The Search

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” and emuna. 

A Religious Greek? 

The parents stood next to their son’s bed and cried. He had been unconscious for a week already. The doctor came over, and in an attempt to calm them said, “From the tests we’ve done, I can tell you that all the systems in his body are functioning properly. He’s just not conscious…”  

Was that comforting for the parents? What are all the functioning systems worth if there is no consciousness? If the main thing isn’t there? 

Rabbi Pincus zt”l, writing about the passuk, “I roused your children, Zion, against your children, Greece,” points out that ציון and יון are the same letters, except for the letter Tzaddik. He goes on to say something shocking: There could be a Jew who is G-d fearing; all his religious “systems” are working. He is learning and praying, and yet something is missing in him, and that lack turns him from ציון to יון, from Jewish to Greek. 

What’s lacking is the deepest point of Judaism – the internal vitality, the consciousness! 

That is what I have been explaining all these years: It is impossible for a Jew to become Hellenized. A conscious Jew, that is, one who really lives his Jewishness – will never leave the source of his vitality! 

It is clear that all those Hellenized Jews were Jews who had “lost consciousness”, Jews who functioned outwardly as Jews, but only outwardly; they had long lost the inner joy, the connection with the Creator of the World, the faith. Only someone who lacks inner Jewish vitality can become Hellenized. 

Filling the Internal Vacuum 

And who gives us that internal point? Who returns our “consciousness” and gives us the internal vitality that enlivens all other systems and gives them meaning? 

Rabbi Nachman tells in one of his stories (The Rabbi’s Son) about the son of a rabbi who was very diligent in his studies and very holy – but he had an internal void that left him feeling unfulfilled. He felt he lacked the internal point. 

And the cure for this lack, says Rabbi Nachman, is to travel to the tzaddik! One receives that internal point only from the tzaddik! It is not for nothing that the difference between Tzion and Yavan is the letter tzaddik, which hints to a righteous person. 

In this story, Rabbi Nachman shows that it is not so simple to come close to a tzaddik. There are many meni’ot – inhibitors. And the main inhibitors come particularly from great rabbis, from his father… It is not at all easy. 

All the more so in our generation, when we don’t know which tzaddik we should become close to. Who is the tzaddik who has the power to awaken our inner point, bring us back to consciousness of the holiness of our Judaism? What can be done? 

Rabbeinu’s Legacy 

Therefore, Rabbi Nachman left us, in his last teaching a directive and exhorted again and again to search for the tzaddik. He explains at great length that all our emuna, all the vitality of our inner spirit and our tikkun (rectification) depend on this. 

Therefore, we cannot let ourselves off the hook by claiming, “It’s hard, it’s confusing, I don’t know who the tzaddik is…” If you understand that all your Judaism depends on the tzaddik, if you don’t want to be a living dead, if you don’t want to be a Greek religious Jew, you must do everything, and the main thing is to pray a lot, as Rabbeinu writes repeatedly, in different words: 

“And therefore, one must search much for a true leader to come close to… But truly one must search very, very much after such a true leader, and beseech Hashem yitbarach, that one should come close to a true leader, so that he will merit true and perfect emuna…” 

Sons Will Not Be Killed for the Deeds of Their Fathers 

This week’s parasha tells us of the sin of the selling of Yosef. This sin has yet to be atoned for, as the prophet Amos rebukes the Jewish people hundreds of years later: “On account of Yisrael’s three crimes and on account of the fourth, I will not forgive them. They sold the righteous for silver…” (Amos 2:6) Even after several hundreds of years, ten of the greatest scholars had to die cruel deaths to atone for that sin. The Midrash says: “And still, that sin exists.” 

We must ask: Do we have to pay for a sin we didn’t commit? We know that sons are not killed for the bad deeds of the fathers! Why are we to blame? 

The question becomes even greater if we read the Megale Amukot on the issue. He brings the passuk, “They said to one another, ‘We are guilty, guilty because of what we did to our brother…’” The Megale Amukot writes that the passuk contains six successive words that begin with the letter alef, parallel to the six thousand years the world exists, for the sin of the selling of Yosef stands as an accusation for all those six thousand years! 

This is certainly difficult to understand, because the sale took place more than two thousand years after the world was created! Why should the sin of the sale serve as an accusation for the first two thousand years before it happened? 

Continuing to Sell Yosef 

The answer is that the sin of selling Yosef, Yosef Hatzaddik, was the sin of negating the tzaddik, the inner point of Judaism. Even great tzaddikim such as the Tribal leaders made a mistake and did not search for the tzaddik, from whom they were supposed to receive, as Yosef told them in his dreams. 

This is not connected only to Yosef the person, but to the Yosef Hatzaddik in every generation. And even before the sale of Yosef, no one searched for the tzaddik in the generation who had existed in the world since Adam Harishon. And even after the sale, to this very day, the point of the true tzaddik is still hidden. The vast majority of human beings, and even the vast majority of proper Jews, don’t take upon themselves to search for and demand from Hashem the opportunity to be close to that tzaddik who can awaken their inner point. 

And even more so, in many generations, not only did no one search for the tzaddik, but they disagreed with him and mocked him and even persecuted him, to the point of wanting to kill him. And this was true even of great rabbis and leaders – just like in the sale of Yosef.  

Rabbi Natan speaks of this at great length in a few places, and we will bring just a few gems from his amazing ideas. 

Rabbi Natan writes that if, chalila, they would have killed Yosef, as was the original plan, the whole world would have been destroyed immediately, because the tzaddik is the vitality of the whole world, and when the world’s vitality is removed from it, the whole world dies.  

Rabbi Natan writes further that one can be very mistaken when coming to clarify the truth from the lie, and even more so to clarify the pristine point of truth from points of truth that are imperfect. And it can be so misleading that even great tzaddikim like the holy brothers made a mistake about it. And Shaul, too, who was clean of sin, made a mistake when it came to David. And therefore, it is particularly the rabbis and the tzaddikim who must pray more and more to come close to the true tzaddik and to be very, very careful to avoid machloket  (disagreements).  

Resuscitation for the Entire Generation 

Therefore, the complete tikkun for the sin of selling Yosef is that all of us should search for the point of the tzaddik, and certainly we should be careful to avoid any aspect of machloket  because if the greatest people could make a mistake, who are we to be able to avoid mistakes? 

According to this it can be understood that the salvation of Chanukah and the cure for the spiritual holocaust of Hellenization was not the military salvation, but the spiritual one: lighting the inner light. The holy kohanim who are the tzaddikim, because they are in charge of teaching Torah to the Jewish people, awakened the inner point in the Jewish people, which enabled them to get up and fight and the few managed to vanquish the many and to purify the Temple.  

The goal of all the mitzvot of Chanukah is to awaken that internal point: The first mitzvah is the Hallel and the thanking, which is the internal aspect of Judaism – Yehudi comes from hodaya – thankfulness. The second mitzvah is lighting the Chanukah candles, which are the light that is being saved for the tzaddikim. This is the light with which one can perform, “I will search for Jerusalem with candles”. Searching for that point of the tzaddik, which brings us back to a full awareness of the holiness of our Judaism and gives meaning to our existence.  

Searching for the tzaddik not only illuminates the inner point, but also removes the accusation of the selling of Yosef from the entire generation! And in the merit of the holy light of Chanuka, we will be able to search and find the tzaddik and come close to him completely, and so light the light of the holy Judaism in our hearts and in the hearts of all our brethren, and the world will reach its rectification.