else is one to think about when reading these words, if not Tzion?  Is there any wiggle room here for ambiguity?  And is there any symbol that can better convey what our feeling should be toward Tzion than the word wept?

And even at the warp speed that’s unfortunately all too de rigueur vis à vis bentching, how does one’s eye glaze over If I forget you, O Yerushalayim, may my right forget (its skill).  May my tongue cleave to my palate if I remember you not, if I fail to elevate Yerushalayim above the zenith of my joy.   

It doesn’t.

And it isn't dry either.

Hashem is Here, Hashem is There….

Hashem is here, Hashem is there, Hashem is truly everywhere.

Hashem is here, Hashem is there, Hashem is truly everywhere.

Up up, down down, right left and all around.

Here there and everywhere, that’s where he can be found.

Up up, down down, right left and all around.

Here there and everywhere, that’s where he can be found.

So sings Uncle Moishy in one of his signature songs.

The original Chabad version as rendered in the Official Jewish Songbook substitutes East side, west side, all around the town for Here there and everywhere, and given the advent of the GPS generation it appears that Uncle Moishy was on to something because who today would know in what direction to point when singing East side, west side?

Be that as it may, in the same way that many of us never quite shake the dumbed down understanding of Chumash that we acquire as children, we also tend to “hear” the concept rather than the reality of Hashem is here, Hashem is there… in the context of a children’s song.  Ironically, it’s only the childish genre that distracts us from the fundamental truth that’s being expressed therein because the words themselves are spot on in their simplistic profundity.  So much so, that one would be hard pressed to more clearly make the point.

And what have the children been singing all these years if not the Emunah national anthem?

Here there and everywhere, that’s where he can be found points us in the right direction but unless we look in that direction through the lens of Emunah we’ll see nothing but nature.

Where is G-d to be found, asked Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotsk?  And he answered, in the place where He is given entry.  But how does He enter if not by virtue of our Emunah?

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.  Our job is to take the juvenile abstraction of Hashem is here, Hashem is there that we melodically internalized way back when, and morph it into the mature reality of Emunah.

In EmunahSpeak: Living With Hashem Rabbi Moshe Hauer….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 (and over there and up there and down 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, there, and everywhere which culminates in a palpable feeling of living with Hashem. 

Hashem is here, Hashem is there, Hashem is truly everywhere is all that stands between us and spiritual blindness because as the Kotsker Rebbe observed, the one who does not see the Omnipresent [literally, place] in every place, will not see Him in any place.

Leveraging Yissurim

There are number of ways to look at Yissurim.  In EmunahSpeak: Seeing the Good, we addressed the subject on two levels.

On a very basic level we spoke about how Hashem only wants the best for us and how we should view life’s curve balls as the real Plan A rather the ruination of what we thought was Plan A.

We went on to point out that for most of us it is the madreiga of grinning and bearing it, which means that if we’ve got our heads screwed on right, really tight, we won’t have a meltdown when a pipe bursts in our house putting most of what we own three feet under water.  We’re not happy about it, to be sure, and as much as we may try, we also seem to be incapable of discerning the good that will eventually put in an appearance.  And nonetheless, we’ll say gam zu l’tova, accepting b’lev shaleim that it’s all Hashem’s will. 

If you think that this is no big deal of a madreiga, see how close you get to it the next time Hashem doesn’t sign off on your plans. Nonetheless, this response is passive, and we’re locked in on defense with no pushback on our part.

On a much higher level, high enough to be but theoretical for all but a few, Rabbi Yisroel Brog shared with us an amazing insight.  He told us, in the name of the Tanya, that the yissurim that we endure in the course of our sojourn in this physical world come from a world that is totally tov, and we are incapable of seeing the tov in much the same way that we are incapable of seeing ethereal beings such as angels.

And because these yissurim do in fact come from a world that is totally good, they have to come to us as such because this world cannot handle anything emanating from that world that’s not dressed up in a levush of yissurim.

Those who are samayach with their yissurim disregard the package (the yissurim) and look inside (the tov).  They are samayach because they realize that they are zoche to a good that is so special that it has to be packaged in yissurim.

In the first case we endure, while in the second a very chosen few are able to see past their yissurim to the good lurking within..

So what about the rest of us who, in a spiritual sense, are very much subject to the law of gravity?  How do we leverage our yissurim as opposed to passively grinning and bearing it?

Being makir tov is a pretty good start.

