Have you heard the saying ‘I thought I would drink enough to drown out my problems, and then I discovered that they float’.
Purim has come.
And gone.
We were joyous. Happy. Jubilant and merry.
I had a couple of glasses of wine and during the ‘after-Purim-party’ I announced the following:
One of the great gamechangers I love sharing from the Torah is the ability to change your future as taught so often by the Rebbe.
The Zohar says:
Come and see: The Lower World is always ready to receive …. The Upper World can only provide the Lower World according to its state. If it glows from below, in the same manner it is shined upon from above; but if it gloats in sadness, it receives judgment in return.
Similarly, it is written, “Serve G-d with joy!”—because human joy draws another supernal joy. Thus, just as the Lower World is crowned, so it draws from above.
Basically it means that if you are having a rough time try to break out of the cycle of anxiety and be joyous.
Yes, sing, clap, dance, smile and laugh.
If you can bring yourself to joy from below. Hashem will reciprocate and beam down joy on you from above.
I challenged the crowd to try it and get back to me with fantastic results.
Be happy, joyous, upbeat, optimistic and things will go better for you.
Now it’s a week after Purim and the headlines are rather bleak.
Its time address the imperfect reality.
How do you keep your spirits up when you see that with all of the good news there is still so much suffering and cruelty. How do you not fall into despair?
Shall I reveal something you may not have known?
The question really started way back. At the original Purim celebration 2,380 years ago. Then too, the salvation was incomplete.
Even after the Purim miracle it is not like the Jewish people were back in their homeland under their own governance and kingdom.
As the Talmud puts it ‘we were still servants of Achashverosh’.
Yes, the saving of the Jewish people from the diabolical plans of Haman and his ten murderous sons was a cause to celebrate.
They wanted to exterminate every single Jew in the world. The tables were turned, and we were given the right to self-defense and miraculously we won the war.
But were we independent? No.
Yet, the Megilla (Esther 8:16) describes the state of the Jewish people as being favorable and good.
ליהודים היתה אורה ושמחה וששון ויקר
‘The Jews had light and joy and gladness and honor’
Granted they had their lives saved. But they were still totally dependent on the regime of Achashverosh.
How can that be described as being ‘light’?
And we ask the same question in our times when thank G-d we live in benevolently governed countries for the most part. We are blessed with many good things in our lives thank G-d. Yet to be honest, there are still formidable and existential challenges that we face.
As Jews in particular, we have quite a few concerns about our future.
The Sages preempted this question by expounding the word ‘light’ in the above verse to mean ‘Torah’.
אורה זו תורה
The world light in the above verse can be expanded to mean ‘the light of Torah’.
This sheds a new light on the way we look at life.
From the Torah’s perspective, the relationship that Hashem has with His people is one of absolute love.
The Chassidic masters gave the analogy for G-d’s love to His people as being akin to the love of an only child born to elderly parents who despaired of ever having a child.
From this Torah perspective anything that Hashem does to His people is an expression of love.
Even the things that don’t look loving and kind.
Cleaning a child who is sullied, and one needs to scrape dirt off their skin is quite unpleasant for the child. From the parents’ perspective it’s a necessary labor of love. Leaving the dirt caked on the child’s skin would not be in the best interest of the child. So, even while it is abrasive and causes discomfort to the child, it is still very much an act of love.
The Megilla reminds us that when there is a miracle and we have happy and good things to celebrate, we ought to celebrate with unbridled joy.
Even if not everything is perfect yet.
Perfect peace and ‘living happily ever after’ will come one day. We pray it comes imminently. It is the state of the world when Mashiach comes.
Till then, we are living in a world in which we are ‘still servants of Achashverosh’.
Yet, even while we observe and experience the imperfections and tribulations of our current epoch, we must put on the glasses of our heritage and see our lives from the perspective of the ‘light of Torah’ viewing our challenges from the perspective of Hashem’s infinite love to us.
And let us start by thanking Hashem for what we do have.
After that we should ask him for what we still need and don’t yet have.
Too often we overlook and omit giving authentic and deepfelt gratitude for the many many good things that Hashem gives us.
Thank you Father!
אבא תודה!!!
We beseech you to bring Mashiach and usher in true and complete redemption and peace, NOW.
AMEN
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Yosef Kantor
PS I searched my computer and found this story from about 1995/6. Enjoy. It was written many years ago, I left it as is.
One Friday afternoon we got a call from three young men from South Africa who asked to attend our Friday night Tefillah Prayers. We invited them to the meal and learned from them that they were Medical interns who had been sent on an exchange student program for several months to Thailand and would then return to start their internship in S.A. There was nothing out of the ordinary... In middle of the following week I got a call while I was out from a boy who identified himself only as one of the young men who had attended our Friday night meal and he said he must speak to the Rabbi urgently. I was not home at the time so my wife asked him to call back later as he was quite anxious and for some reason did not want to leave a return phone number.
