We are living in challenging times.
Challenging times are challenging to our Emunah. We see things around us that we don’t understand. It’s difficult. We have to be careful that we don’t lose our focus, or attitude. Even with difficult things going on, we always have to regroup and strengthen ourselves. I once heard a story from Rav Wolbe, about the Chafetz Chaim. He was the the unquestioned Gadol of his time, well known for his work on Lashon Hara, but he was also world reknown because he wrote the Sefer Mishnah Berurah. This six volume masterpiece of Halacha has been a best seller ever since it was written. It took him years to complete. Before computers, printing presses worked letter by letter. It was a great, great feat. During the time that he was working on the Mishnah Berurah, a child in his family passed away lo Alenu. He was obviously broken and down. At some point during the shiva, he went over to the window, shook his fist back-and-forth and said, as if he was talking to the Satan/evil force, “You’re not going to stop me, you’re not going to stop me.”
Rav Wolbe explained that the Chafetz Chaim understood, of course, that for whatever reason, this tragedy had to happen.
But if his reaction would be a decline in his Avodat Hashem, to think “Forget it- I just wrote that whole Mishnah Berurah and this is what happened? Who needs it?”if he had gotten broken and down, and not continued, that would have been the Yetzer Hara working on him. This is a very big Chiddush. Similarly, when Avraham Avinu returned after Akedat Yitzhak, and found that his wife Sarah Imenu ha passed away, we all know it looked like Sarah had passed away because of what Avaraham was involved in. Maybe the shock of thinking Yitzhak was going to die killed her. But the rabbis all tell us that Sara Imenu was supposed to pass away then anyway. The rabbis tell us that the Satan has the right to make things happen to cause us to question our Emunah.
This a tremendous Chiddush! G-d gave the Satan the power to test us, and he can test us by making things happen in ways that look strange and shocking. We have to put on our Emunah glasses and say that it might look like that, but that’s not what is going on.
There’s a story told over in the Sefer Machaneh Yehudah (a book of tragic stories from the time of the Spanish Inquisition. A woman had lost her husband, lost her children, lost everything. She was running for her life and she picked up her head and said,
“G-d, You took away my husband, You took away my family, You took away my community. There is one thing You can’t take away from me, and that is my Emunah. You can’t take that away.”
We have to think like that also. Even as we look around. We don’t want to open the newspaper or see what’s happening. There are terrible things going on in communities all over the world. But we have to say, “Hashem, there is one thing you can’t take away from me, and that is my Emunah.”
Emunah means I have lenses that I can see things through in a different way. Emunah means my eyes don’t just see physical things.
I saw a video once of a moving speech by Rav Schwab, (click here to watch https://www.dropbox.com/s/ll99pn7aflko97n/VID-20200402-WA0005.mp4?dl=0 ) A rabbi and leader of the Washington Heights community, when he spoke at the Siyum HaShas about four cycles go.
A little boy was holding his father’s hand as they were being taken off the cattle car and about to be separated. The boy looked at his father and said. “Daddy, I was a good boy. What did I do wrong? Why is this happening?” His father held him, caressed he and tried to calm him down, when suddenly the Nazis yms, shot the little boy.
That’s the end of the story that we see. But, Rabbi Schwab said, if you continued watching you’d see that G-d scooped up this little boy and said, “Son, come with Me, you’re going to join My Yeshiva.”
He said that it says that G-d learns with the little children that were plucked away. But we don’t see that. We see the tragedy on the one side, but we don’t see G-d scooping him up on the other. That’s what Emunah tells us.
The Imrei Emet says that when Yosef interrogated the brothers, to make them prove that they were really brothers, he took Shimon and locked him in prison- לעניהם - “ to their eyes”. Rashi says “ to their eyes” means that only while they were looking, Yosef locked him up, but once they left, Yosef took Shimon out and treated him like a king.
A similar term is used when Moshe broke the luchot. He said he broke them, “to your eyes”
The Imrei Emet questions what “to your eyes” means. We know that it says the letters is the luchot flew off before Moshe broke them. So they weren’t really broken. It just looked like they were broken.
The spirit of the tablets left before they were ever broken. He said, it looks like all these Jewish people were broken during the Holocaust. It looks like they were destroyed. That’s what it looks like to our eyes, but they all were picked up and they were taken up to special places.
We have to have that attitude. We look around, and even though we see things that are horrific and tragic, we still have to understand, with our Emunah eyes. We have to tell ourselves that these people are being taken care of, because it’s hard for the people left behind. We have to strengthen ourselves.
Max Mizrachi, a special man, lost a child in a tragic way. He has told me many times that what gives him the most hizzuk is this Rashi in Avoda Zara that Rav Schwab quoted. He knows his son is still here, he’s just in another room, on the other side of the wall. He’s been able to comfort many people over the years with this concept, because he knows his child is still here, he’s just learning with Hashem. He once told someone, “Your son is in Yeshiva, my son is in Yeshiva, my son is just in a Yeshiva that will take a little longer to come back from.”
That’s what we have to believe. That’s the way we have to look at things. There will be a Techiyat HaMetim, the dead will come back, and we will understand why this is happening.
We have to keep our Emunah strong. Klal Yisrael has been through difficult times. The people that kept their Emunah strong were the people that survived. That’s what we have to do. We can’t let the Yetzer Hara cause that our reaction to tragedies is that we lose our emunah. That’s his end goal. Then he wins. We can’t let him win. We have to be like the Chafetz Chaim, and shake our fist in the window, and say, “You aren’t going to get me, you are not going to bring me down!”
We should all hear Besorot Tovot.