Welcome to Emotional Wellness Daily. We continue with the topic of the spiritual source for self-worth, which is realizing and appreciating what it means just to be a Jew, and one of the indicators of this is the Brit Milah. A Jew has a sign and a symbol on himself that he's different.
The Midrash tells us that Amalek would taunt the Brit Milah. Rav Shmuel Berenbaum explains that this was because they could not handle the fact that we had that added value. It bothered them that we had the seal of God upon us. He says, regarding Purim, that it says L’Hashmid/ to destroy, and L’Harog/ to obliterate, but also L’Abed/to eradicate or decimate. The Gaon of Vilna says this means they wanted to burn and destroy the bodies.
Haman and Amalek could not tolerate a Jewish person walking around, because a Jewish body testifies to the existence of God. That's what bothered the Nazis more than anything else. The Jew symbolized God and they couldn't handle it. They hated the Jews so much because of what we represent. But that's something to pride yourself on, to walk around knowing, I represent something. The more antisemitism there is in the world, the more you should say to yourself, “Wow, look what I possess! Look what I represent.” It’s not a coincidence that Haman wanted to wipe out and destroy the Jewish people's bodies, or that the Nazis burnt Jewish bodies. And more recently, Hamas, in their horrific pogrom, also wanted to obliterate Jewish bodies.
And it's something to really appreciate, this concept of what it means just to be a Jew, regardless of your affiliation. What's very interesting is that it’s a lesson that we learned from Hamas.
I heard a similar message in the name of Rav Kalman Krohn, the brother of Rabbi Paysach Krohn.
He said he was once in a taxi in Israel with an irreligious taxi driver. He told the driver, “We're brothers.” The taxi driver said, “We're not brothers.”
Rabbi Krohn persisted, “Yes, we are brothers.” Again, the taxi driver denied this. Finally, the Rabbi said, “My teacher, my Rebbe taught me that we're brothers.”
“Really? Who's your Rebbi?” the driver asked.
“My Rebbe is Hitler. Hitler taught me that we're brothers. Hitler didn't differentiate. We're brothers.”
That's really what Hamas taught us. One could say, “Look at these Jewish people on Shabbat and Simhat Torah at a music festival! What's going on here?” But Hamas taught us, “These are Jews and we’re going to kill them because they're Jews. We can't tolerate their Jewishness.”
We all possess that, and we shouldn't have to wait to die Al Kiddush Hashem to appreciate it. Every Jew has that in him. He is a walking testimony of Godliness on earth. We don't realize that that is self-worth. Imagine walking down the street with a banner that says, “There's a God here!”
We are creations of God, and we're waving that banner all day. What value we have! It’s the value that every Jewish person possesses. We say it in our prayers, in a section of Korbanot that we say every morning before Hodu, “How fortunate, how we lucky are. When we say the words Shema Yisrael, we say, “Hear Oh Jew, I'm a Jew. I am a testimony of God,” whatever I'm doing, wherever I'm holding, just walking on the street, or even at a music festival on Shabbat, on Simhat Torah.
I'm a Jew. That should give a person self-worth.