Bringing the Children Back to Life

The Youth is Not with Me 

There is nothing that frightens a parent more than the phenomenon of what is known in Hebrew as neshira – dropping out. It is impossible to describe how heartbroken the parents are when they see their child going “off the derech”. For years they gave their all to educate the boy or the girl in the ways of Torah and yirah (fear of Heaven), invested time, effort, money, and endless prayers, and when they see the child losing the feeling for Torah, becoming cold and dismissive and leaving their way of life, changing his dress and his behavior – that breaks their hearts. Unfortunately, this is one of the biggest and most common problems today.  

Of course, there is no magical solution. Clearly, what is needed here is plentiful prayers and every effort possible to save these children. But, as part of the mitzvah of teshuva, when we see a painful phenomenon, we are supposed to examine our own actions; perhaps there is some general problem we have that could be fixed.  

It All Depends on Me – On My Pnimiyut (Inner World) 

In general, one can say that our children are the mirrors of the innermost thoughts. And so, to reconnect them to kedusha (holiness), we must check ourselves: Is our inner world connected to kedusha? 

Unfortunately, very often we discover that our observance of Torah and mitzvot is on a kind of automatic pilot. “Their fear of me is like rote learning of human commands,” says the prophet about the people who “with its mouth and with its lips it has honored Me, yet it has distanced its heart from me.” One gets up in the morning, prays, studies, does mitzvot – but the heart is missing; the heart is far away. Something inside us is detached from our actions. This is just expressed and mirrored in our children, but clearly the correction of this starts with us and not with them.  

It is strictly forbidden to knock ourselves or to blame ourselves, chalila. This can only cause damage. Fighting with the children also won’t help. But we do want to correct the situation and have a spiritual influence on them. Hashem loves us and makes us aware of a certain point, not so that we will break down, chalila, but because He has a message of love for us – and we must listen to it and accept His rebuke so that we will be able to correct the situation and bring back our hearts, our lives! Rabbi Nachman of Breslev promises us that when your heart goes back to functioning in kedusha, the hearts of your children will inevitably feel this and respond accordingly – “Hashem, your G-d will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring.” 

The Holy Fire 

So, what should one do? How does one reawaken and re-enliven the heart? How does one connect Torah and mitzvot to the innermost part of our hearts? 

The best advice regarding that is to connect to tzaddikim. Because the tzaddik is all fire, all internal life, and he has the power to light the inner fire in every human being. A person can study Torah and do mitzvot, but these can remain external. His heart is dead, is comatose. The tzaddik wakes the person up, enlivens his heart and lights the inner fire in him.  

Just listen to these words of Rabbi Nachman, and you will already feel your heart awakening: 

“And therefore, the leaders of the generation must blow the earthiness away from the heart, in other words, from every Jew, and the fire parts of each and every Jew will come back and connect with each other, and the Jews will be connected, and become a heart. And each and every Jew will become the heart for the place where there should be a heart, and it will once again burn for Hashem yitbarach.” 

How sweet are these words! 

Do You Have a Light? 

How do the tzaddikim do this? By revealing to us the light that is in the Torah, the secrets, the pnimiyut – because only when a person is connected to the pnimiyut of the Torah does the Torah connect to the pnimiyut of the person! And that is the entire idea of Chassidut and Kabbala, both of which are known as pnimiyut haTorah. 

And therefore, Rabbi Nachman says that all of a person’s Judaism depends on becoming close to tzaddikim. One might ask, why? Where did Rabbi Nachman come up with this fundamental idea? We know that Judaism means following halacha, Tefilla, mitzvot, Torah study, etc. Why does Rabbi Nachman say that all of Judaism depends on being close to tzaddikim? 

But the main point of Judaism is the heart, the pnimiyut. “The Holy One, Blessed Be He, wants the heart.” “Hashem sees to the heart.” And, unfortunately, our heart is not under our control. Only the tzaddikim control their hearts. And any Jew who wants to rekindle his heart, to fire up his Judaism – must look for the tzaddik who can open his heart for him. There is no lack of Torah classes. There are many holy communities, Baruch Hashem; keeping mitzvot is easier in our generation than ever. But the heart – it is still far, far away, and buried deep down! 

That is why we search for tzaddikim and connect to them! 

To Die in Order to Live 

And since this is so deep and so fundamental, the inhibiting factors are huge. And to break down the inhibiting factors, one needs mesirut nefesh (full devotion).  

In our parasha there is a passuk: “This is the Torah – should a person die in a tent.” Chazal say about this that the Torah is maintained only in someone who “kills himself” for it. And that is, of course, true in the simplest sense when it comes to learning and acquiring Torah, but in light of what we said above, Rabbi Natan provides a new and deeper approach to these words of Chazal: A person should kill himself, in other words, be willing to give up his life in order to dwell in the tents of the tzaddikim. Because it is not in just any beit midrash (study hall) that one can attach the pnimiyut of heart and soul to Torah and invigorate his pnimiyut – only in the tents of true tzaddikim! 

When Bnei Yisrael were in the wilderness, there were many batei midrash, in every tribe, but Yehoshua Bin Nun didn’t “budge from the tent,” the tent being Moshe’s tent, because he knew that one can learn Torah anywhere, but to get a Torah that is enlightening and enlivening, a Torah that fills one’s heart with love and fear – that was possible only in Moshe Rabbeinu’s tent! 

As Rabbi Natan says: 

“Should a person die in a tent – particularly a tent, that is the aspect where he ‘kills himself’ and hands over his soul so that he can remain in the tent of Torah, which is the tent of the true tzaddik… for the main tikkun of a person, the main keeping of the Torah, is when he “kills himself” for the tent, in other words, so as to come closer to the true tzaddik, which is being a yoshev ohel – a dweller in a tent.” 

A Prisoner Cannot Free Himself 

This is connected to the issue of the Para Aduma (the Red Heifer), because tumat met (the impurity of coming into contact with a dead person) is the most severe of the impurities. Tuma is related to the word atimut (unreceptiveness). Using Chassidic thought, we will explain that tumat met is the shutting off the heart. The heart is dead. As we see so much in our generation, among ourselves and others, something is missing. 

In all the impurities, a person can purify himself by immersing himself in a mikvah, but not so with tumat met. A person like that cannot purify himself. He must go the kohen who purifies him with the ashes of the para aduma, to imply that a person whose heart has become closed and non-receptive cannot free himself from this jail. He must go to the tzaddik–kohen who can purify him, remove from him the blockage of the heart, and rejuvenate his heart. 

Dear fellow Jews, a whole and happy life is a life of meaning, where the heart is alive. Attaching oneself to a tzaddik is the key to having a living heart. In other words, it is the key to a truly happy life. and the gain is double and triple – you yourselves start to really live, and you are thereby also protecting your children’s hearts, and even if they have already started to drop away, you can perform CPR on them, and save their lives.