When Everything Seems Stuck

What’s Missing? 

Sometimes it seems that everything is stuck. You are doing what you can in terms of both material and spiritual matters, but you feel that something is lacking, and you don’t know what it is. You pray endlessly, searching for anything that needs fixing, anything that needs chizuk (strengthening), something to take upon yourself, but you feel you are missing the point. The yeshua (salvation) seems far away. Something is blocked; something is stuck. What should you do in such a situation? 

We feel this regarding the Jewish People as a whole. True, we are seeing great yeshuot; but on the other hand, we feel that we are standing in one place and not moving ahead. Soldiers are dying and we still feel that the middat hadin (the aspect of strict justice) is still in action. True, we are all strengthening ourselves and praying and saying Tehillim, but we would very much like to know if there is something really effective that can be done to sweeten the dinim at their source and so to witness complete victory over our enemies, with them suffering a clear and definite defeat and thus ending all our troubles. 

And about the Geula (Redemption) that we are waiting for: Today there are yeshivas and talmudei Torah (elementary schools for boys) and a live and vibrant Jewish world; the many study-halls are packed with avreichim (married students) and talmidei chachamim (Torah scholars), ba’alei teshuva (returnees to Judaism) and people who are increasing their mitzvah observance – but where is the Geula?  What more can we do to witness the Geula? What’s missing? 

The “Key” of the Sea 

Let us see what happens in parashat Beshalach. After countless promises, after the many miracles and wonders of the Ten Plagues, after seeing the Shechina (Divine Presence) in the Plague of the First-Born Sons, Moshe and Aharon take the people out of Egypt, and they reach Yam Suf (Sea of Reeds). And now the people are “stuck” between the Egyptians who are behind them and the sea that is in front of them. It is easy to imagine their feelings and identify with their distress; after all, all of us have felt that way at some point in our lives. 

We have all the reasons to expect a miracle: The entire Jewish People, descendants of the holy Patriarchs, are standing there, believers descended from believers, calling out to Hashem. Moshe Rabbeinu and his righteous brother Aharon, and Miriam the prophetess are standing there. Nachshon ben Aminadav jumps into the sea and after him the entire tribe of Binyamin does so as well – but the sea doesn’t split.  

But there is another factor that shows up there and tips the scales! There is one thing that seems like a minor issue, but it is that thing that in the end changes the picture, it is the “key” that splits the sea. What is it? 

“The sea saw and fled”¹ – What did it see? Chazal say that it saw Yosef’s coffin! Everything depended on Yosef’s coffin! And the Torah emphasizes that Moshe Rabbeinu himself took the trouble to bring Yosef’s bones with him. Chazal say that Yosef’s coffin was always sitting in Moshe Rabbeinu’s tent; and when traveling it went before the camp with the Aron hakodesh that held the Tablets. And this – throughout their travels in the desert! 

A Mobile Charging Point 

What is the significance of Yosef’s coffin? 

Rabbi Natan of Breslev writes that Yosef’s coffin expressed the importance of graves of tzaddikim. Like the “traveling well” that went with our forefathers from place to place because it is impossible to survive in the desert without water – so too the Jewish People had a “traveling” grave of a tzaddik wherever they were, because they could not live without a connection with kivrei tzaddikim (graves of the righteous). 

The trip to kivrei tzaddikim and prostrating on them express the recognition and the emuna (faith) that we cannot do things alone; we must have the merits, the help and the prayers of the holy tzaddikim. Every time you go to kivrei tzaddikim, your soul is “recharged” with power and hope; it is renewed; it is redeemed from the “straits” of the soul. Every time you visit the grave of a tzaddik, you can experience wonders and miracles, up to the Splitting of the Sea, literally! 

Still Alive 

The tzaddikim exist; they live. Their existence can be felt tangibly at their graveside. The tzaddik is right there – just beyond the door – and he is greater than when he was alive. The holy Zohar says that tzaddikim after their death are present and alive and act in this world – more than when they were alive! Everything they did and rectified during their lifetimes they do even more after their passing! 

