Who Throws Away Gold?

Translated from Rabbi Arush’s feature article in the weekly Chut shel Chessed newsletter. The articles focus on his main message: “Loving others as yourself”. 

I Didn’t Give Up Anything 

There are those who do teshuva out of distress, and there are those who do teshuva when they are at the height of their success. 

When Hashem had mercy on me and I did teshuva, I was at the height of success. Not many of the readers remember the 1970’s. Who owned a car then? Only a minority of the population. And I had then a car, money, an apartment, and all the pleasures that this world has to offer.  

And therefore, when I began to observe the mitzvot, all my friends, who viewed me as an icon of success asked me: “How can you leave all this happiness? How can you give up such a life?” 

And I replied to them: “Your question contains the answer. I am not ‘giving up’ anything. I have just found something much better. If you had a sack of silver coins, and you would find a sack of gold coins, and you can carry only one sack – what would you do? Of course, you would throw away the silver and take the gold. 

“Therefore, even according to your viewpoint and to your notions that this world is worth gold, you can understand that if I threw away this sack, I must have found a sack of diamonds, which are of inestimable value.” 

Selling Emuna to the “Believers” 

The true diamonds are not the Torah’s external aspects, but rather the internal ones, the pnimiyut. “The light that is in it returns him to the good [path].” If the Torah were only a collection of laws, no one would do teshuva, for no one would want to limit himself with prohibitions and further restrictions.  

All those who repent and leave the vanities of this world do so only because they discover an inner light, a great light that illuminates all the laws and reveals that the prohibitions do not limit and do not restrict; rather, they enable us to truly connect to the Creator, and to grow and develop in the correct and healthy way; they protect us and our light.  

And what is the light? The true light of the Torah is the light of emuna (faith). 

I can tell you about myself – that even before I observed Torah and mitzvot I merited to know the Creator of the World and believe in Him. The simple faith existed in me back then as well, and pointed the way, and that is the only thing that led me in the end to leave the false ways and to connect to Torah and mitzvot. 

I remember, that even when I didn’t know how to observe the most basic mitzvot – I sat in the home of a charedi family and spoke with the family members about belief in Hashem, and they sat in front of me open-mouthed and said to me: “Where are you getting all this information from? We have lived all our lives with Torah and mitzvot and thought we believed in Hashem, and we never heard about a connection with the Creator like the one you describe – the faith that Hashem loves you in any situation, being able to speak directly with the Creator of the World and having such a deep connection with Him.” 

The Result of Emuna 

And as we wrote last week, Chanuka is the festival of light. Our Sages teach us that to educate (Chanuka, as in chinuch – education), one must search for the light in the Torah and pass it on to our children.  

Because without the inner light that illuminates all of Judaism, one can easily reach a situation in which one is exposed to foreign cultures, and as a result leaves a holy and light-filled way that is thousands of years old.  

For many years I have explained that what was lacking in the Jewish People in that generation was the gratitude and joy in Torah and mitzvot, and the days of Chanuka are days of gratitude, intended to correct that. 

But in recent years I have taken another look and I discovered that what was lacking was the light, which is the emuna, as I will explain. The very essence of emuna was lacking. 

I have already written about this at length in the wonderful booklet, Joy of Life (currently only in Hebrew), which teaches that whoever believes in the Creator but does not believe that the Creator loves him with endless love, unconditionally and in any situation – he really doesn’t believe in the Creator, but in an imaginary figure totally unconnected with the Creator. 

It is possible to believe in the Creator only if one knows Him. And knowing the Creator means to know that He is a loving father in any situation. He loves you and believes in you. 

The gratitude and joy in Judaism, too, is only a result of the belief that Hashem loves one. 

How can one be happy when one is believing in a lie, in a made-up creator, a “creator” who, chalila, hates, an imaginary figure who is evil? 

Banishing the Darkness 

Only when one knows and recognizes the Creator’s love and believes in that – only then does the emuna connect you to the Creator and illuminate your life, and such a faith one would never, ever leave, no matter the situation and the price to be paid. 

But when there is no light in Judaism – when offered some money, some honor, wisdom, sports and all kinds of cheap substitutes, a person will leave very easily, because what does he have in his Judaism if he doesn’t feel the light and the sweetness? 

The days of Chanuka are days of thankfulness due to those small candles that we light every evening.  

These candles are the light of the Torah, the light of emuna that shows us how much Hashem loves us. And it is the light that banishes the darkness of kefira (unbelief) and shows that this world has nothing to offer us, because there is no love in the world like the love of our Father in Heaven.  

To Watch the Sun Rise at Eight in the Evening 

With this light it is possible to get through any crisis in life! Recently, I had a distressing and extreme example of this, a very difficult case. 

It was a most upsetting event. I went to pay my respects to a friend of mine, an old-time ba’al teshuva from the north of the country. His son, unfortunately, had committed suicide. 

May we not know from such things! It is so hard to lose a son, and even more so in such circumstances. And I came to provide some consolation to the broken family.  

It is easy to understand what sort of atmosphere there is in such a home. All the family members who grew up with the young man and were with him all those years – they could not come to terms with the tragedy; and all the deceased’s friends were young men themselves who were faced suddenly with such a tragedy; they were deeply shocked. What can one say in such a situation? 

But I knew the one thing that strengthened me in all the difficult trials I went through, and the one thing that could strengthen the family. I decided to just repeat the words of emuna that I wrote in the booklet “Joy of Life.” 

What can I tell you? It was like seeing the sun come up; watching as the darkness disappeared slowly and the light of day appeared. Just like that, one could see the darkness leaving the people’s faces, and their being filled with encouragement and hope and consolation. They were receiving the light and the abilities to cope with the impossible situation. He Who rolls darkness away in face of light! 

You Have Replaced My Lament with Dancing 

In conclusion, I told them a story that was very suitable for that scene. I wrote up this story in my book The Garden of Emuna. The Ba’al Shem Tov’s disciples went to console their friend and spoke words of faith, to the point that they were so strengthened that they got up to dance joyfully. And that is what happened here too. 

At a certain point, the parents and brothers, together with all the friends and relatives, sat and sang with me, “Hashem yitbarach always loves me and things will always be good for me, and I will have more good and even more good.” We then got up to dance and thank Hashem for His tremendous love for us. 

What awakened me more than anything else on that very difficult evening was that all the friends said to me: “If our deceased friend had heard all this, he certainly wouldn’t have done what he did; he would be alive today, dancing with us, as well as enlivening other people and making them happy.” 

“Darkness over the abyss” – that is Yavan – Greece. 

Any darkness that shuts out the light for a person, can do so only when his emuna is weak and has been extinguished. The only solution for this is to light the light of Torah, of emuna, to kindle the light of the love that Hashem always loves us in any situation, and then the healing sun rises and shines, and all the harsh decrees become sweeter; the shadows will recede and we will have the light of Hashem and His Honor shining upon us, soon, in our days, Amen.