You broke your leg, and now you are hopping around on crutches?  Whatever Hashem’s reason, one thing is certain:  He had one.  And the fact that He had one precludes any idea of mistake or accident.  So, while you were uncomfortably leaning on your crutches during Shemona Esray, did you remember in Modim to thank Hashem that your leg wasn’t amputated because of diabetes or that you didn’t crack your skull instead?

According to the view of the Chovos Halavovos, no matter how good we are and regardless of how many mitzvos we do or how much Torah we learn we can’t begin to pay Hashem back for the fact that he brought us into this world and sustains us.  And to accentuate the point he notes that before we draw our first breath we are already nine months behind in the cheshbon.

Simply put, Hashem owes us nothing and we owe Him everything.  Whatever we get is a gift with one hundred and twenty years of perfect health being a bigger gift than two painful years on a respirator.  This being true, it therefore logically follows that those two painful years on a respirator are a bigger gift than four even more painful years on a respirator.  And so it goes.

Whatever yissurim come our way are ironically by way of Hashem’s Middas HaRachamim, not Middas HaDin, and they are better than we deserve because we have no claim in strict Din whatsoever for anything.

You got hired?  Boruch Hashem!  You got fired?  Boruch Hashem!

Each event was brought about for a different reason to be sure, but they are both Boruch Hashem nonetheless because in the same way that we are supposed to bless Hashem for the bad as well as the good we should thank him also, and we do so by leveraging our yissurim as a vehicle for something positive to say in Modim.

Yissurim are also a revelation, in that their ebb and flow make us keenly aware of the miracles inherent in our bodies.  They are an advance seminar in the Sha’ar HaBechina of the Chovos Halavovos and as such, our relationship to them should be viewed as one of rebbe and talmid in which we imbibe a shmeck of the profundity of our physical existence.  

Rav Miller z”l, taught us that by bringing attention, for instance, to a part of the body that we have temporarily forgotten that we possess, yissurim draw the attention of the thinking person to the seamless perfection of Hashem’s handiwork as manifested in us. 

Hashem has to arrange for something to go wrong (in the form of yissurim) for us to come to a clear understanding of the “miracle” of everything going right.

Missing the Message

Virtually all of us, somewhere in our lives, have to deal with those who can be charitably described as being difficult.  And for most, it’s practically a cradle to grave experience.

Be it a close relative, teacher, co-worker, roommate or simply the guy that sits next to you in shul, the one who thinks that Hashem is deaf; we are constantly challenged, if not assaulted, by people whose behavior runs decidedly south of the norm.

So how do we react?

Some of us (ME) don’t do well with this sort of thing.  We tend towards a somewhat less than tolerant view of our fellow man if he is thought to be other than normal as defined by us.  Whereas the more egalitarian disposed amongst us see little more than the quirks and idiosyncrasies that are nuts and bolts of what might benignly be thought of as eccentric behavior, we get fixated on the sundry abnormalities that confront us to the exclusion of all other considerations.

We are admonished to go with the flow of the yissurim that we encounter in the course of our lives as opposed to kicking back at it, and yet that’s exactly what we do with the emotional yissurim that come our way as a by-product of our relationships with people perceived to be difficult.

In EmunahSpeak: The Stick we spoke about the moshal that compares the way we react to the events in our lives, be they big or small, to a dog barking at a stick being wielded against it.

We asked there: why is it that we (who should know better) are constantly angry at the stick?

And we answered that: Unlike the dog, we never see Anyone holding it.  If we did, we would no doubt do a lot better than a dog in zeroing in on the cause of our discomfort.  The “sticks” in our lives are physically detached from the One that wields them, and as a consequence thereof, we all too often fail to fill in the spiritual blanks in our field of visual understanding.  And so we lash out at the stick, be it a spouse, a neighbor, a flat tire, a boss or a migraine, missing the essential point of the encounter in the process.

So if we're reacting to everything that comes our way as opposed to discerning its underlying message, what then is the difference between the challenges presented by the difficult ones amongst us and the everyday stuff that gets in our face?

Those things to which we react adversely in the every day give and take of our existence are more or less speed bumps on an otherwise fairly smooth road. Not so vis á vis those that challenge us by their very existence. Speed bumps are not the exception.  They’re the default position, and we react accordingly by being in permanent anticipation mode.  Rather than wait for a shoe to drop, we act as if it already did.

Dr. Dovid Lieberman directs our focus where it should be when he tells us that it is our responsibility to perceive the wider reality which is that Hashem is speaking to us through every person and situation.  While this is certainly true for all people as was pointed out above, as far as the difficult ones are concerned, Hashem never stops talking.