When he finally got a hold of me he sounded very cryptic. He said “I can’t speak now but I must meet you urgently” “I know it sounds strange but I will explain myself. I cannot come to you right now as I must be close to my work but could you please come and meet me at the Shopping center near the Hospital where I am currently located.” I indeed thought that the request was strange and in a way presumptuous. after all I didn’t know this guy from “Adam” and here he is asking me to go out into the Bangkok infamous traffic to meet him for an undisclosed reason. Yet, I reasons since I am a Shliach and a Jew has reached out in distress of some sort I must help him.
Instinctively I grabbed a pair of Teffilin and grabbed a book to read in the Taxi which “happened” to be a basic book of Judaism “to be a Jew” by Donin. I got to the shopping center and the young man was waiting for me. We sat down and the obviously distraught young man introduced himself as Brian and fighting uselessly to fight back tears started to describe his plight:
“Two days ago while I was drawing blood from a probable AIDS patient (Thailand has a very high AIDS rate...) I pricked myself with the needle and I know as a medical student that is a strong possibility that I may have contracted the fatal virus. I have not been able to function since then my life is passing before my eyes. I have told no one/ You are the first one I have confided in. Rabbi, what should I do? should I pack my belongings and go and share the last few months of my life with my parents? Should I tell my girlfriend who is in SA right now. I am at a loss for what to do. I know from my background that the only person to speak to is a Rabbi so I have turned to you for help” He informed me that the first tests would only work after 2 weeks to know whether he had it and conclusively only after 1 month.
I am sitting there barely a year out of Kollel (post graduate Torah studies) and now I have this kind of situation which I cannot defer and I must respond to with sensitivity and understanding and obviously make this young man realize that he must use this as a spring board for spiritual growth. The feeling that I had was that I must now answer as a Shliach of the Rebbe and try to advise to the best of my ability and Shlucho shel Odom Kmoso certainly I will be guided from above to give the proper advice.
I told him the following: “On no account may you tell your parents as there is nothing to be gained and they will also not be able to sleep. You must believe with full Bitachon (trust in Hashem) that “it will be good” (Tracht Gut)” and I explained this concept at length. Besides that I told him that based on a story where someone had the virus and came to the Rebbe and said “I have non Kosher blood” and the Rebbe told him to “eat kosher food and you will have kosher blood” that it is critical that he now start to eat Kosher only (a very difficult proposition for a young man in Thailand on a limited budget.) I told him he is invited at all times to our house and we will try to send food with him so that he would succeed. I also suggested that he may want to come over to the house and I would teach him to put on Tefillin as he had forgotten since his Barmitzva. I told him that I could teach him here if he wants fully expecting him to turn down the offer as South Africans are usually more reserved according to my perception. To my surprise he said if you don’t mind, I would like to learn right now. So to the amazement of the Orientals shopping in the Center two Jews started wrapping Tefillin. With tears in his eyes, he repeated the Shema and committed himself to putting on the Tefillin every day.
Brian lamented to me at future meetings while he was still in doubt about whether or not he had the virus that he had become so foolishly obsessed with this career that he had stopped going to Shul on Friday night in SA years back and now did not even come to the family Kiddush on Friday night. Yet we discussed the fact that he was lucky to get the wake up call without suffering anything but mental anguish (I always spoke as if he had nothing and after the tests he would see that it had all been a bad dream) and he told me “I don’t want to look at religion as a crutch rather I have seen how relevant it is and important in daily life and how much I must learn...” He told me about how wonderful his girlfriend was and how she was coming to spend the last weeks of his trip with him in Thailand and how she would really want to get engaged but he had never wanted to discuss it until finishing the internship. So, I asked him if she is a nice Jewish girl why delay it after all this whole experience has shown you how fragile and dependent on G-d we really are.
When his girlfriend and brother-in-law came to Bangkok they all spent Shabbos with us and walked with me to Shul and Back on Shabbos morning 1 1/2 hours each way in the wet heat and pollution of Bangkok. He later confided to me that this was the first Shabbos he had kept properly in his life, and he would include Shabbos, Kashrus and Tefillin into his life and continue learning when he got back to SA.
A few days later they came to tell me that they were engaged and even before they told their parents they had wanted to tell us. A few weeks after he got back to SA his mother wrote us a nice letter saying, “I don’t know what you did but Brian came back with a positive attitude to Judaism and going to Shul”. A few months ago, we got their wedding invitation and a few words how they are doing well BH.
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Purim Joy in Thailand |
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Joy and Spirited dancing at Chabad Bangkok
Chabad Laos Megillah and Purim Party |
