Jewish?! Are You Crazy?

Imagine you’re on the way to an important meeting; if it will work out, you will do the deal of your life. It has taken a year to get this ten minute meeting and while you’re parking the car at the fancy hotel, you suddenly remember that you didn’t wrap Tefillin today and sunset is in another five minutes. Did you ever feel something like that? You are so close to success and the only thing that stops you is your belief – Judaism?

That sort of thing could get you (quite understandably) very frustrated. It’s easy to feel that Judaism holds you back from getting ahead. Jewish life is a major investment of time, energy, money and resources, and you it affects your life in all terms. It’s so easy to feel that it stops you. So why live a Jewish lifestyle? Who wants to be a robot Jew doing things only because you were told and not because you feel like it?

Let’s consider for a moment, the Jews in America at the beginning of twentieth century. How did they feel looking for a new job every Sunday because they were fired for refusing to work on Shabbat? Why did they continue living as Shabbat observant Jews? Why couldn’t they bend the Torah to their trying circumstances? After all “without bread there is no Torah”…

Our main problem is that we feel that the Torah pulls us down and doesn’t let us develop. But the truth is that Judaism is much deeper then something that only obliges us. It’s much more than a group of scrolls gathered into a fat and boring book. The Torah actually pulls us up and gives us meaning, purpose, and development on every level, including the spiritual level.

Rabbi Arush explains that to the extent that you love and appreciate the mitzvah, and take joy in doing it, is to the extent that the mitzvah enlightens and illuminates you and your life. The Torah gives you so much when you understand that what you are doing in terms of observance is nowhere near as much as what you’re getting.

Let’s return to the example of Shabbat. No human could possibly have created Shabbat observance, which gives every single person and even animal owned by a Jew complete and total rest of the body and soul. No human could imagine (and sometimes it is hard for us to understand) how all these little details affect us. Is turning on and off a light work? Ripping toilet paper? What’s the big deal?!

The answer is that all these details create this incredible experience called Shabbat where you don’t think about ANYTHING. No work, no money worries, no laundry, no cooking, no nothing. We see how Sundays have changed in the US over the last few decades so that now it’s just a shopping day. But all those details enable Shabbat to remain fixed and never deteriorate into a day lacking true spiritual purpose. A day to reconnect with G-d, with our family, with ourselves. To turn off the million devices and prove that we use them, instead of them controlling us.

What about those families who kept Shabbat even in the most trying circumstances? There is a famous story about a little girl who came without her family to live with cousins in America. She was sent to work. Her family made her promise to continue to keep Shabbat, and she didn’t know what to do. Her cousins insisted she work on Shabbat to bring in money, but she promised her family. She ended up walking one block and crying there the entire day. At the end of the day she returned home, and her cousins were overjoyed: “How did you survive?” She couldn’t believe it, she was terrified of what they would do to her, and here they were happy? It turns out, that day was the famous Triangle Shirt fire. She was saved because she refused to go to work on Shabbat.

It’s true that we don’t always see the results of keeping the Torah and mitzvot as immediately as that girl did on that day. However, the Torah is based on real and meaningful things, on enabling you to fulfill your true purpose in life – that’s what keeps the Jewish fire from going out. The culture around us is based only on fun and exciting things, and on transient things like money, honor and prestige.

I want to ask you a question, did you ever feel that you’re not needed for the continuation of the world? That feeling comes because the things you do don’t have eternal, real importance. They might be just cheap thrills, or something else transient of this world, and that’s why you feel not important. Judaism forces you to live a valuable life. With Torah, mitzvot, and especially emuna – you have a reason for living, a purpose to a meaningful, moral and upright life. A connection to truth and to G-d that doesn’t end even when a person leaves this world.

Retirees suddenly don’t mean anything to someone who was once so important in their workaholic life. Some people even consider to commit suicide (and it’s not a joke) because they have no purpose to live anymore. They get to the end of their life and find that it was empty, wasted time. Come to the Torah and emuna, and make your life much more meaningful, and the next time you lose a business deal that would make you a millionaire because you didn’t wrap Tefillin, see it as an investment.