The truth, says Dr. Lieberman, is that such relationships are a very common area in which people often miss the message by focusing on the messenger instead because they don't understand that difficult people are not in our lives to add to our woes, but to help us.

Rather than get aggravated by the people who don’t act normally, we should be reflecting on what lesson can learned from such encounters or relationships by asking:

Nu?  So what does Hashem want from me now?

Tefillah Chronicles (a second look)

Reflections on the DIVINE Dialogue

Way back in September, in the run up to Rosh Hashana, we posted four pieces in seven days, and somehow this one got lost in the shuffle.  For all those whose heads were buried in their Tehillim's last Elul, here's what you missed:

Three steps back, a perfunctory nod to the left followed by one to the right, a few mumbled words facing forward and you’re but two words away from shlepping through yet one more Shemoneh Esrei.  Those two words are V’eemru ahmain, and at this point Shlomo Zalman Auerbach z”l suggests that one reflect on the kind of Amidah he just davened.

Reflect?

Most of us, nebach, were mentally past the last two words before we even uttered the first two.  So now with but two words to go to the finish line we’re supposed to slam on the brakes to bring the express to a halt and reflect, as if we were philosophers, on the davening we just blew through at warp speed.

What’s so important about these two words anyway?

If people actually understood that they were addressing malachim (one good and one bad), and asking them to say AMEN to the nineteen pit stops that served as way stations during their five minute trek across the expanse of their spaced out universe, they might be too ashamed to finish the Shemoneh Esrei.

More specifically, we are asking the malachim to sign off on our ruminations over the stock market in Boreich Aleinu, our reflections on the Yankees in Shema Koleinu, the deal that slipped through our fingers in Re’ay, and the deal we hope to make today in Modim, to name but a few of our imaginative wanderings.

Okay, so most of us are somewhere else when we’re davening Shemoneh Esrei, and we’re not that picky about it either.  Apparently, anyplace will do, the only criteria being that we wind up “there” as opposed to “here.”

The irony, of course, is that those who are focused on their davening are also someplace else.  Proper d’veikus and kavanah means going to another planet.  Those who do it right aren’t here during that time either.

It’s quite unbelievable when you think about it.  We call it Tefillah B’Tzibur but everyone’s “there” in one form or the other, except for the two malachim.  They’re here, and they are waiting for those last two words.  The good news, however, is that they aren’t all that makpid.

If your mind took you to a place where you talked to Hashem, they will answer your Amen with one of their own.  But if you drifted off to a place (or rather places) where the whole world talked to you, fugetaboutit.

You’ll get another chance to change addresses at Mincha.

Punching the "Plan A" Time Clock

In EmunahSpeak: PLAN B we noted that our self-absorption notwithstanding, the truth is that this is a theocentric world, which requires us to understand that what we propose to do is actually Plan B.  All that other stuff: the flats, the medical emergencies etc. is in reality Plan A, because it obviously reflects the Yad Hashem which is manifesting itself in our lives.

It’s all a matter of focus.

It’s all about looking at life’s curve balls as the real Plan A rather the ruination of what we thought was Plan A.

Our plans, short range or long are put forth as the manifestation of our collective egos.  It is all about us: what we propose, how we see it, what we would like etc.  It all comes down to this:  We spend virtually every day of our entire lives writing a ticket that may well end up as Plan B at Hashem’s discretion if He doesn’t choose to punch it, whereas the reality that supplants our intentions, be they worthy or otherwise, is revealed after the fact as the true Plan A.

I am beginning to think that maybe we are more prolific writers than we would have ever imagined.

It could well be that in certain instances, specifically concerning the speed bumps that we hit in the course of our daily routine that are no more than time wasters, such as being stuck in traffic and the like, that we essentially write the script notwithstanding the fact that its very existence is put into play by Hashem to thwart the one in which we were emotionally invested.

How so?

Sometimes, the reality show that ends up getting stamped as Plan A is a snapshot of the Ribbono Shel Olam’s principle of midda keneged midda in the context of what you do with your time.

If you are the polar opposite of one who moves with alacrity to do Hashem’s will, in that you are terminally late for davening or learning, and/or you waste much of your actual face time in the aforementioned and similar mitzvah oriented activities, maybe Hashem pays you back by wasting even more of your time.  And it’s not just limited to the ruchniyas aspects of our lives.  Anything you do, or to be more precise, don’t do in terms of what proper hishtadlus would require in any given situation would be grist for a midda keneged midda lost time payback.

