The Besht (Ba’al Shem Tov, 1698-1760), the founder of the Chassidic movement and a charismatic leader who lived 300 years ago, had a unique explanation of a verse from Yirmiyahu (Jeremiah 30:7), “It is a difficult time for Yaakov, and we will be saved from it!”.
All the Jewish people are called Yaakov, because he was the father of the tribes and all Jews come from the twelve tribes. So this verse is speaking to each of us.
The simple meaning of the verse is, never give up hope. G-d will always save us from our difficulties.
However, the Besht changes the emphasis. Rather than reading “from it” to mean that G-d will save us from our difficulties, read “from it” that the salvation will come “from it” from the difficulty itself!
That in the actual difficulty is the key to our future success.
My father was a fighter. He grew up during the depression in the United States and started to work at eight years old delivering newspapers to supplement the family income. He served in the US army, led a successful business career and was able to retire with an executive pension at age 54 in the mid-1970s. But something strange happened. Even though he had dreamed for forty-six years of his retirement, when faced with nothing urgent in his schedule, he slowly slipped into depression. He played cards, went on vacations, met with friends, and was even an avid tennis player. But could not get over the feeling that something was missing in his life. Sometimes my mom had to force him to get out of bed.
The family was concerned, but no advice seemed to help, and no one knew what to do.
One Tuesday, he was playing tennis. A foursome with my mom and another couple. Running for the ball, he tripped and fell. It wasn’t just a fall. He could not move his arm. Rushed to the hospital, the verdict was that his shoulder bone was smashed into pieces. He needed a complicated operation. Thank G-d everything was successful. But at the conference with his doctors afterwards, they had bad news. He would at best regain only 30% of the use of his arm. Muscle damage and bone fragments would make full use impossible.
I was in Israel at the time, my parents in New York. Very concerned, I mentioned that my father had hurt his shoulder to one of my teachers, Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh (a renowned authority on Kabbalah and Chasidut). He immediately asked me, “Right shoulder or left?” I said “Left”. He said, “Good, good!” I asked him, “Good? Good what??? The doctors say he can only regain 30% of the use of his arm.” Rabbi Ginsburgh explained that a break on the left side, the side of “judgement”, was actually a positive thing spiritually. It meant a “sweetening of the severities”. Rabbi Ginsburgh promised we would see good things from it.
I soon traveled to the States to see my father and told him what Rabbi Ginsburgh had said, but in truth he could not relate to it. What did really bother him was that the doctors’ prognosis – that at best he would only have a third use of his arm. My father’s response to the doctors was “the heck with them!”
What I remember most from those ten days in New York was my father moaning, groaning, crying and sweating as he pulled over and over again on a pulley device they had given him for physical therapy. I could not bear to watch him struggle so hard but you could hear his moans no matter where you were in the apartment.
In the end, a year later, he was not just playing tennis again. Not only did he get full mobility back in his shoulder and arm, but he also got out of his funk. The struggle with his arm gave him a new inner strength. He even began a new profession that kept him challenged, active and physically focused for the next twenty years of his life.
This Jewish month, Tevet, is the coldest, most wintery month of the Jewish year. But remember, dawn follows the darkest part of night.
We must remember that from the difficulty itself comes the salvation. From the darkness itself comes the light!
The next time we have a problem, don’t ask, why did this happen to ME???
Instead ask, WHY did this happen to me? You are guaranteed to find the answer.
Wishing you a safe and healthy winter, Shaul.