Take God’s Hand – Part 1

God Himself testifies about Moshe Rabbeinu that he was the humblest man to ever walk the planet. Rabbi Arush recently discussed the question: What exactly does that mean? What exactly did he do in order to earn that title? 

The answer: Moshe prayed before every single thing he did.

Rabbi Arush explained that part of emuna is believing that Hashem did, does, and will do everything in the world. As he discussed in his book A New Light, that automatically means that the only thing left in our hands is our will and our desire. Ultimately, the results – success, failure, don’t even manage to do it, etc. – are ultimately up to Hashem. That is to say, the results are all from God – we just have to try. And therefore, we are JUDGED on what we wanted to do and tried to do – not on how it actually worked out in the end. 

If we truly live that reality, then we recognize that if we really want something – we must pray for it! We need to ask Hashem to make it actually happen, because what actually happens is His decision – not ours. 

Our requests aren’t just about big-ticket items we want such as a soulmate or a new job. It’s absolutely EVERYTHING – from asking Hashem to help you wake up on time and fulfill the commandment to jump out of bed like a lion, to asking Hashem to help you fall asleep and sleep a deep, refreshing and holy sleep – and everything in between. 

Hence, emuna means that we recognize that we are zero. We don’t have any true power, we can’t control anything inside our bodies such as our next heartbeat or our next breath, let alone anything outside of us. Someone who truly internalizes that, prays about everything! If you want it and you don’t have any power to get it, then automatically you’re going to ask the One who does have the power to give it to you. That was Moshe Rabbeinu’s emuna and humility. 

Rabbi Arush added even more and further explained that anything you don’t pray for and get – you are punished for it! How? You are given arrogance as a punishment. You think that you did it – and that takes you farther away from Hashem. There is no worse punishment! 

Furthermore, arrogance carries with it severe transgressions against Hashem. Arrogance is totally contrary to emuna. Since emuna is emotional health, arrogance brings in its wake all sorts of emotional ills. When you fail or make a mistake, you hate yourself and blame yourself, fall into despair and depression, or become anxious for future mistakes and problems.  

Incredible amounts of needless emotional stress and suffering all come because we didn’t pray first. We didn’t recognize that it wasn’t in our power to succeed alone in the first place. 

In Rabbi Arush’s words, “Either in this world or the Next World – you’ll be punished for every single thing you received without prayer!” 

In another class, Rabbi Arush went even further. He said that the entire weekday Shemonei Esrei  that we pray three times a day can be understood as a prayer to Hashem that we should merit to pray on everything, to have humility, and to be saved from arrogance.  

“Bring us back in complete repentance before You…” This is the essential teshuva (repentance) that we need to do. To come back to emuna and recognize that Hashem is Ein Od Milvado – the only power. To beg Hashem to pray before everything we do, and in this way live with true humility and repent for our arrogance. 

He stressed that it’s important that every time we say the name “Elokim” in Shemonei Esrei,  we mean that God “has all the power, and all the abilities, did, does, and will do everything, ein od milvado, and oversees us with personal Divine providence” (Siddur Lev Shalom, Rabbi Arush’s siddur, Hebrew only, Nusach Sephard). 

“See our pain and fight for our cause…” All the worst pain and suffering comes because of arrogance! We beg Hashem to come to our aid and enable us to pray about everything.  

“Heal us and we will be healed…” Heal us from all the sicknesses we gave ourselves due to our arrogance! Heal us from thinking that we can do something alone! 

“Save us, and we will be saved…” From our arrogance! From all the suffering that comes with arrogance! 

“…because You are our praise…” We want to recognize that You did it all, and praise and thank You for it properly! 

Now, before you get totally depressed about how far away from all this you (and everyone else including me) are from all this – Rabbi Arush teaches that the easiest way to fix the error of forgetting to pray before you do something, is to thank Hashem for whatever you forgot to pray about!  

That makes sense to me, since this repentance is still an aspect of humility. You don’t need to say “thank you” to yourself! So clearly saying “thank You” means that you recognize that you didn’t do it yourself, couldn’t do it yourself, and thank Hashem that He did do it. 

As for me, I took Rabbi Arush’s teaching to work and I succeeded! For about an hour… I will tell you that that hour felt AMAZING. I felt like a whole new world opened to me. I felt so close to Hashem, I felt like Hashem was right with me, listening, helping… 

…and then some hours later in the evening, I suddenly realized that the kids had come home, the whirlwind of dinner and bedtime had knocked me over and here I was, I hadn’t said ONE WORD of asking Hashem to help me, not even in general in the last moments as the kids were knocking on the door… 

Since then, I’ve realized just how serious this work is. Most of the time I forget. And then I beat myself up for forgetting. And then I remember that I need to pray to not forget, because why beat myself up? Who says I should be on the level to remember even once an hour anyway? Anger and despair is a lack of emuna… and then I get angry at myself that I’m angry at myself and in a place of lack of emuna… and the only way out is to realize that I really have to stop expecting of myself absolutely ANYTHING in spirituality… and man, how much arrogance do I really have, because I think that I should be doing so much better! Oy vey! 

I was really stuck in a rut until Hashem helped me realize that I just need to take His hand… more on that in Part 2. 

*** 

Rachel Avrahami grew up in Los Angeles, CA, USA in a far-off valley where she was one of only a handful of Jews in a public high school of thousands. She found Hashem in the urban jungle of the university. Rachel was privileged to read one of the first copies of The Garden of Emuna in English, and the rest, as they say, is history. She made Aliyah and immediately began working at Breslev Israel.   
  
Rachel is now the Editor of Breslev Israel’s English website. She welcomes questions, comments, articles, and personal stories to her email: rachel.avrahami@breslev.co.il.