To the extent that this is true it comes out that we ultimately write our own ticket on many of life’s petty, time wasting irritations.  Ironically, we set in motion the very forces that dumb down our aspirations to Plan B status by inadvertently signing at the bottom line of what Hashem has seen fit to present us with as Plan A.

Panim el Panim

In EmunahSpeak: Goin’ Ostrich we pointed out that:

As a proxy for earthquakes and floods we have missiles, but instead of seeing them through the eyes of the Gemara so as to utilize them as a means of bringing us to Teshuva, all we see, to the extent that we trouble ourselves to look, is missiles and the wickedness of the Arabs that rain them down on our heads. 

True enough, but Rabbi Yehuda Litwen makes the point even more explicit, as he gives it to us black on white in the name of R’ Elchonon Wasserman:

When we had Neviim they told us what the demands in Shomayim were from us.  But now we do not have Neviim, so how do we know what Hashem wants from us?  R' Elchonon said that Hashem speaks to us through the other nations of the world-if rockets are flying then Hashem is telling us WAKE UP!

If Hashem is speaking to us amidst the missiles falling on Ashdod and sundry venues, He’s no doubt screaming at us out of the carnage in Toulouse, but the screaming, as such, is not substantively a function of decibels.  It’s procedural, and it comes to us in the manner of its delivery.

We learn from the Ariza’l that a wife is a mirror of the husband.  Whatever deficiency he has he sees in her.  Moreover, and this is the point that concerns us, Rabbi Shalom Arush tells us something that distinguishes the horror of Toulouse from the other body counts that have (hopefully) humbled us in the not so distant past.  He lets us hear that Hashem also speaks to the husband through the wife. 

Eva Sandler, r”l, no longer has a husband to speak to.

While still sitting shiva for her husband, Yonatan and her two sons h”yd, she wrote a letter that was posted on Chabad.org and published in Hamodia, in which, amongst other things, she said the following:

Along with our tearful remembrance of our trials in Egypt so many years ago, we still tell over how “in each and every generation, they have stood against us to destroy us.” We all will announce in a loud and clear voice: “G-d saves us from their hands.”

The spirit of the Jewish people can never be extinguished; its connection with Torah and its commandments can never be destroyed.

Parents, please kiss your children. Tell them how much you love them, and how dear it is to your heart that they be living examples of our Torah, imbued with the fear of Heaven and with love of their fellow man.

Please increase your study of Torah, whether on your own or with your family and friends. Help others who may find study difficult to achieve alone.

May it be G-d’s will that from this moment on, we will all only know happiness.

Does this sound like a widow so recently bereft of her husband and two sons that our tears haven’t had time to dry yet?

Who’s speaking here, anyway? 

Is it not Hashem?  And is he not speaking directly to us?

What we are hearing here is not your every day wake up call.  Hashem is not hinting to us by way of missiles and the like in lieu of the Neviim, to which He came in visions and dreams.

He’s speaking to us Panim el Panim in a scream couched in the barely audible whisper of a widow. And we don’t have to ponder our reaction because this time He tells us exactly what it should be.

Whence the Real Deal Teshuva (2)?

Project Cheshvan

In EmunahSpeak: A Real Deal Teshuva (2) the emphasis was prospective with an eye to growth rather than a retrospective inventory of our accumulated aveiros.  We said there:

In Elul you are what you want to be.  You are the sum total of all the aspirations and kavanas you have for growth in the ensuing year.  During the rest of the year, however, you are what you do on a daily basis, with the reality check of what you aspired to in Elul being what you do on a daily basis in Shevat.  If your growth was real enough to take root then it will still be around to blossom in Shevat.

If it was stunted, it won’t. 

In Elul I was on the cutting edge of big hasagos.  If I was the sum total of all my aspirations, kavanas, and the like then I must of have been at least ten feet tall at the time.  

Then, as was stated above, came the reality check of what I do on a daily basis in Shevat, and the ten feet that I imagined myself to be back in Elul quickly morphed into an imagined five feet standing on shifting sands.

Well here we are in Nissan already, and my Elul Do List is still in mint condition, finger print free, and I probably could sell it to a collector on eBay.  The way things are going I may well be spared writing a new one for this coming Elul.

And it wasn’t like I put it into a draw or something.  I had it right on my desk next to my laptop along with sundry reminders scotched taped to my desk lamp and my laptop so that it has been in my face since Elul.

