Heal the World
Ready to start a truly good year - a year that you’re happy, healthy and fulfilled? Here’s how you can make that dream a reality...
What’s the difference between a medic and a doctor? A medic treats a patient externally – to stabilize him enough to bring him to the medical staff and equipment in the hospital. However, a doctor – at least a real doctor – is supposed to treat the root of the problem, not just to stabilize the patient or treat symptoms. The doctor tries to understand the primary cause of the symptoms, then isolate and treat the root sickness and completely uproot it.
The Torah portion of Bereshit (Genesis) describes in a few short chapters how a sweet, beautiful world – literally The Garden of Eden – plummets in only 10 generations to such a low level that the Creator saw it necessary to completely destroy and erase it. And how humans, the masterpiece of creation, fashioned by G-d’s own hands, who walked and spoke with G-d, created with a smart mind that can create its own creations out of the materials that the Creator gave him – sinned and sinned until humans fell into believing the biggest lies and confusions, in idols and worse.
In our days, the world is once again full to the brim with sins, lies, and more – to the point that it seems that the only way to fix it is to completely destroy it all and start over. If we were a “medic” of sorts for the world, we would immediately despair of this patient – there is no way to save someone with such critical injuries. Even a doctor would despair as well. Even if the doctor could figure out all the different sicknesses, he would say that it was already too late to successfully treat them.
However, the biggest doctors, the doctors of the soul – the greatest tzaddikim (righteous sages) of the generations – they know that the Torah doesn’t just tell simple stories. The Creator of the World hid all of the medicines in the Torah. And they teach if that you believe that you can destroy – then believe that you can repair!
The Root Cause
So how can we repair a situation that is so far gone? Simple – the tzaddikim start treating the root of each problem and automatically the body starts healing. Even more, the sicker the patient and more serious the sickness, the more the tzaddikim find deeper advice and even more incredible treatments which weren’t necessary in previous generations. Therefore, now that the time for the Redemption is upon us and the voice of the Creator is calling upon us to return to Him and repair and heal – so too, Hashem is revealing to the tzaddikim treasure houses of advice, healing and salvations in order to fix and heal the Jewish people and the entire world.
In order to understand the root of where the world currently stands, let’s look deeper into the very first sin. The snake comes to Chava and entices her to eat of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. Rashi explains the first sin included two major mistakes, both part of one big picture:
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The first major problem was that the snake convinced Chava that G-d hated her, and she believed him. Hence, we see that Chava didn’t know or believe in the great foundation of emuna, that Hashem loves you! G-d is good and only does good, that He is merciful and created man in order to give him all the good in the world.
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The second failure was that Adam didn’t appreciate the good that G-d did for him in giving him a wife, and instead blamed G-d for giving him Chava who told him to eat as well. He refused to take responsibility for his actions, and instead tried to place the blame on who? On G-d Himself! Who is all good and only does good for all of His creations!!!
A Strong Foundation
The world emuna comes from the root imun – belief. When a child is secure and confident that his parents believe in him and love him – then he has imun in his parents. This enables the child to listen to his parents and he relies on them and their advice, even when he doesn’t understand their motives, and even if he has his own lusts and desires to do the opposite.
The child’s belief that his parents love him and only do good for him comes not only from what his parents tell him, but also from his appreciation for all the good that they do for him. A child who appreciates what he has and is grateful for it, and knows how to say “thank you” for it – that child pays attention to how much his parents do for him. He feels their love because he doesn’t take for granted all of the good that they do for him. He will be emotionally stable and healthy, and able to listen to his parents and continue in the path they set for him.
But when a child doesn’t know how to be grateful for what he has or say thank you for it – it doesn’t matter what the parents give him, he will forever feel lacking, hated, like a poor, unfortunate and pitiful case. He will constantly be full of complaints against his parents and will never experience their love for him. He will suffer his whole life from low self-esteem and always feel broken. Even more, he will certainly not have the emotional strength to set aside his own ideas to listen to his parents!
This is because appreciation is the foundation of emotional health and stability. It is also the foundation of emuna and the knowledge that Hashem loves you. It is the secret to a happy, peaceful life filled with satisfaction and positivity, without hatred, animosity and criticism. It’s also the foundation of all good character traits. It is also the foundation of fulfilling Torah and mitzvot.
The reason why is simple – when you know for sure that your Heavenly Father loves you, then whatever He tells you, you naturally want to do it. What could possibly make you change your mind? What can move you from the truth? If the One who loves me beyond understanding, does everything good for me and only wants to give me more and more good says that something is bad for me, why on earth would you refuse to listen and hurt yourself?
The Sin that Causes all other Sins
We can now clearly understand how the world went downhill so quickly. Adam didn’t appreciate his wife and wasn’t happy with her and all the good that Hashem gave him. Therefore, automatically his wife thought that Hashem hated her and forbid her from eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and bad in order to harm her. This caused the first sin. Then Cain didn’t appreciate all the good that Hashem had given him either. Half the world belonged to him and it wasn’t enough! Therefore, he didn’t serve Hashem properly, and then became jealous of his brother Hevel and killed him. It’s no wonder that the world continued to spiral into oblivion at breakneck speed until G-d saw it necessary to kill all of mankind.
A New Beginning
The events around us are always connected to the weekly Torah portion. Even though the new year starts with Rosh Hashanah, the first few weeks of holidays are all building a foundation and preparing for the new year. Only now, after Simchat Torah when we read the portion of Bereishit do we truly start the new year.
If we want to have a truly good year, a year of eating from the tree of life, a year that we are happy, healthy and fulfilled – then we have to fix the foundation, which is appreciating what we have and saying “thank you” for it, and truly feeling the good and the love G-d is showering on us every moment.
We have to get to the point where gratitude envelopes us and is part of every moment of our lives. When we do, we’ll repair everything at its root, and live once again like Adam in the Garden of Eden and we’ll have healing, miracles and wonders – all the way right to the full and complete Redemption!
