18/08/2025
It’s a billionaire’s world today. They have the money so they have the power. They’re willing to pay and there are so many people willing to be paid, especially for their souls. After all, who needs a soul in this generation?
The Gemora says that just in advance of the Messianic Era, truth will be missing (Sanhedrin 97a). It warns that you won’t be able to find a “va’ad emes,” a place of truth anywhere. Wrong will be right and right will become wrong, and governments will turn to heresy.
I guess some kind of congratulations are in order, because we have managed to become that generation. Decades ago society’s moral compass was only off, but today it is lost completely, stepped all over…crushed. The only way to feel secure today and happy with the world is by becoming a liar like the rest. It is not a comfortable time for lovers of truth.
The thing about the Left is that it has no shame. It only has an agenda, and a misguided sense of righteousness that lets them walk all over the rest of society that doesn’t agree with their beliefs. The very wealthy among them have no problem paying others to do their dirty work, and the people they get to protest their cause have no problem being paid to do it. That’s how things roll in a greed-based society.
I could go on at this point about how it is all part of God’s master plan for history and that nothing is out of Divine control, which is true. But did that save the Jews from suffering in Egypt when Moshe’s demand for freedom resulted in increased slavery? Did they feel even a little bit better knowing that their additional suffering was part of the redemption process? Not at all. It broke them.
Truthful people see what is happening and it scares them. They want assurances that as bad as it is already, it won’t get too much worse, like it has in the past. Not every Jewish exile has ended too badly, and they want a guarantee that this one won’t either. Haman wanted to destroy all the Jews but was overturned before he could touch even one. Our “Hamans” have already done a lot more than that.
You know what it’s like? It’s like losing control of your car on ice and feeling scared as you slowly and helplessly slide towards a crash that you know is going to hurt any moment now. Hating pain, part of your brain wonders to itself about the odds of things not turning out as bad as the other part of your brain has predicted they will. All you can do is wait…and hope for the best.
As for those guarantees…who can promise anything? Who knows anything today for certain? Brave and knowing people like to act the part for others to comfort them for as long as they can, until reality actually hits and proves them liars. How many have already promised a smooth transition to the Messianic Era and have already been proven wrong?
There is no question that God will fulfill His promise of redemption and the destruction of evil. The only question is, at what point in the redemption process will He do that? After how much suffering has already occurred will He finally turn the tables on falsehood and its propagators?
Not fast enough for me. Although I am so very grateful for things not being worse than today, I am daily aggravated by what has already occurred and what others plan to do. I am so frustrated by the misguided and how easily they can spread their money to maximize disruption and cause destruction. I am no Nachum Ish Gamzu who could lie there a suffering paraplegic and be happy about his outcome. Rebi Akiva is my hero for many reasons, but especially for the very heroic way he died, but not one part of me wants to have to replicate his heroism.
It’s not that I haven’t dealt with pain before. I certainly have, both physical and emotional. I have known pain severe enough to make me question the value of life. I have known loss, personal and of those for whom I greatly care. But does any of that compare to all of that during wartime…during the Holocaust…or the Crusades, etc.?
So what can we do, given the situation today outside and inside the Jewish people? It’s coming for us in all directions. What should we do? Run and hide? Where? I’d rather die defending Eretz Yisroel than live somewhere else. Delude ourselves into thinking the situation is a lot better than it seems, and will end a lot easier than it is? I’ve tried that, but reality has a way of creeping right back in again, if only because people close to me watch the news and insist upon sharing it with me.
I have taken the Zohar seriously about how learning it saves you from Chevlei Moshiach and the War of Gog and Magog. But what about everyone else I care for who doesn’t? And besides, am I learning it enough? No. Do I learn it well? Not really.
Besides, can you run and hide from your personal Divine Providence? Harm can seem accidental, but if you happen to find yourself in its way, it’s because God put you there. There are people who have found themselves looking down the barrel of a gun and somehow survived anyhow, while others were far enough from it to escape and yet still didn’t. Personal tikun is personal tikun no matter what history is doing.
So what do I have left? What weapons, if any, do I actually have? I’ve asked myself, even if I knew the kind of Kabbalah from the past that would allow me to knock off my enemies through spiritual means, would I even use it? I have answered, no. What do I know about how God runs His world and what He wants to stay or go at any point in time?
And even though, as Bilaam said, no one can bless or curse anyone who God doesn’t want to bless or curse, it doesn’t mean that God doesn’t hold you responsible for trying if you were wrong in your assessment of the situation. That’s why every time we talk about God getting rid of our enemies, we leave it to Him to decide who they are and when they can be taken.
Part of the answer to the question is isolating the real enemy here. Is it Hamas…the anti-Semitic nations of the world…the Israeli leftists? They’d like us to believe so. They’re doing everything they can to make us believe it is so.
But it isn’t. Anti-Semites are only manipulative puppets of God, as independent as they think they are. Leftists are only His seemingly convoluted means to carry out the true redemption, even though they don’t even believe it is coming. We’ve known this for a long time, at least back as far as Haman. That’s all our enemies have ever been, or ever will be. It’s a fundamental of every believing Jew.
Then who, or what, is the real enemy here? Our fear. Though there are opinions that FDR was not the greatest friend of the Jews, he is credited for saying with respect to the Great Depression that “we have nothing to fear but fear itself.” I’m not sure how religious President Roosevelt was, so I don’t know if he had God in mind when he said it. But we certainly should.
This is what Moshe Rabbeinu told the Jewish People in his parting words in Parashas Aikev:
Now, Israel, what does God, your God, ask of you? Only to fear God, your God… (Devarim 10:12)
Was that only what God originally wanted from us, but has since given up on and turned to other things? Or, is this still as true as it has ever been?
Obviously that latter. Fear of God is what God has always wanted us to work on, and it is still what He wants to work on. The scary things that happen in advance of Moshiach coming is just the final stage of that program, one last shot to check the right boxes before time runs out and the exam is over.
Ahhhhhhhhhhh, but then there is this conspiracy between the Sitra Achra (a.k.a. Satan and Angel of Eisav) who works through history and with the yetzer hara who works through our ignorance and emotional vulnerabilities. It is the Satan from the outside who makes our enemies look so scary and the yetzer hara from the inside who makes us panic about them. Together, they are the worst distraction away from true fear of God ever.
As has been pointed out by many in the past who have understood all of this on some level, it’s only called being courageous when you deal with your fears and work past them. It is the brave person who says “no” to the Satan, and gives instructions to their yetzer hara instead of receiving them from it. The day we fear God (and not just punishment) more than our “enemies” is the day they go away, first emotionally and then, eventually, physically as well.
Having said all of that, the next burning questions are, how do we get true fear of God, and quickly? Unfortunately, we’re asking this question late because such fear of God can take a lifetime to achieve, and we don’t have that kind of time anymore. The really good news? We have been told, and I can tell you it is true, that anyone who comes to sanctify themself a little, Heaven will sanctify them a lot (Yoma 38b), and that we’re not expected to do everything, just enough to “convince” God we’re real.
There. I’ve brought you to the door. Now it’s up to all of us to open it for ourselves and walk through it to the other side. I can’t tell you what is there, because no one can. It’s just one of those things that God makes dependent on a person’s own will. I can only tell you that if you are one of the fortunate people to get there, you will kick yourself for not going there earlier.
But hey, better a little late than never…
Rabbi Pinchas Winston
No comments:
Post a Comment