So what happened?  The same thing that happens every year.

Nothing.

And after giving it some serious thought I think I understand why.  For one to take on to improve in any number of given areas over the course of the coming year is like deciding to do something between now and the rest of one’s life.

A year is simply too long.

Not that it wouldn’t take a year or more (and quite likely a lifetime) to effect a proper tikkun in certain areas in desperate need of improvement.  It’s just that with the finish line so far off into the distance of next Elul/Tishrei we tend to space out as to the immediacy of it all, and with all the time in the world to get started we never do.

The solution, as such, consists of reducing the year to a month, which forces us to start now, not then.

Bowing to the reality that approximately eighteen children under the age of ten will be running loose in my house at various times during the run up to Pesach, the Yom Tov itself, and its aftermath, my intention to afflict some wear and tear on my Elul list will be put off until Iyar.

If I can’t make a significant start, and hopefully a serious dent, in my Elul list during Project Iyar’s attempt to play catch up after six months of treading water, then EmunahSpeak: A Real Deal Teshuva (2) gets deleted from the archives.  The failure to do what needs to be done is already enough for my plate.  It doesn’t have to be seasoned with hypocrisy.

Henceforth, we’re talking Project Cheshvan, not Iyar.  That’s the deadline to seriously massage all those things you promised to do in Elul.  Aside for things such as committing not to speak loshon hora and the like, which people tend to jump into right away (and usually fail) there’s too much doing in Tishrei for most people to make a go of it with any hope of success.

If you're one of those truly rare people who thinks he could pull it together in Tishrei with enough presence of mind to make a frontal assault on his Elul list you shouldn’t be reading this.

You should be writing it instead.

The Purely Righteous

So who are they, anyway?

While the tzaddikim are most certainly purely righteous, the purely righteous do not necessarily have to be tzaddikim. 

They could also be Beinonim on a roll who are rising to the challenge of the tests being placed before them in contradistinction to their literal soul brother, the Rasha, who simply goes with the flow of his inherent bent toward wickedness without making any attempt at staying the course.

As we said in reference to the Beinoni in EmunahSpeak: The Beinoni HaKodosh (2), Our whole purpose in this world is to defeat the Ra, and defeat in this context doesn’t mean changing the Ra into something you would be comfortable inviting to your home for a Shabbos seuda.  Ra is an integral part of Creation with a fundamental role to play for the duration. Our job here is not to change the Ra but rather to push it away.

The mechanics of the pushing away process was also laid out in EmunahSpeak: The Beinoni HaKodosh (2)  where we also spoke about the Beinoni’s ability to push the Sitra Achra (Ra) down every time he abstains from doing something he shouldn’t do and the fact that he possesses that koach only by virtue of the possibility of his not abstaining.

But by merely staying on defense, ever so vigilant not to do that which the Torah prohibits, a Beinoni doesn’t qualify as yet as being purely righteous. In addition to being able to administer a smack down to the Ra he has to bring something to the table in the way of spreading light if he wishes to do as the purely righteous do.

And what exactly do the purely righteous do, be they of the Tzaddikim or of the Beinonim?

Rav Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook z”l, explained as follows:

Rather than complain about wickedness, the purely righteous go on offense and increase righteousness.  And they do it by example, which in turn brings people close as opposed to pushing them away.

And rather than complain about heresy, the purely righteous increase faith. They instill in others the foundations of emunah which, in and of itself, pushes heresy out the door, because as we know from EmunahSpeak: Nothing but Thoughts, we have it on good authority from Chazal that one cannot hold onto two disparate thoughts at the same time, so all we have to do is to decide to put good thoughts into our heads, thereby pre-empting the dark side competition.

And rather than complain about ignorance, the purely righteous increase wisdom.  They know that the only antidote to ignorance is to give over the Toras Moshe that they received from their rebbeim who are links in a chain extending all the way back to Har Sinai.

The approach of the purely righteous is the Rosetta Stone of achdus.  Rather than snipe from the sidelines on all the ills, real and imagined, that plague us, the purely righteous proactively give of their essence with the aim of qualifying those very ills for the endangered species list.

They understand that a little light can dispel a great amount of darkness, so rather than complain about darkness the purely righteous increase light.

Goin' Ostrich

My brother’s keeper?

 Back in Elul, in EmunahSpeak: Red Alert! we noted the recent missile attacks on Ashdod.  And although through the course of the year the intermittent firing of missiles triggered additional Red Alerts, it wasn’t till this past Shabbos and the days following, that the Red Alert siren was heard in Ashdod with a frequency approaching that of last Elul. 

