Training for the Elite

Have you ever driven on a particularly tiring day and realized upon reaching home that you remember little about the trip?  You drove through traffic on autopilot. The path is so familiar that the decision to head for home allowed the mind to retrace a series of well-practiced steps.  This common occurrence contains practical spiritual implications if we are looking for them.

The Talmud states:

“In the way one wishes to go, he is led…” (Makos 10B)

People often ask me how I traveled so far off the derech just five years after a miraculous series of events reconnected me to my Jewish roots. Although spiritual struggle is not atypical for a baalat teshuva, arriving at an undesirable destination and wondering how I got there taught me some profound lessons that may help others who face the same struggle. Our forebears left Mitzrayim with miracles and wonders but ended up on a long detour.  Not only are we to understand the big picture, but we must apply the Torah to our individual lives as well. My detour began with complaints because it began without emuna.
 
Rabbi Shalom Arush, shlit’a, teaches us that the purpose of our life in this physical world is to get to know Hashem and acquire emuna, complete faith that Hashem does everything, for the best, and that His sovereignty applies to all the events in our lives. The only real power we are given is that of choice…deciding the way in which we will go.
 
No one warned me at the beginning of my journey that the Yetzer Hara would pummel me with all kinds of troubles, and that I would have to believe that Hashem allowed it in order to strengthen my emuna. When the divorce from a non-Jew came, the loss of a custody battle, and eventual loss of my home and nearly everything I owned, I reacted like the guy who doesn’t understand why the boxing coach is hitting him. First, I felt disoriented; then angry.
 
I consistently failed to realize I was being trained for an elite mission. I was unknowingly choosing the wrong path. As my compass spun wildly, confusing guideposts began to arrive on the scene. First, a well-meaning secular professor who wanted to “help” me understand that religious faith is illogical and perhaps, harmful, G-d forbid. Then, along came Jewish friends who told me that they were atheists and that being Jewish does not require kavanah (intention). I had been a Psychology major as an undergraduate student and joining an organized group of skeptics offered me the promise of relief from my cognitive dissonance. Suddenly, I was surrounded by an environment that reinforced faithlessness, but I did not realize I had brought it into my life by a series of small decisions.
 
For a while, I kept Jewish tradition outwardly, but soon, less and less. What was the point in the absence of a sovereign Creator? Slowly, I subjected myself more and more to the whims of an impersonal natural universe. As if in a dream, I had no idea how far I had traveled until I ran out of gas on a remote stretch of the Highway of Utter Despair.
 
I had moved 40 miles away from the nearest shul in order to oversee a fast food restaurant. My life consisted of work and sleep. The emptiness I felt inside grew until it was unbearable. One night, I sat on my patio under the stars and finally acknowledged that I was completely lost. I told Hashem that I didn’t even know how I had gotten there, that I no longer had a sense of purpose, that I needed Him.
 
Soon after, I borrowed a CD, chosen randomly, from a rabbi. It contained a shiur on the story of Yaakov and the stones which fought over which would be his pillow. Hashem settled the matter by attaching them all together. I had complained endlessly about a lack of yichus (religious pedigree) and this story had shown me that I did not have to have Yaakov’s head on my shoulder. I, too, was part of the rock.
 
A spark of emuna lit a tiny flame in my heart. I traveled to the rabbi to share with him what had come of the loan of his CD. He replied that in 18 years of outreach, I was the only BT who had become so angry and yet, had returned. He explained that it was impossible for him to understand the difficulties BT’s faced. They have to completely reinvent life in every detail and embrace a new mind that overcomes the influence of upbringing and life experience.
 
Perplexed that he referred to me as already having returned, I began to think seriously about what I really desired. That one shiur had been like tasting food for the first time in days. I realized that my soul had been starving. Deliberately this time, I made a choice.
 
I sat on the patio again weeks later and said to Hashem, “If you want me to be a Jew, I want to be a Jew. But I am trapped in a job that is not kosher, in a community that is alien to Judaism, and even in the closest community, there appears to be no chance of finding a bashert that would want to live an observant life. Not with my baggage. It is all so impossible from my perspective, but if you show me how, I will do teshuva and live Jewishly for life.” I meant it. Then I laughed at myself, feeling rather silly…illogical…delighted.
 
Two weeks later, an unexpected shidduch was arranged by a local acquaintance, and I realized that my bashert was looking at me over a cup of coffee at a local Starbucks. He too, had strayed from his Jewish life and into years of hard knocks before he had made a decision. Like me, he had prayed two weeks before–a prayer uncannily similar to mine– from the other side of the city.
 
He is now my black-hatted, bearded husband whose joyous actions have increased Torah observance in our community. We live a mile from shul. We go to sleep at night listening to Breslev emuna CD’s in the background. And we thank Hashem.