Redemption Against All Odds
By Rabbi Shimon Raichik
This week wherever I went and to whomever I spoke, people were happy that Bibi Netanyahu won the election in Israel. It was reported in the news that the Administration in Washington was involved in trying to get Netanyahu removed by sending advisors to the Left leaning parties in Israel and by spending millions of dollars in campaign contributions along with other countries. Still, this was all to no avail and Netanyahu’s pro Jewish, pro security government was re elected.
What lesson does this teach each one of us as we enter the month of Nissan and as we begin our preparations for Pesach? Chassidus teaches that the yetzer tov is located on the right side of the heart, as it says in a pasuk; Hashem stands at the right side of the distressed in order to save him from those that would bring him harm.
The yetzer hara stands on the left side and is looking for a good fight. The yetzer hara cannot just tell a person outright to do an aveira. Instead he begins the battle by asking for compromises. Compromises are where he begins because compromises sound so reasonable. On the surface all he seems to be asking for is cooperation and all he is doing is just creating ways to live together with harmony in our shared environment. At the end of this battle however, after having made one compromise after another, there is nothing left to compromise about, because slowly, and step by step it was all given away. To stay above this struggle and not fall into the trap of the yetzer hara is our constant challenge, it’s what we wake up to in the morning… every morning. As we know from the Tanya, every day the benoni is asked to bend and to compromise, and every day the benoni must fight, and with Hashem’s help, (the one who stands on our right side) we stay strong from the enticements of the yetzer hara on the left, and we overcome whatever challenge that day brings.
When the late Yitzchok Rabin signed the peace accord with Arafat and President Clinton on the White House lawn he declared that the Jewish people were no longer an “Am levadad yishkon- A nation that dwells alone.” What he said was perhaps wishful thinking to some but it was not true and it will never be. We, the Jewish people are a nation that dwells alone, and must dwell alone. But how is it that we stand alone?
In the Megilla Haman said; “Yeshna am echod- there is one nation”; we are a nation that stands with the one and only Hashem. So when we say that we are a nation that dwells alone we don’t mean all alone, we mean all alone with Hashem. We do not look toward or rely upon other sources for help and our salvation. Sure we cooperate with others, we are a friendly and helpful nation to all that are decent, but we look only to Hashem for our help and for our guidance.
We compromised the Sinai and it’s oil resources, we compromised areas in Yehuda and Shomron, and then we compromised in Gaza, we gave in to the pressure. In the end all we received in return were bullets, bombs, and missiles. The Rebbe said that according to the Torah if we have a strong border, and remain strong resolute and outspoken about our beliefs then we will be safe.
This is true for each one of us as individuals and for our communities in general. All compromises in Judaism, whether with our beards, tznius, or kashrus, in the end all the compromises are nothing more then one big trap. All they lead in one direction to more and more compromises and further and further from Hashem. Eventually we look around and ask ourselves; where am I? How did I get here and what if anything is left to compromise?
The point of Pesach is that we were taken out of bondage. We were sprung from the trap of galus and we came close again to Hashem. We need to remember this essential message. We must always return to who we are; alone, or “all-one” with Hashem. He took us out of bondage and out of slavery and drew us close to Him and made us into a nation.
This is the reason why we keep all our minhagim and all of our hidurim on Pesach. We do it all in order to break our bondage, our servitude to the mundane and to the physical. Throughout the year we make many assumptions about what we need. We feel that we need this or that and consider it our basic necessities and our basic rights. When we prepare for Pesach, and then on Pesach then our assumptions about what we need needs to bend to Pesach. And then we learn and show ourselves that many of the things that we thought were necessary really were not. We break out of the bondage and servitude to the habits and assumptions about necessities and become servants to Hashem. This gives us the strength throughout the rest of the year to break out of our constraints and remain strong servants of Hashem in all areas. From the positive we can understand that buckling to pressure and making a compromises only leads to more comprmises and the end result is unfortunate. It all begins by preparing and observing Pesach.
Just like the Prime Minister should remain strong, resolved and clear, so too should we remain clear strong and with resolve to remove the ‘sour dough’ within ourselves and our communities, and rid ourselves of all of chametz, and thereby break out of any bondage and return to who we are; a nation that dwells at one with Hashem with confidence and security in all of it’s land with the coming of Moshiach now!
A Good Shabbos, A Good Chodesh