And as it was back in Elul, it falls to Rabbi Lazer Brody to give us the play by play at street level:

GRAD rockets continue to be fired from Gaza toward Ashdod. We had 5 Red-alerts this morning, at 6:30 AM, 8:15 AM, 8:35 AM, 10:07 and just now at 10:55 AM.

That was yesterday’s bulletin. 

On Sunday, he reported that in addition to a number of hits that day, the Red Alert was heard many times in the wee hours of Shabbos morning.  So much so, that people were nodding out in shul from lack of sleep.

And today, for the fourth day in a row it was more of the same with attacks coming at 2:25 P.M., 2:45 P.M., 3:15 P.M., and 5:00 P.M.

As for the rest of the country, the part that’s outside of siren range, it’s not clear if they’re hearing anything at all, be it with their ears or their hearts.

In EmunahSpeak: Now We Know we said in reference to the Leiby Kletsky tragedy:

Like rolling thunder he (the Satan) moved from one place to the next.  Way out at first on the other side of the world through New Zealand and Japan, leaving earthquakes in his wake, then a lot closer in the form of tornadoes tearing through the Deep South and then through Joplin, Missouri.  From there he went into the flood business as he devastated the Mississippi Valley, and then, back in tornado mode, he dropped in for a quick pit stop next door in Springfield, Massachusetts to quench his thirst by almost sucking up the Connecticut River.

These weren’t isolated incidents.

As is well known, the Gemara in Yevamos teaches that every disaster that comes upon the world comes only because of Klal Yisroel.  It’s always about us.  It always was and it always will be.

Rav Miller, z”l used to say that if you see a small news item on the bottom of page 89 in the New York Times reporting a cyclone in Bangladesh that killed 200,000 people, the whole purpose for this devastation was that a Jew named Miller in Flatbush should hear about it and do Teshuva.  And if he doesn’t do Teshuva, then it’s a waste of a lot of goyim for nothing.

Like rolling thunder, the Satan moved from one place to the next.  Each stop along the way Hashem knocked on our door, but we didn’t answer.  And so it went until he reached Boro Park.

And when he finally got there, Hashem didn’t knock.  He let the Satan kick the door down instead.

You can’t say we weren’t warned.

And in like manner both those living in Ashdod and all the rest of us for that matter, who are doing our best to avert our eyes, have also been warned.

As a proxy for earthquakes and floods we have missiles, but instead of seeing them through the eyes of the Gemara so as to utilize them as a means of bringing us to Teshuva, all we see, to the extent that we trouble ourselves to look, is missiles and the wickedness of the Arabs that rain them down on our heads. 

Rather than see a wake up call, we see a routine, or more accurately we succumb to a routine much akin to garbage collection or bread delivery.

A couple of years ago, Mishpacha Magazine ran a piece about Netivot when the first kassim rockets fell within a kilometer of the town. The people quoted in that story made it very clear that they viewed the possibility of rockets, chas v'shalom, falling on Netivot as a tragedy of major proportions.  That it was happening tog and nacht in Sederot which is only a few kilometers up the road was not even mentioned, and therein lays the real tragedy.  One does not have to look further than Parshas Vayeira to see what kind of a midda this is. 

What future is there in a country where the concern of anyone as to what’s happening runs only to the extent that it’s happening to him? 

Instead of deciphering and internalizing what the Gemara tells us should be on our screen, we do a one-eighty by not daring to take a peak outside our daled amos. And as a consequence thereof, we are the ultimate losers because when we go ostrich vis á vis yenem we are at the same time closing our eyes to that which was sent our way to awaken us to our dire need to do Teshuva.

The Yetzer Hora’s Purim

That’s pretty much what we have, isn’t it?

There’s an inyan to drink on Purim "until one does not know (ad d'lo yoda) the difference between "cursed is Haman and blessed is Mordechai".  There is also an inyan to be b’simcha and to do things out of our norm like dress up in costumes etc.

And when it comes to these inyanai Purim the Yetzer Hora does more than simply answer present at the roll call.  It's a real frumak so the order of the day, as far as it is concerned, is to be super machmir.  In its zealousness to be mehuder in all of the inyanai Purim, it pushes the envelope on ad d'lo yoda and takes it to new and uncharted territory where Simchas Purim morphs into kalos rosh so as to make the two indistinguishable.

