Welcome to Emotional Wellness Daily, a project of Sephardic initiative for Mental Health Awareness.
The Sefer Tiferet Shmuel, by Rav Shmuel Berenbaum brings down a very interesting concept that we're going to connect a little bit to our emotional wellness.
In this week's parasha, there were angels that spoke to Hagar and Yishmael, many, many angels.
The question is, after all the angels that came and spoke to Hagar and Yishmael, about Yishmael, why didn't they become great people? His answer is that from open miracles, a person doesn't change. Only when a person works on himself does he change. It can't just come from the outside, without work. He says,
Let’s say there was a miracle. There was a blackout in the entire town, and the only lights that remained on were the lights of the shuls and the Bet Midrash. Maybe the next day, everyone would come to shul and learn. They’d say, Wow. But after a while it would dissipate.
He says that in the times of the Chafetz Chaim there was a dybbuk-a type of soul that hasn't found rest and enters into someone’s body and starts talking and revealing secrets.
Many people wanted to see this dybbuk to strengthen their Emunah.
But Rav Yerucham Levovitz of the Mirrer Yeshiva would not let anybody go, because, he said, “Only from your own work and toil on yourself, do you develop and grow. If something just comes from the outside, a revelation, a sudden blitz, you might have a temporary surge, a temporary arousal, but it's going to dissipate.”
We find something similar with Keriat Yam Suf- it says that the maid servant saw greater revelations than Yehezkiel HaNavi. Unbelievable. But still, she remained a maid servant.
It dissipated. The goyim heard about Keriat Yam Suf, but they didn't change. They went back to normal. And not only did they not go back to normal, they actually had a yerida. They went down. Amalek heard what happened, and came to fight. And so did the other nations of the time. The Jewish people, on the other hand, who they saw the open miracles, said
Ze Eli V’AnVehu, which can mean either, This is my God, I will do my Mitzvot nicely, or This is my God, I will build a house. I'll build it a Bet Hamikdash for Him.
They immediately did something and worked on themselves. Yitro heard about the miracles, and he came to the desert to join the Jewish people. Because only through a person's hard work does he change. And if he doesn't, if anything, he gets worse.
Recently, SIMHA held virtual event that many of you might have watched. Dr. Shlomi Zimmerman said something from our Torah about Moshe Rabbenu. It says,
“He applied his heart and his eyes to feel their pain.”
He said we see two things. There's a heart and there's the eyes. And he said, if a person just looks at pictures and graphic images or just follows things superficially, not only will that not cause you to be empathetic and feel, but actually, it's going to end up causing you to have less feelings because you just become dulled and desensitized- unless you put your heart in, which means working on it yourself. You think about it, you start to feel, and only then will it be impactful and cause you to change.
We lived it. When Corona came about, everyone said lavish weddings were not important anymore, and forget all the spending on unimportant things. Of course, it's like it was forgotten. It was long, long time ago, in the ancient pre-historic era of Corona weddings.
What happened? The answer is that it was an external blitz. And all these external things that are not thought out, and not worked on, don't last because, again, like we said yesterday, we need to have the human being involved. External stimuli that are not coming from within, that are not being worked on and toiled on and integrated into the person, don't last. They're just temporary surges but not lasting.
Our job is not to be like Hagar and Yishmael and rest of the Olam that saw things but didn't change. Our job is to be the people that see these things and take it to heart. There are many people that are making changes and are taking things to heart and are working on themselves. And that's our lesson from the Parasha, as it relates to emotional wellness.
Have a wonderful day.