An Eternal Connection

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. 

Go For the Roots 

What do you do when you receive a phone call from the homeroom teacher of one of your children, the kind no one likes to receive: “Your son (or your daughter) has done a very bad thing”; and they’re not talking about a normal disturbance or outburst, and not even about the child being chutzpadik; rather, the child has done something truly appalling.  

The actual response to this depends, of course, on the type of act done; but there is one very important point that in principle is true for any serious misdemeanor. It’s true, by the way, when the offender is an adult, but we feel more comfortable talking about children.  

Please understand: No one falls so low in one day. The child goes through a process, and the process begins with small things. In the beginning, the child seems completely okay, and everything looks normal, causing the parents to ignore the small signals the child is sending out – until everything blows up in their face.  

These “small” things are not small at all, because in the end they are what bring the person to the lowest places. It is like an archer shooting an arrow – the smallest deviation at the starting point will cause the arrow to veer far away from the target.  

Therefore, parents who wish to help their child must look for the deep causes of the fall, and they must pray to Hashem that He show them the deep root of this act, and how this root can be healed. 

As we see, Chazal always looked for the deep reasons and the initial mistakes that brought the Jewish People to commit the gravest sins. The passuk asks, “Why has the land been destroyed?”, in other words, what was the reason for the great destruction? Chazal say that none of the chachamim (sages) or the prophets could provide the answer to this question. It was the Holy One, Blessed Be He, who gave the answer Himself: It was because they didn’t recite the blessing over learning Torah prior to the actual learning. 

Yet, everyone knows that the Churban (destruction) came about because the Jews had reached a state of utter depravity in all realms – they had engaged in idol worship, immorality, bloodshed – but that is not the question. The question is what is the deep root that caused them to deteriorate so far, and that was what even the chachamim and the prophets didn’t understand.  

From the Highest Point 

In our parasha, the Jewish people commit a grave sin: They make themselves a golden calf, an avoda zara (false god). How could this happen a mere three months after the Exodus from Egypt and the Splitting of the Sea? Just forty days before that, Hashem yitbarach spoke to them face-to-face at the Giving of the Torah, and their existence in the desert was full of open miracles – and yet, they fell so far? 

The real question is: What is the root, what is the deep cause, what is the “small” mistake that distanced them so much from Hashem? It is important for us, too, to know this, because today we don’t have a yetzer hara (evil inclination) for avoda zara, but the same mistake that caused our forefathers to engage in avoda zara, can cause all the failings of our generation as well.  

And we’re not talking only about those people who are far from Torah and mitzvot; rather, we are talking about those who label themselves as religious and even Ultra-Orthodox as well, and particularly them. All of us must understand the deep, central points upon which all Judaism stands.  

You Have Cast Me Behind Your Back 

Rabbi Natan of Breslev, the gaon in chassidut, reveals the secret to us – the secret of what caused Yisrael to fall and make the Calf. He writes something amazing: The reason is that they did not search hard enough for Moshe Rabbeinu’s Ruach Hakodesh (holy spirit)! 

And we will explain: Avoda zara is a flaw in one’s emuna (faith). There are thirteen principles of emuna. It is not enough to believe only in the existence of Hashem, in His oneness and in His hashgachah (Divine Providence). Anyone whose belief in one of the other principles of faith is flawed, is creating a flaw in his entire emuna, and in the end it will bring about a flaw in his faith in Hashem’s existence, and he will turn to avoda zara. 

We have a few principles of faith that speak of the Torah being eternal and about having faith in Moshe Rabbeinu himself and in his prophecy. Moshe Rabbeinu was not only a teacher and a counselor; rather, he himself was the Torah, and all faith depends on him. Moshe is netzach (eternity) and therefore, according to the Kabbalah, his trait is that of netzach.  