As far as the drinking is concerned, the Yetzer massages the definition of ad d'lo yoda to such an extent that it’s hard to tell the difference between the Irish and the Jews, leaving the Irish green with envy over how we do them one better on St. Purim Day.

It comes out that instead of V'nahafoch Hu meaning an inversion of reality as in an upside down world, it more accurately represents an inside out Yiddishkeit with Purim definitely on the outside looking in.

 

And so it goes.

 

That’s not to say that we don’t get anything right.  After all, we do go through the motions rather well.  As per the Halacha, we’re attentive to every word of the Megillah.  We spare no expense on Shalach Manos and we give Matanos L’evyonim with a full hand.  And we readily comply with the directive of Chazal that states Kol haposhet yad nos'nim lo (Whoever stretches out their hand on Purim should be given tzeddakah) (Talmud Yerushalmi, Megilah 1,4).

 

Throw in a seuda that would make Achashverosh sit up and take notice, and you’re looking at the halakhically sound, hashkafically dormant Purim otherwise known as the Yetzer Hora’s Purim.  In the same way that a woman can be technically tznius from head to toe and still look like lady of the night, our Purim moves stealthily through all of the halachic checkpoints without setting off any alarms while hashkafically it’s hard to find a pulse.

 

What is there in any of these activities, proper and, unfortunately, universal as they may be, that bespeaks of the fact that Purim is the holiest day of the year, or as Rabbi Shimshon Pincus z”l, puts it, the epitome of kedusha?  And do we see from any of this that Purim is mesugal more than any other day of the year for any yeshua that one may require for whatever reason?  

 

It’s all part and parcel of all of those outstretched hands that we so generously shmeared with gelt during Purim. In the same way that we speak no evil, hear no evil, and see no evil vis á vis those extended hands irrespective of whatever they may be attached to, Hashem gives us whatever we’re davening for just for the asking without any kashas on His part.  The whole day of Purim, Hashem, Who's itching to love bomb us with everything and anything, waits for our tefillos that for the most part never come.

 

So why aren’t we davening in any semblance of a meaningful way?  Why is it that on a day that oozes kedusha, when our tefillos, brochos, and bentching should be different, our idea of different is chap lop?!

 

The story goes something like this: we get sucker punched by all of the tumult inherent in the whole inyan of simchas Purim and by the opportunity that the mitzvohs of the day give us to think that we have gotten to the core of the matter.

 

As Rabbi Mordechai Groner puts it, theYetzer Horah works very hard on distracting us from the "REAL" avodah of Purim.  And that avodah is to restoreV'nahafoch Hu to its traditional meaning by leaving the Yetzer outside looking in and by not being attracted/distracted by the leibidik levush of Purim at the expense of its inner sanctity and all that flows from it.

The Beinoni HaKodosh (2)

In EmunahSpeak: The Beinoni HaKodosh we said, our job is to reach the level of Beinonim.  And we also noted that Hashem derives a tremendous nachas ruach from the Beinoni’s lifetime street fight with Ra (evil).

The entire existence of the Beinoni is a study in contradiction because the very strength of the Beinoni derives from an inherent weakness.

Unlike the Tzaddik, who for the most part travels under the radar as far as life’s temptations are concerned, the Beinoni never leaves his foxhole on the front line in the battle against Ra.  His weakness is that he sometimes forgets to keep his head down, which invariably leads to a grab bag of negative consequences.  But being a Beinoni, he licks his wounds and is back in the thick of it in short order. 

Our whole purpose in this world is to defeat the Ra, and defeat in this context doesn’t mean changing the Ra into something you would be comfortable inviting to your home for a Shabbos seuda.   Ra is an integral part of Creation with a fundamental role to play for the duration.  Our job here is not to change the Ra but rather to push it away.

And this is where the Beinoni’s strength lies.  It’s in his ability to push the Sitra Achra (Ra) down every time he abstains from doing something he shouldn’t do, and he possesses that koach only by virtue of the possibility of his not abstaining.  And that positive decision not to do wrong diminishes the koach of tuma which consequently causes the Kovod Shomayim to go up in the world.  And this elevating of Hashem is more important than anything else. In contradistinction, the Tzaddik has no taiva to do Ra as we understand that term, which means that he cannot subdue the influence of the Sitra Achra in this world.

As we said in EmunahSpeak: The Beinoni HaKodosh, At its root, this world was created with but two personality types that will always remain the way they are: The Tzaddik and the Rasha.  And as we also learned there, Beinonim, in the view of the Tanya, have the same spiritual DNA as the Rasha’im.
 
