Welcome to SIMHA Emotional Wellness Daily.
We're continuing our discussion of the Torah approach to anxiety. Our Torah gives us techniques to deal with doubt. This is an important point.
There are two major principles in our Torah that help us deal with doubt. One of them is called רובRov which is majority, and the other is called, Hazaka, which means things remain status quo.
Rov comes into play when, for example, we slaughter a cow. We have to check for 18 possible terefot/dysfunctions (such as a hole in the brain, stomach, lungs) that will render the animal unkosher. One of things we check is the lungs. That's what Glatt or Glatt Bet Yosef is about ( Glatt is Yiddish for smooth). We check the kings because there's a higher probability of lung defects than other types of terefot.., the others, we don't check. We drink milk from a cow. We can't drink camel milk, and if we knew for sure that the cow had one of these 18 dysfunctions, we couldn’t drink its milk either. If a sonogram was taken of the cow's head and we saw a hole in the brain, we couldn't drink the milk. Yet we drink milk of cows without doing these sonograms. Even the most stringent person drinks cow’s milk without a sonogram of the cow beforehand. Why? The answer is Rov/ majority. The majority of cows are healthy. Is it possible that a cow is unhealthy? Yes. But is it probable? No. And that's an important rule in dealing with anxiety. Anything that our anxiety attaches to is possible, it’s just not probable. The Torah says we deal with probabilities. More people die in car accidents than in plane crashes. Is a plane crash possible? Yes. Is it probable? No.
Most people don't die from terrible diseases every year. If most people died from diseases every year, we wouldn't have a population. It’s possible, but not probable.
This is an important technique-Anytime you come to worry, tell yourself It's possible. It's not probable. That’s a Torah principle. We have to live by the Torah. We can't start making up our own rules. It's almost heresy.
Another example of Rov is that you have three hotdogs on the table, two kosher and one not kosher, and they get mixed up, you can eat each one of those hotdogs alone. Why? Because Rov/ majority says it's kosher. One person shouldn't eat all three at the same time, but if one person ate the first and the second, he could possibly eat the third as well, based on majority, as strange as that might sound. That is rule number one. Rov.
Rule number two is Hazaka, which means when I'm in doubt, I assume things don't change.
For example, if a lady needs to be divorced, we can throw the divorce contract to her. (We're not getting into the halachic implications, we'll just keep it simple). If there's a distance between the husband and wife and it's thrown to the wife, and it's closer to her, she's divorced. If it's closer to him, they're not divorced. What happens if I have a doubt? The answer is, if she was married until now, she remains married. In the opposite scenario, if I throw a ring at her, and I don't know if it got there or not, she remains unmarried. Why? Because I have a doubt/ a safek, and anytime I have a doubt, the rule is, Go back to status quo. Whatever she was until now remains. If she walked in single, we assume she's single until proven otherwise. If she walked in married, we assume she's married until otherwise.
There's a related concept called Hezkat Chaim.. This is a very important one. People have a status that they're alive until proven otherwise. It’s a halachic concept, which we see it in the following situation:
Ms. Levy (Levys are usually Leviiim) marries Mr. Cohen (let’s assume he is a Kohen). In the times of the Bet Hamikdash, the Kohanim ate something called Teruma. Mrs. (Levy) Cohen, the Kohen’s wife, is allowed to eat it as well, even though she was not born a kohen, because she's married to a kohen. But, if her husband dies, she can no longer eat from it. So what happens if her husband goes (pre-cellphone days) to the city, and he's supposed to get back at seven and it's nine o'clock at night and he's still not back? Is she allowed to eat the Teruma? Yes. But
Why? What if he got killed in a car accident? It doesn't make a difference. Even if they had cell phones, and he doesn’t answer his cell phone for two hours, he's considered alive until proven otherwise, so she can eat the Teruma.
Therefore, when someone isn’t answering the phone and the anxiety sets in and we start to think that maybe he was kidnapped, Hazaka says they weren't. Rest assured, Hazaka says that he’s okay.
The following story shows how a Gadol B’Ysrael lives by these principles: There was a young married man that prayed Netz on Shabbat.
He'd get up in the summertime at four o'clock in the morning, pray, and finish by seven. Then he’d come home, his wife would get up and they'd have coffee together.
One day when he was coming back from Netz, he bumped into Rav Shach, a Gadol B’Yisrael ( who usually didn’t pray Netz but couldn't sleep so he prayed Netz) as he was walking home.
Rav Shach asked the young man if he would like to learn. The young man could not believe it! What an opportunity- to learn with Rav Shach! . So he went to learn with him, and they got so engrossed in their learning that before they knew it, it was 12 o'clock. The man looked at his watch, said, “Oh my gosh, I didn't tell my wife!’and ran home. Of course, his wife was very upset with him. She was ready to call the police! The boy later related the story to Rav Shach, who said, “You really should have told your wife, but I don't understand why she got so upset. The rule is Hazaka. You left in the morning, and you were alive. You're alive until proven otherwise.”
To recap, the Torah gave us these two important approaches to doubt:
1-Rov- is , is it possible? Yes, it's possible but it’s not probable.
2-Hazaka means that things don't change until proven otherwise.
These are two great principles to use in life, when you find yourself in situations of doubt and uncertainty.
Use Rov and use Hazaka.
Have a wonderful day.