In The Garden of Gratitude (can't recommend this one highly enough, especially if you can read it in the original Hebrew) Rabbi Arush explains a concept that in my opinion, solves the situation in Israel right now (what follows is me paraphrasing the book): He says that sometimes Hashem does something that is totally unexplainable. If a person becomes sad and complains about this situation, saying that it is bad, etc. – then he fails to see Hashem in that situation, which is a lack of emuna. Because of this, the person then falls under hastara – concealment. Now, more things happen to the person that are totally unexaplainable and seem bad, without a good in them. If the person continues to complain and not see Hashem, then the cycle continues, with more and more bad things happening to the person that are confusing and perhaps downright evil. But if the person chooses to praise and thank Hashem, even though it really does look bad, then Hashem saves the person and eventually, they will understand how what happened was totally for the best. And if a person has already gotten into a negative cycle of hastara doubling and re-doubling itself, they can stop the process by starting to thank Hashem for EVERYTHING and strengthen their emuna that everything is for the very best. Then the hastara will go away, and Hashem will save them and show them how everything is indeed for the very best!
This is true on an individual level, which is what Rabbi Arush was discussing in the book. But it certainly is true on a global level as well! In Israel, people are frightened by seemingly senseless terror attacks which are happening, seemingly at random, all the time. The attacks continue to get more gruesome and terrifying, and people are truly afraid. Afraid to walk down the street, afraid to stand at a bustop, afraid to ride the train, afraid to go shopping, afraid to leave the house. Afraid! The cycle of violence continues to escalate, seemingly completely out of hand. The situation in Ch”l isn’t much better, with reports of anti-semitic attacks and propaganda from literally all over the world, also escalating daily, coming to a low boil and threatening to explode R”L. This to me seems like the solution. If Klal Yisrael, instead of being afraid, complaining and seeing the evil – if we would only start thanking Hashem and strengthening our emuna, not complaining at all, knowing instead that there is absolutely no evil in the world and everything comes from Hashem, and only Hashem can permit a terrorist to touch a hair on a Jew’s head, then the concealment surely would go away completely, and Hashem would surely save us from our enemies!!!
*One note – Harav Arush was very strong a few weeks ago that we are not to thank Hashem that another Jew is suffering c”v. We thank Hashem for everything in our private lives since Hashem is waking us up, and that is good! And in general, we can thank Hashem that He is waking up all of Klal Yisrael, and showing us that we have no one to lean on besides Him, and that we know in general everything is for the best etc., but we don’t G-d forbid say something like “thank you Hashem that 4 Jews were killed in Har Nof.” We cry for the suffering of other Jews, but we do not allow ourselves to fall under the concealment that Hashem is not there. Instead, we thank Hashem for all the good that He is surely doing for us, even within the suffering, and strengthen our emuna that everything is for the best, the evil is really not able to touch us at all if we cling to Hashem, and surely Hashem will save us if we only call out to Him.
No comments:
Post a Comment