Even great tzaddikim need kivrei tzaddikim and they go to them and pray and bring about salvations there. How much more so simple Jews whose only hope and trust are in the tzaddikim, as Rabbi Nachman says in Sefer Hamiddot: “by prostrating oneself on kivrei tzaddikim, the Holy One, Blessed Be He does him favors even though he is not worthy of them”!² 

And Rabbi Natan of Breslev writes further: “Tzaddikim are greater when they are dead than when they were alive³, and they rectify the souls of Yisrael when dead more than when they were alive. And they vanquish the Sitra Achra (the “other side” – the evil) and the klippot (shells) that take hold of the souls that have fallen into sin. they vanquish and annul them in their death more than in their lifetime, as expressed in the passuk: “The dead that he killed as he died outnumbered those he had killed throughout his life.” The true tzaddik, the true leader of the generation, kills those who hate holiness, the klippot and the Sitra Achra when he is dead, more than when he was alive.”⁴ 

That is why it is only Yosef Hatzaddik – who when he was alive vanquished the klippa of Egypt and circumcised all the Egyptians and broke the extreme tuma (impurity) and prepared the way for the Jewish People to survive spiritually in Egypt – could annul the klippa of Egypt completely after his death. He wiped the Egyptians off the face of the earth and performed the last stage of the exodus of the Jews from Egypt – the Splitting of the Sea – and he continued to go in front of them in the desert and vanquish all their enemies! 

Strengthening by the Tzaddikim 

There are many amazing sources for this, and they cannot all be brought here. But the main thing is that we must know that all redemptions – both personal and general – depend on kivrei tzaddikim! 

We are not the ones who bring the Geula; rather, it is the tzaddikim of all generations who do that. They spent all their lives making efforts to hasten the Geula. Now, too, they continue to do so, even more than when they were alive, and therefore, when we go to their holy graves and arouse their merits – it is like “The sea saw and fled.” In every trip to kivrei tzaddikim – more and more klippot and darkness flee and are wiped off the face of the earth, and more brothers and sisters of ours experience salvation and redemption and release themselves from the tumot and the exile to lives of complete emuna.  

Therefore, if we want to see big changes for the good in Jews in general as well as in every Jew in particular – if things are hard for you and you feel stuck – go to the tzaddikim who spent their lives bringing about salvations for the Jewish people. Not only will they provide the salvation that you need, but they will also give you daat (understanding) and rectify your soul, which is the real yeshua. 

Rabbi Shimon 

We must know that one of the holiest places where one can do the most is the holy tziyun (tomb) of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai in Meiron. It is said about him that “It is worthwhile to depend on Rabbi Shimon in difficult times.”⁵ We see that all Jews go there on the anniversary of his death and at joyous times as well as times of sorrow, and feel a special connection and atmosphere close to that tzaddik, who announced and promised that the Geula depends on him: “Because with this book, which is the holy Zohar, they will leave the exile with mercy.” ⁶ 

And so, if you need an urgent yeshua, if you want help from above in matters that you feel you are stuck in, such as Torah study or making a living – if you need a yeshua in the form of a shidduch or bearing children – do not hesitate: Go to the great tzaddik, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, and know that you are going to a living, existing tzaddik who wishes to help you, have mercy on you, save you, and sweeten all the dinim and rectify your soul and open all the gates of salvations for you.  

It is important to publicize here what the tzaddik from Netanya, Rabbi Amos Guetta, requested – that every Jew must go to Rabbi Shimon and ask for the Mashiach on his holy tziyun! And every trip of that sort not only brings salvations upon you, but also protects and saves all Jews, and hastens the Geula. 

¹ Tehillim (Psalms) 114:3 

² Sefer Hamidot,  section “Tzaddik”:173 

³ Chulin 7:2b 

⁴ Likutei Halachot, Nezikin 3:8 

⁵ Gitin 19a 

⁶ הזוהר המתורגם- הקדמת ספר הזוהר (The Translated Zohar – Introduction to the Zohar)