The people saw that Moshe’s return to them had been delayed, and that he was not arriving at the time he was supposed to arrive. At this point the yetzer hara fooled them into thinking that Moshe was no longer in this world. So, what did they say? “This Moshe, the person who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.”¹ Their conclusion was, therefore, “Get up and make us a God that will go before us.”¹ In no more than a moment, they cast away all of Moshe’s efforts to redeem them and to bring them close to Hashem; to reveal Hashem’s existence to them. They cast away all their emuna, and all the Torah and mitzvot that Moshe had taught them.  

They had a selfish need: They needed a leader. The former leader had (seemingly) died – and they immediately looked around for the next one. The previous leader didn’t interest them anymore; he was no longer “relevant”. His heritage was of no interest to them. They were already looking “forward” … This was a very serious mistake in their faith in the eternity of the Torah and in Moshe Rabbeinu’s prophecy.  

The Tzaddik – Lives on By His Faith 

Yehoshua bin Nun was the exact opposite of all this. It never occurred to him to leave Moshe. After the Giving of the Torah, he remained with Moshe far away, outside of the camp, and did not return home. Nothing interested him. He didn’t want to “get back into life”, because his entire life consisted of his connection with Moshe. Yehoshua understood that Moshe was not just a person who “happened” to take them out of Egypt and give them the Torah – no, Moshe Rabbeinu’s entire essence was to be a redeemer, who will continue to redeem the individual and the Jewish People every minute, and continues to be Rabbeinu, our rabbi and teacher, even now, three thousand years later.  

That is why Yehoshua waited in suspense for forty days and forty nights for Moshe Rabbeinu to return! 

The Jewish people were supposed to believe that what Moshe did is never-ending; it is eternal. The Torah is alive, the laws of the Torah are eternal. Even if Moshe is indeed no longer with them, they must continue to search for his spirit, for his heritage; think what he would have said and what he would have done and what he would have wanted them to do, how he would have wanted them to behave – that is called to search for the Ruach Hakodesh of the tzaddik! 

A Tzaddik is Not a One-time Event 

Every Jew who has the merit of receiving instruction from a tzaddik and the tzaddik saves him and enlightens him with daat (correct understanding) of emuna, must always continue searching for the tzaddik. Don’t think that the tzaddik is like a tow-truck that gets you out of the mud and then you say goodbye to him and get on with your life; rather, the tzaddik is the engine that drives you all your life. You don’t leave a tzaddik, because he is the one who endows you with life and gives you the ability to move forward. 

Connection with the tzaddik is the main part of beirur hamedameh (a correction of the power of imagination). When a person detaches himself from the tzaddik, his medameh gets confused, in other words, the person views all of reality in a distorted way, and therefore makes immense mistakes in judgment, and most certainly will develop false beliefs and commit transgressions. That is why Rabbi Nachman emphasized in his will that the main thing is to pray that one should become close to a true tzaddik and look for his real spirit, because that is the path to beirur hamedameh and to correction of one’s faith, leading to our meriting the Redemption. 

The Jewish people in Shushan, too, thought that seventy years had already passed and they haven’t been redeemed, and concluded from that that their connection with Hashem was severed forever, and that is why they allowed themselves to search for a new culture, to assimilate among the non-Jews and to go to the wicked Achashverosh’s feast. But Mordechai stood there, and shouted and revealed that the Torah doesn’t change, nor is it exchanged, and the Jewish People will forever be the People of Hashem, faithful to the Torah in any situation.  

The big troubles of the Jewish people began when they turned their backs on Mordechai and refused to listen to him – and the salvation started when they listened to Mordechai and Esther, repented immediately and returned to the complete faith.  

In our times as well, the Jewish People are going back to recognizing its eternal heritage, its eternal destiny. The Jewish People wish to renew its eternal connection to the Torah of Moshe, to the tzaddikim, and to the simple, straightforward faith that Hashem loves us and that we are his people, his flock, always and in every situation. As such, we will certainly see great salvations and a complete Redemption in mercy, very soon.  

Editor’s Note:

¹ Shemot (Exodus) 32:1