Emuna = Freedom
Emuna teaches us that everything Hashem does is complete kindness, whether or not we understand. A little girl's Celiacs is no exception to that rule.
Rebbe Natan writes (Likutei Halachot, Hilchot Hoda’a, 5) that without emuna, one’s mind and thought process are in exile, chained like a prisoner in captivity. One cannot escape such mental and spiritual bondage by way of logic or reason…only by way of emuna, can the mind terminate its exile and become free.
With Rebbe Natan’s above principle in mind, we can understand why Hashem reminds us in the first commandment – the mitzvah of emuna – that He is the Lord our G-d that took us out of Egypt. So mathematically,
Emuna = freedom.
Two years ago before Pesach, I received an unforgettable letter from a mother whose 8 year-old daughter suffers from Celiac disease. The daughter can’t digest gluten and therefore cannot eat any bread, pasta, cakes, cookies, or anything with wheat- and/or grain-flour additives. The mother bemoaned that her heart breaks whenever she takes the little girl to a birthday party. All the little girl’s friends are eating pizza and birthday cake with glee, and she’s left out. She watches her friends with a forced smile, says the mother, but she’s hurting inside. On Pesach, she can’t eat matza. On Shabbat, she can’t eat challa. On Purim, she can’t eat Hamentashen.
The next paragraph of the mother’s letter told me that the daughter never said Birkat HaMazon (grace after meals, said only if bread was eaten) in her life. She apologized for sounding blasphemous, writing that she was sure Hashem forgives a brokenhearted mother, but then she asked me her bombshell question: If Hashem is so kind and compassionate, why would He torment a little girl with Celiac disease? “My daughter is a little princess,” wrote the mother, “what did she do to deserve this terrible fate? I know that this may sound like a trivial question compared to terminal diseases, bankruptcy, and other people’s problems, but please, I need a good answer to strengthen my faith!”
Really, I was glad that the mother wrote because questions like these make me run to Hashem for the answer. I got up from the keyboard, grabbed my jacket and hat, and went out to the desert for hitbodedut.
The unpolluted Negev air is magnificent this time of the year – it cleans the lungs and the brain. Surrounded by sand, sagebrush, and a striking sunset, Hashem put an amazingly clear answer in my heart for the mother of the Celiac child, as follows:
Emuna teaches us that everything Hashem does is complete kindness and compassion; whether or not we understand how or why doesn’t alter that fact. The little girl’s Celiac disease is no exception to that rule. Here’s how:
The great tzaddikim of the last 220 years – Chassidic masters and Kabbalists alike – have told us that there are no new neshamot (souls) in this generation. All of us are gilgulim (reincarnations) of souls that require a tikkun, or soul correction, in emuna. Therefore, the daughter’s condition is an obvious test of the mother’s emuna.
As for the little girl with Celiac disease, she – like the rest of us – is here to correct a blemish in emuna from a previous gilgul. Yet, I would venture to say that her tikkun is extremely fine, like the final polishing of a diamond. In her former life, her blessings after the meals and all her other mitzvot associated with bread were probably so perfect that Hashem doesn’t want them tampered with in this gilgul. So, Hashem’s considerations are absolute chessed (loving-kindness) to keep your child’s lofty place in the world to come intact. Hashem is helping her to gain only, not to lose.
Don’t you wish people would offer us deals like that, where we’d only gain and not lose? That’s Hashem’s loving nature; we can’t look at one act only. To understand, we have to view the script of the entire play. In addition, we can’t possibly see or fathom all of Hashem’s considerations. We must strengthen ourselves in emuna – that’s our job in this go-around.
I wrote the mother my thoughts in a return email, and she said that my answer made her feel substantially better and enabled her to make peace with Hashem.
There’s no guarantee that my thoughts were accurate about the little girl’s previous lives. But one thing is true: Hashem enabled me to show a fellow human being how the seemingly bad is certainly for the best, which in itself is a mighty reinforcement of emuna. With emuna, we’ll all attain true freedom this Passover.
Meanwhile, although it’s not easy, our friends that suffer from Celiac disease should know that they can make matzo, pitas, or crackers out of buckwheat (photo, left), which has no gluten. Also, there are plenty of tips to make life with Celiac disease easier and tastier.Emuna enables a person to keep a good frame of mind. Let’s not say that a person is “sick with Celiac”. Let’s say he’s healthy with Celiac. With emuna, we’ll see every blessing in this world and in the next, amen!
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