Welcome to Emotional Wellness Daily, a project of SIMHA.
A key ingredient in emotional wellness is hope. If a person has no hope, it’s hard to survive difficult situations. A person needs to feel that there'll be a happy ending, a light at the end of the tunnel.
But how do we get there? A key ingredient of having Emuna is Tikva, that that's our hope.
Today is Pesach Sheni, and the rabbis tell us the lesson of Pesach Sheni is that there is no such thing as Ye’ush/despair in this world. Pesach Sheni came about because two men that were contaminated missed out on the Korban Pesach. If you miss out on Lulav and Etrog, you just have to wait until next year. You’re too late. Technically, Pesach should have been the same. But these men walked in and said two magical words a: Lama Niggera-why should we miss out?
God heard those words and created a new concept-Pesach Sheni, a makeup day for the Korban Pesach. This teaches us that whoever you are, wherever you are, there's still hope.
Rav Sadok HaKohen, in his sefer Divrei Sofrim says, A Jew never gives up hope, whether it's physical or spiritual. Regarding the physical, it says, even if a sword is on your throat, don't give up hope. And spiritually, teshuva always helps. There is no such thing as despair. He says that God purposely chose that Avraham and Sara were old and they had given up hope on ever having a child. Sara even laughed.
Why did God have to make such an unnecessary miracle? God likes to limit miracles. The answer is that God did this to teach the Jewish people that their whole essence came from a situation that should seemingly be one of despair. The Midrash Tanchuma says Sara gave up. She said, I'm withered.
This concept is very relevant to us because it says in the Gemara in Sanhedrin that Mashiach come when they give up hope, when they despair of the redemption. That means at a time where seemingly, there's no hope. Because when there's no hope, you realize that Hashem is above it all and He can take care of it.
The Navi says, “Look at Avraham your father. Look at Sara, look at your beginnings. We’re always supposed to look back, and look at ourselves in the mirror and say, Where did you come from? You're a miracle baby. You came after situation of despair. The Jewish people are a miracle people. That's what keeps us going. That's the secret to our resilience. And that's why the Jewish people count according to the moon. It gets smaller and disappears, but comes back, strong and bright again.
Many times we’ve told the story of a rabbi who asked a survivor how he survived the concentration camps. His answer was, Birkat Levana. The rabbi asked, What do you mean? The man said, “We had no tefilin, we had no siddur, we had nothing. But every month we'd look up in the sky and we'd see the new moon, and we make the beracha of Birkat Levana. It says, Just like the moon renews itself, we the Jewish people renew ourselves.” That's the message of Pesach Sheni but it’s a message for every day, for a Jewish person.
There is no Ye’ush/despair. Rather, Yesh Tikva/There is always hope.