A Letter for Life-Seekers 

Dear Jews, dear Jewesses, 

What would you want for your child? I assume you want a great many things.  

But what is common to all those things is that you want their life to be good. We want a good life for our children. The best. That is our deepest wish.  

If we had to choose a future for our children and were given two options: that they should be rich but have a bad life, or be poor and have a good life, there is no doubt that we would choose the second of these.  

Because the most important thing for us is that our children have a good life.  

Even good health is just a means, and not an end. There are people who are completely healthy physically, but their lives are very bad. It is clear to me that we would not wish that for our children. Conversely, there are people who have diseases or disabilities and they are happy and pleased. They feel life is good and they do good to everyone else. 

We should know that the Creator of the World, Who is our Father, loves us no less than we love our children. He wants life to be good for us no less than we want that for our children. 

He wants us to live good and happy lives. For that purpose, and only for it, He created us: so that we will have complete good. And everything that the Creator does is only for that purpose. 

To many, it seems that suffering is a fate decreed in heaven, and that therefore our happiness does not depend on us.  

I would like to enlighten you – it may sound a bit harsh, but it’s the truth: No suffering in our lives comes from the Creator; it is what we do to ourselves. It’s our choice. I am not blaming you, but, rather, giving you much hope: your happiness depends on you. And that is the greatest news.  

“Suffering” means any kind of distress, sadness, resentment and feelings of deprivation. Any anxiety, fear, jealousy, hatred, looking unfavorably on others, all the soul’s suffering and the light and severe depressions. All the self-blame and self-castigating, all our lack of emuna in ourselves, all the heavy emotional burdens we drag behind us, all the heavy stones that are sitting on our hearts – all of this we do to ourselves, but we can change everything and live the happy lives that the Creator wants us to live.  

Because we have the choice: To believe in the Creator and live full, real, and happy lives, or not to believe and to continue to suffer. 

He who believes in the Creator completely is always happy; he is free of any sadness, anxiety and worries. He is always optimistic and believes in himself. He is always ready to get up and try, to start anew. He is always happy with his portion in life; his relationships with other people are full, normal and healthy, free of jealousy, hatred and vengefulness. 

He is completely healthy emotionally.  

Nowadays, unfortunately, mental illness is not the lot of just a few. Almost every one of us is suffering from some level of mental illness. We are under constant tension and stress, and often collapse from the pressure.  

And that pressure, too, is lack of emuna, since it stems from a person thinking everything is in his hands, under his control.  

The believer does not refrain from action: he does everything with energy and joy – only without the pressure and the worries. Moreover, because he is free of the pressure, he is much more effective, and much more focused.  

I wrote about this at length in my book The Garden of Emuna, and, even so, I would like to clarify what I wrote there and speak to you about two points that are fundamentals of emuna and that will give you the keys to work and obtain emuna and live healthy lives with healthy psyches.  

The idea is very simple: To be healed, one needs to define both the illness and the cure correctly.  

Define the Illness 

First, to define the illness: If you are blaming something or someone for your distress and suffering – even if it is yourself – here the illness is clear. It is clear that you have no emuna that there is none other than Him, and I wrote at length about that in the book. But even if you understand already that all your emotional distress is rooted in lack of emuna, and you say, “I must strengthen my emuna. I do not have enough emuna, my emuna is weak” – that, too, is a mistake. 

Why? Because this is an unclear definition of the illness. The illness must be defined clearly: If you have suffering or distress of any kid, if you are not completely happy – you have no emuna. This is kefira – denial of emuna. Ninety percent emuna – is kefira. There is nothing in the middle; it is either emuna or kefira; either happiness or suffering. 

When the illness is defined correctly, only then can you invest all of your powers in the true solution. And the true solution for kefira is of course to acquire emuna and to live it in the way we will explain in a moment.  

Define the Cure 

And here is where the second point comes up: to define the cure. In order to acquire emuna and live a good, happy life, one must understand what emuna is. If we do not know what it means to believe, we will have no way to heal ourselves, because our powers will be wasted in the wrong places.  

The holy Zohar defines emuna: To know the Creator. In order to believe in Hashem, we have to know Who Hashem is. What His traits are. If you think wrong thoughts about the Creator, then even though you might think you believe, this is actually not belief in the Creator, but, rather, belief in some sort of entity that you have created for yourself. And even if you have a conversation with Hashem every day or even today – that is not a conversation with the Creator, but with that being that you created in your imagination. It is not the emuna, then; it is a superstition, a mistaken emuna.  

Jews say to me: Rabbi, I have emuna. I talk to Hashem every day. I try so hard. But I suffer from anxiety.  

And I say: How could that be? What do you have to be afraid of? That the Creator will do something bad to you? 

If one knows Who the Creator is, one understands that that cannot be. There is no such reality. Because the Creator is good and does only good. He loves you and cares for you as if you were His only child. So how could it be that He would do something bad to you? Can there be room for fears or anxiety in the life of a believer? 

That is what is behind all emotional suffering and negative feelings – they all stem from lack of emuna, in other words, from the fact that we don’t really know the Creator, and therefore believe in something wrong. This means to take the greatest power that you have – the power of emuna – and waste it. it does not heal you; it only hurts you.  

There is a story about a yeshiva student who began to experience difficulties in his emuna and wanted to leave the Torah way of life. He approached his Rosh Yeshiva and told him of his confusion.  

The Rabbi said to him: “The ‘Creator’ that you do not believe in, I don’t believe in either.” The Rabbi was telling him: “You do not believe because you do not know the real Creator, His goodness and love. If you would have known the Creator that I believe in, you too would certainly not be able to even think of giving up your emuna.” 

Therefore, when people speak about emuna as a cure to emotional suffering, they are speaking not about strengthening what seems to you to be the correct emuna, but, rather, they are speaking about studying and strengthening the true emuna, the pure emuna, the emuna in the Creator, May He Be Blessed, Who not only created the world and there is nothing other than Him, but is also a merciful father, who is good and does good, who always loves you and always does only what is best for you. Everything that He did for you until today was only the best for you. And you can be rest assured that He will always do only what is truly good for you.  

Dear Jew, dear Jewess, take these things to your hearts, and your life will be better. 

Writing to you with love,  

Rabbi Shalom Arush