By the Grace of G-d
Dear Friends,
Have you heard the story of the person who walked by an archery and saw target after target with arrows protruding from the bullseye. He asked the owner of the archery; ‘how do you get a perfect bullseye every single time’.
The archery owner replied ‘I am an unconventional archery. While other archeries draw the target and then shoot the arrow, I first place the arrow and then draw the target around it’.
Have you ever had the experience of meeting someone in a bad mood who doesn’t cheer up no matter what you do or say? You almost feel like asking them ‘is anything ok’?
Or the reverse. Someone who is bounding with good energy. Whatever information you feed him to try and get him upset simply doesn’t work.
It seems like we sometimes place our arrows and then draw the target around it. We decide what feeling we want to feel and then build the case and color the events in our life to support that feeling.
Take the story of this week’s portion. The spies go to check out the land of Israel (at this stage its still called the land of Canaan) with the intention of finding fault with it. Yep, they found a good reason to reject the land. People were dying in the land of Canaan at an accelerated rate. They returned to the people of Israel and told them ‘this is a land that consumes its inhabitants’ and people frequently die here.
What they didn’t take into account is that G-d had orchestrated the deaths so that the inhabitants of the land of Canaan be busy with funerals and not pay any attention to twelve spies walking around their country scouting it out to conquer it. The temporary increase in deaths was a blessing for them. It was providing them ‘cover’ for their own safety. It was not something to complain about.
Joshua and Caleb, the two spies who retained their faithfulness to G-d and Moshe, came with the pre-determination that going into Israel was the best thing possible because G-d had chosen it for them. Thus they saw ONLY GOOD when they scouted the land. They weren’t put off by the challenging circumstances they saw. They saw a golden opportunity to inherit their G-d given inheritance.
Very often the circumstances are not objectively good or bad. They are dependent on the eyes of the beholder. Even the color black. You can look at a black suit as being classy and wear a black tuxedo to a wedding. Or you could term it mournful and relegate it to funerals.
The choice is often ours. Are we victims of our circumstances. Or do our circumstances present us the possibility to forge ahead and carve our induvial niche of positivity in G-d’s world.
I want to share something that was very dear to me when I was a young man of twenty-two and has become even more meaningful now, thirty years later.
On Monday Sivan 28, June 3, 1941 the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn arrived with his wife on the safe shores of the United States of America.
In 1991 as a twenty-two-year-old student in the central Lubavitch Yeshiva, I participated in the fifty year celebration. The Rebbe acknowledged the specialty of the occasion and personally handed each of the thousands, myself included, a printed booklet containing deep words of Torah. As well as a dollar for Tzedakah.
This Tuesday, 28 Sivan thirty years later, I am once again blessed to be participating in the celebration. This time it’s the eighty-year mark.
Thirty years ago, as a student of the Rebbe I was personally celebrating the saving of my Rebbe’s life from the burning shores of Europe. If not for that day where the Rebbe safely arrived on American shores the world would have been bereft of his great wisdom and leadership.
Now, from the perspective of my current age and life experience I see it far more powerfully.
In his fortieth year, the Rebbe arrived to a culture that was totally different than the European culture he had escaped. The Jewish landscape in the USA was lifetimes away from the pious ‘shtetl’ life and centuries of Jewish scholarship and devoutness that the European Jewish community was known for.
There were two choices.
Look at the American journey as a necessary but spiritually regressive move.
Or look at the arrival to America as being G-d’s sign that now American culture could and should be harnessed to create a vibrant and committed Jewish future.
The Rebbe chose the latter.
He considered his move to America as being a bullseye. It was exactly where G-d wanted him. Coming to America was the Divine plan. And then he started reframing everything else based on that. The circumstances in America were opportunities to be used, not problems to complain about.
America had a ‘chutzpa’ and boldness that was trademark. The Rebbe would embrace that forthrightness and big mindedness and use it as a weapon in the battle against assimilation.
Famously, a young man accompanied his immigrant father to see the Rebbe in the 1940’s. The young American put his feet up on the desk. The father who remembered from Europe how one needs to respect rabbinic leaders was horrified. The Rebbe calmed the father and said that the bold spirit of the American youth is good, we just need to teach the youth how to channel this assertiveness for positive things.
My dear friends, look around the world today and you will see the Rebbe’s success in the replanting of Judaism in the Western world. The thousands of Chabad centers in every part of the world attest to this.
The Rebbe’s approach to modernization and technology was assertive and bold. They are tools to be used in making this world a G-dly place.
Let us take a moment to think about how we can use our life circumstances to best create a dwelling place for G-d here on earth. By studying Torah and doing mitzvahs. Putting on Tefilin, lighting Shabbat candles. By being benevolent to others and loving even to those whom you don’t care for.
Not despite the ingredients of our life, some of which we may think we would rather not have. Rather let us try to use all the aspects of our life, like them or not, to catapult us to loftier places.
Sounds too lofty and unreachable?
Don’t aim for perfection at the beginning.
Try it with one thing.
The next time you say ‘oy vay’ about something you find challenging, stop for a moment and thing whether perhaps this very thing also gives you some traction and acceleration in your journey of getting closer to G-d.
For example. Someone just irritated you. You experienced a classic ‘oy vey’ moment?
Think to yourself how this is your opportunity to overcome your own natural self-centeredness and be tolerant of others. Our Sages taught that sometimes G-d brings us things that challenge our equilibrium to give us the chance to work on refining our characters.
By viewing life as a journey steered by G-d, you can embrace every aspect of the journey as being Providential and tailor made for you.
Your arrow is in the bullseye. You are, exactly where G-d wants you to be. Now its up to you to draw the target around it.
With blessing of Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Yosef Kantor