After the twists and turns of countryside driving (see the last article) came the end of the road. In all my years of driving never have I arrived at the end of the road and reached such a steep peak. I quickly thanked Hashem that I was driving an automatic car and that I didn’t have to worry about a clutch. I couldn’t see what was in front of me. I slowly moved forward but the car felt it was falling backwards. It was quite unnerving. After what felt like an eternity I edged forward and turned right. I was elated to finally be on a straight road and heading back home. Our adventure was over and it was time to get back to our lodgings and back to what we knew.
We are hours away from Yom Hadin, we too don’t know what lies ahead of us. We live our lives on automatic, staying with what is comfortable, shunning those to the right and left as being either fanatical or too liberal. Have we moved forward at all this year, or are we falling back? It’s cheating to cruise through life on autopilot. Doing so requires very little effort. It might feel safe and welcoming, but it really doesn’t get you very far. Those who would say “sholom yihiyeh li…” my life will be fine, I have nothing to worry about are in greatest danger of getting things wrong.
Knowing we are not fully in control, living with fears and anxieties speaks volumes about the type of people we are. We know that life has meaning and that we ought to be doing something. Just open a Tehilim where it’s clear how much genuine emotion, doubts and fears fill every chapter. Being real with how we feel is not weakness but strength.
The story is told of the heiliger R’Levi Yitzchok who used to enquire of every baal simcha what would be served at the simcha. After this went on for too many weeks , a brave or perhaps foolish chossid plucked up the courage to ask the holy Rebbe what he was really asking. The answer he received needs to pierce your hearts dear readers. The Berditchover was proving a point that however sinful or distant a Jew might be from Hashem, when it comes down to it, no one celebrates an aveira, but we do fully celebrate our simchos and mitzvos. We invest our hard earned money in celebrating our living a life of meaning and connection to Hashem. Regardless of our choices, the silly ones and the bad ones we are ashamed when we do wrong. We hide from our neighbours, close our curtains, look over our shoulders to make sure we cannot be see. Obviously in the moment we also forget that Hashem sees all.
Rebbe Nachman teaches that “You may feel that Hashem rejects you because of your sins. You may think that you are still not doing His will. But remain strong and throw yourself before Hashem. Spread your hands to Him and beg that He have mercy and let you still serve Him. It may seem that Hashem is rejecting you, but cry out, “No matter what! I still want to be a Jew! Hashem has great joy when you conquer Him this way.”
We often project our feelings on others or in this case on Hashem, imagining that the way we feel about ourselves must be what Hashem thinks too. This is no more than the schemes of the Yetzer Hara. Instead, we must know as practical hashkofa that “when a Jew wishes to speak to Hashem, Hashem casts aside everything else. Evil decrees are even set aside at this time. Hashem puts aside everything and only listens to the person seeking His presence.”
If you have not considered that point before, read it again. If we lived with a sense of how precious we are to Hashem, that He wants to hear from us we would have very different kehilos today. A brief glance of the advertisers that are posted through our doors here in Manchester and I assume in London too we are bombarded with a plethora or advert for clothes and mental health charities. Every other page advertises new groups that are there to help, every other yid has become a therapist of some kind. Why are we not screaming day and night to HKBH, save us, save our children, our husbands, wives, students etc. We have grown comfortable on our auto pilot lives to accept that this reality is normal.
We’ve all done the same with food and petrol. We can recall cheaper times, times when paying inflated prices would have seemed like a fanciful nightmare or bad joke, but we have made peace with this terrible reality. And so we make peace with the reality of pain and superficiality that plague modern life. There is nothing Torahdig to be obsessed with matching high priced clothes for our daughters and designer shoes, belts, cufflinks etc for our sons. We must celebrate that we recognise the stress of modern living and the availability of frum culturally sensitive help but our communities are places of immense pain and we need to stop the problem not just fix it. The damage is done before the solution starts.
So we come back to our journey through life where we cannot see where to go, we have to look over a steep precipice and boldly edge forward hoping to continue our journey. We need to remind each other ( isn’t that what a kehilla is, people looking out for each other?) how much we mean to Hashem. If we accept this premise, then we must value each other unconditionally. One final teaching from Rebbe

Nachman really underscores this idea.
The Rebbe once spoke about those who are religious for a while and then fall away. He said that even the short time they are religious is very dear to Hashem, no matter what happens later. It is written, “You have captured My heart with one of your eyes” (Song of Songs 4:9). Hashem is speaking to the Jewish people, recalling the time they accepted the Torah. The Midrash asks why the verse says, “with one of your eyes.” It answers that the other eye was already looking at the Golden Calf. Even when they accepted the Torah, the Jewish people already had plans to stray. Still, the short time they were close to Hashem was very dear to Him. Therefore, Hashem said, “You have captured My heart with one of your eyes.”
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