Together We Will Win

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.

Pictures – Good and Bad 

They say that “One picture is worth a thousand words.” This war has supplied us with many, many pictures. Let’s listen to the pictures and to our own hearts and try to understand what these pictures do to us. There are pictures such as the one of thousands of Jews – men, women, and children – going out on a cold winter night to greet their brothers who are returning from captivity, with love and warmth and cheering. Or like the picture of soldiers and civilians, religious and non-religious, dancing together, or like the picture of a sefer Torah being installed in a synagogue in a kibbutz. What do these pictures do to us? How good and pleasant it is to look at them. How heartwarming.  

On the other hand, what do pictures of stormy Knesset sessions, or of an ugly demonstration, or of arguments and shouting, blaming one another – what do these do to us? It doesn’t matter which side we’re on, either. They just give us a bad feeling, press a dagger into the heart, depress, weaken.  

Pictures of the first type give strength to the fighting soldiers, to the families at home, to families who have been uprooted from their homes. They give hope, they make the enemy afraid; and the pictures of the second type do exactly the opposite. They are not only unnecessary; they are really damaging – they do harm to our health, to our security. Really dangerous.  

So, first of all, we don’t have to see things that make us feel bad. We are not obligated to torture ourselves. We are not obligated to allow the media to abuse us. For what? To see all this evil? Why experience all these negative feelings? We should see only things that make us feel good; look and focus only on pictures of the first type. If we won’t want and won’t search for the pictures that portray divisiveness, if we shout, “Enough! Stop this abuse!”, in the end, it will have an effect.  

Learning the Hard Way 

But beyond that, we don’t want to only see good pictures; we want to create good pictures, create a good reality.  

The pictures we saw up to last Simchat Torah were, unfortunately, mainly of the second type. Bad pictures. Pictures that gave us a bad feeling. The pictures from Simchat Torah itself – well, there’s nothing to say about them. But due to our many sins, the difficult circumstances turned everything around. Since that hard day, we are all seeing the wonderful pictures portraying unity and joy, devotion and love, emuna (faith) and the power of giving and chessed. People are showing interest in Judaism. People are uniting. Even estranged couples are finding a way to rise above themselves at this difficult time and focus on what they have in common. Overnight, people are gaining a sense of proportion and understanding that all of yesterday’s little squabbles are really and truly meaningless.  

But why must we experience such a terrible disaster to see pictures of unity? Is there a different way? What will we do after the war? Will the good pictures once again disappear from our lives, and the bad pictures return? What can be done so that on the day after we will continue to see unity, love, joy – pictures that will make us feel good? 

Sometimes one has to learn the hard way. What we couldn’t grasp in times of peace and quiet, we were forced to understand through a veil of blood and war. And so that this will never happen again, we must search for and find the easy way – the way to build bridges and connect without a terrible tragedy. We must find the way to love and listen even without being threatened by death. We want to see only the good pictures even after the war, when there will be peace and tranquility! 

The Renewed Unity 

There was a fierce disagreement between the sons of Yaakov Avinu, one which led to an estrangement, to the point that they couldn’t even speak with each other. “They couldn’t say a peaceful word to him.” The only solution back then would have been to sit and talk, to clarify the truth. They had a righteous father, whose main trait was that of truth. They could have sat with their father, talked and listened to each other until they had settled all the disagreements, and thus would have renewed the love and the brotherhood. 

But they didn’t see what they had in common – “We are all the sons of one man,” but rather chose the way of war and brought upon themselves and their father much suffering. And when things weren’t done the easy way, they had to go the hard way. Yosef brought them to an extremely unpleasant situation of captivity and jail in order to unite them. His demand was that they bring the one missing brother – Binyamin. Why did Yosef insist that the brothers bring Binyamin? This is hard to understand, knowing that Yosef loved his father so much and knew how distressing this would be for him.  

Rabbi Natan of Breslev explains this beautifully: “Let one of you go and fetch your brother. The rest of you will remain confined here. This will test whether you are telling the truth.” Rabbi Natan says: You didn’t want to sit together and clarify the truth when we were sitting peacefully in our land, so now we will be forced to unite in a foreign land, in jail and exile, in fear, and now we will find out the truth. 

Yosef’s call to the Tribes to gather had already brought them to take account and understand: “We are guilty.” But the process wouldn’t be complete until all the sons of Yisrael, the twelve holy tribes, Yosef included, would sit down together and discover the point of love and brotherhood uniting them, as indeed happened in the end. Rabbi Natan says: “It is impossible that the truth can be complete unless all of Yisrael gather together with the aspect of Yosef, who is the aspect of the true tzaddik, and therefore the main rectification and hope is through those who come close to the point of truth.” 

The Way of Peace 

From my many years of experience with couples who come to me to achieve shalom bayit, I can say that the solution for all the couples is one: A couple comes with disagreements and gaps between them. Each one comes with his own “truth”. In this way, there is no chance for peace. 

The only chance and the only solution are that the two of them accept guidance from an external point of truth, when they have a rabbi, leader, guide that both are committed to. Only in that way will they succeed and reach a state of peace and love. Those who are willing to accept the guidance succeed, while those who want to continue to hold on to their own truth will never achieve peace. The most they can hope for is a ceasefire. 

And that is what Rabbi Natan means when he says one needs the point of truth of a true tzaddik. Why does one need a tzaddik? Because when everyone unites around one tzaddik, a supreme authority, behind one flag, one truth – then it is very easy to bridge the gaps.  

Together We Will Win – Even After the War 

The holy days of Chanuka are now behind us. The Jewish People was in an existential danger of losing its identity, its uniqueness and its Judaism. That being so, it lost its independence as well. When Matityahu, the Cohen Gadol called, “All who are for Hashem, come to me,” he united all the people with a single goal: to call out the name of Hashem, to fight for Him. It was then that the Jewish people had the strength to go to war and sacrifice themselves in a situation of the few fighting the many, and win and see miracles and wonders, as well as reinstalling kingship and independence. 

In this generation, as well, what gives the soldiers the strength is their belief in the Creator of the World, in the Jewish People. This is what gives them their power on the battlefield, and thanks to that we hear endless stories of heroism and amazing miracles. 

If we want to continue to see the good pictures, we must continue to unite around the flag of Judaism and faith in days of peace and routine as well. This is what makes us a nation. This is what connects us to the Land of Israel, and this is what connects us to one another. Only with this truth in mind will we be able to solve all the disagreements and all the conflicts and see only peace and unity, love and friendship among us.  

Because “Together we will win” is not true only in time of war. “Together we will win” is always true, every day in our lives. Together – husband and wife; together – brothers and sisters; together – neighbors and communities; together – ethnic groups and lifestyles; together – varying opinions and viewpoints. And only thanks to this “together” we will get to Parashat Miketz, that the ketz – the end – will come to the darkness and the exile, and all Jews will merit the complete Geula together.