We Will Remain Strong!

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.

The Cure Comes Before the Blow 

A man who lost his son at the party on that terrible day came to our studio and asked to speak with me and tell me his amazing story, about how he coped with the unimaginable pain. His son was missing for a few days, and he says that what kept him going in that time of uncertainty was only emuna (faith) and bitachon (trust) that whatever Hashem will do, will be good.  

He told me that a few days after the massacre, on a Friday that happened to be his birthday, he said to Hashem: “I will thank You, Hashem, for every gift You give me.” That very night, he received the terrible news that his son had been killed. 

A loss is always the same loss, and the pain is always the same pain, and the distress is the same distress. But there are those for whom the pain and the distress wreck their lives and they get lost: they drown in the pain; and there are those who manage to “stabilize the ship” and continue with their lives with the pain and despite it. They can even use the pain for the purpose of building and growing, the pain giving them the strength to engage in positive action. 

This man knew that the pain is immense and was threatening to drown him and his family, and he asked Hashem to give him strength. “Creator of the World, send me something that will give me strength,” he requested. 

On Sunday morning, when he was about to put on tefillin, he found in his tefillin bag an old newsletter from our yeshiva. It was a newsletter that was published in 5779 (2019), more than four years before the blow! Hundreds of newsletters have been written since. And who keeps them? In some wondrous way and through Divine Providence it was particularly this newsletter that he had kept. It waited for him for four whole years and turned up at exactly the right moment.  

If he wouldn’t have told me this himself, face to face, with the newsletter in his hands, I too wouldn’t have believed it. This newsletter speaks precisely about coping with the loss of a son by way of emuna. May it never happen to you! 

This particular article had been written as a result of deep personal pain that I was experiencing myself at that time, and, as usual, I found consolation only in emuna. It was written for Shabbat Nachamu, the Shabbat of consolation. And it waited four years to fulfill its purpose.

The Secret of Staying Sane 

We have all been through and are still going through a very difficult period. The pain and distress are endless – hundreds of close families, plus a widening circle of thousands of families and friends have experienced a shakeup that will change their lives completely. The powerful feelings of pain and rage have a negative dynamic that might destroy a person’s life and we have already seen and heard that some just could not go on when faced with the horror and the loss. 

Therefore, here too I wish to return to emuna and get from it the emotional strength. And if what I write will help even one Jew – it is worth it. 

Yosef Hatzaddik experienced a terrible personal disaster. To be sold as a slave and be detached from his family, and on top of that to sit in jail and rot there for twelve years is not a pleasant experience for anyone. But it is doubly hard when that person was extremely close with his father. A youngest child, orphaned from his mother. And it is even more difficult, knowing that he was betrayed by his brothers. These were not militias of terrorists – these were the people he had grown up with. And it is even harder when it happens during the most beautiful years of one’s life – between the ages of seventeen and thirty, when it is clear to him all the time that there is no chance of his coming out of there alive, at least by natural means. From Yosef’s point of view, it was a life sentence. 

Yosef’s heart could have been overflowing with all types of powerful negative thoughts: from frustration and despair, all the way to rage and revenge, self-hate, self- blame, hatred towards mankind in general and his brothers in particular, loss of faith in himself and in others. He could have reached the point of death, could have gone insane, or become a cruel and bad person himself. 

But, no! Yosef maintained his delicacy, his talents, his nobility. He behaved towards the brothers as if everything that happened had nothing to do with him. So much gentleness, so much caring, absolutely no anger or revenge.  

Where did all this come from? From emuna! 

After he revealed himself to them and they had come full circle, they were stunned. They were not yet able to digest all that was happening; and if they were digesting it, they were certainly expecting a death sentence. But already at this stage he said to them: “And now, it was not you who sent me here but G-d, and He has made me father to Pharaoh, lord of his whole household and ruler of all Egypt.” “I am not angry at you at all,” says Yosef, “because it is not you who did this to me; it was only Hashem.” 

This is the entire secret of maintaining sanity. Don’t blame anyone. It is only Hashem. It is not you, nor is it them. Not the government and not the army and not anyone else. It is only Hashem. Why did it happen? That is another question; that is the next stage. But before anything else, emuna! And stage one in emuna is: Everything comes from Hashem, there is nothing other than Him. 

We Go on with Life and Memorialize the Kedoshim (Holy Ones, Martyrs)  

This doesn’t mean that no one is to blame. There are culprits, and they must pay their dues to society. But first, you must hold on to emuna. First, you must protect your inner world, your stability and your emotional health; your life, what you have left.  

Because after you went through what you went through, you have only two options: to believe that it is from Hashem, or to deny and say that it’s not from Hashem. If it’s Hashem, then it’s not the army and not the government, nor anyone else. Your pain was not caused by them. They were only the agents. Whoever is to blame will be punished, but your dealings are only with the Creator, and not with them. 

If you search for the guilty right away; if you immediately aim all your distress at the wrong targets, you are endangering yourself both short- and long-term. You are endangering what you have left, your family, because the bad and negative feelings, even though they are natural, are ruling you and unsettling you at will, like the evil terrorists who tortured and are still torturing an entire country, playing with their feelings towards the hostages and their families.  

Yosef did indeed make sure to have the brothers correct their ways and lead them to the right conclusions; he did this out of love and for their own good. And to this day we are being punished for that sale. David Hamelech, who did not allow the punishment of Shimi ben Gera who cursed him and said, “Hashem told him to curse” – he too made sure at the end of his life that Shimi would be punished, allowing his tikkun (rectification). But both Yosef and David concerned themselves first of all with their emuna! Both of them, first of all, protected their inner world in the face of everything they went through and did not activate the revenge based on their own personal distress. 

Dear families, dear Jews, the distress is deep and difficult, and it is only natural that one feels rage towards all kinds of factors. But one must not desert one’s faith. And faith begins with the knowledge that it’s all from Hashem. “It was not you who sent me here, but rather G-d.” Complete detachment of the personal tragedy from the need to blame. 

This faith will heal you and enable you to go on with life. It will enable you to use the immense pain to memorialize your dear ones in the best way, which will really perpetuate all the good and the light they produced in their life. I am sure that is truly what all those martyrs would want, more than anything else: to see you standing strong. And don’t worry: The faith that everything is from Hashem will not take anything away from the punishment that should come to all those guilty ones at all levels, because Hashem, Who judges the whole world, knows and sees the truth, and He rewards every human being according to his ways and deeds.  

May Hashem give you and all of us the strength to cope, to withstand hard tests with the mindset of emuna, and console us all with complete consolation, with the complete Geula.