The Tzaddik and Beinoni are side by side with one not being higher than the other.  They represent two distinct ways for nachas ruach before Hashem.  And He doesn’t expect from one what he wants from the other.

Rabbi Yisroel Brog tells us that a Tzaddik can turn what’s bitter into something sweet and darkness into light.  The Tzaddik increases tov, but he’s not fighting to destroy the Ra.

And that’s why we need Beinonim.  Beinonim do the job.

Rabbi Brog points out that whereas the Tzaddik is all about sweetness, the Beinoni is loaded with charif.  The Yetzer Hora is always working on him inside with every tool at his disposal.

This is the lot of the Beinoni, and at the end of the day, no matter what he does he can’t turn the charif into something sweet.

But he can make it palatable.

The Beinoni HaKodosh

At its root, this world was created with but two personality types that will always remain the way they are: The Tzaddik and the Rasha.  And never the twain shall meet.

Very educational to be sure, but what about the vast majority of us who are Beinonim?  To where did we disappear? 

Beinonim, in the view of the Tanya, have the same spiritual DNA as the Rasha’im, and as such, they are essentially nothing more than a variation on the Rasha’s theme.  They are presented with the same challenges, but whereas the Rasha marches in lock step with the flow of his evil inclinations, the Beinoni does his best to paddle upstream against that current, as he contends with the Yetzer Hora in a perpetual turf war for his neshama. 

And the word perpetual is not a literary flourish.  It’s meant to be taken literally.

The Beinoni struggles his whole life with his Yetzer because for all but the fewest of the infinitesimal few who pass through this world as Tzaddikim, the status of Beinoni is the only game in town for those seeking to avoid what Rav Avigdor Miller z"l, used to refer to as the tropics of the next world.  It’s a lifetime contract without an escape clause, rather than a stepping stone by which the righteous amongst us can elevate themselves to the status of Tzaddik.

So if becoming Tzaddikim is, for all practical purposes, essentially beyond our grasp, to what purpose are we engaged in a tug of war with the darker side of our imperfections?

Rabbi Yisroel Brog tells us that our job is to reach the level of Beinonim, and given that at the root both Beinonim and Rasha’im are cut from the same cloth, leaving this world as a rock solid Beinoni is no small accomplishment.

And therefore, with this conception in mind, the idea that we are not put into this world to become spiritual übermentchen, we can deal with our failures.  Just as a basketball player who misses a shot is even more determined to score the next time he gets the ball, the Beinoni who is cognizant of his place in this world brushes himself off after every knockdown and gets back into the ring to continue the fight with Ra (evil) because he understands that his personal struggle, in and of itself, is a great nachas ruach for Hashem. 

The bottom line here is that when a person is faced with a challenge it’s not a sign of weakness.  Rabbi Brog reminds us that it’s a siman that he is alive and that he’s up to his eyeballs in Avodas Hashem.

Beyond the Horizon

This world is the ultimate box, and it is impossible to think out of it because we have no frame of reference on the far side of the universal town limits.

What you see may or may not be what you get, but it nonetheless circumscribes the limits of one’s horizons.

What you can see is all about you.

It’s all about your eyes, which means it’s about your understanding and comprehension.  It’s the database which encompasses the sum total of your perceptions, and as such it’s perpetually in the face of our emunah and bitochon which do not march to the tune of the eye’s inherent limitations.

You have a problem and you don’t see a solution, so that’s it as far as you’re concerned.  It’s time to turn out the lights and call it a day because your whole world is subsumed within the parameters of your imagination, and what you can’t see simply doesn’t exist for you.

But what about what’s beyond your eyes?  That’s all about Who created them.

It’s solely about Hashem without any tevedik pushback to induce us to consider any other scenario.  It’s about the non-existence of limitations of any kind, be it time, space or anything else that reduces our view of the world to the panorama afforded by a keyhole.

When anchored in hashkafic bedrock, our emunah and bitochon pokes a hole through our personal horizon, and beckons our imagination to walk through to the other side to a world in which everything is possible.

As we said in EmunahSpeak: Living With Hashem, 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.

While it’s true that what you can see is all about you, it’s no less true that what you don’t see is all about the bottom line reality of your existence.  It’s in that great unseen realm beyond the horizon of your comprehension that emunah/bitochon intersects with what will eventually morph into the answer to every question and the solution to every problem.