Posted on 03/16/17
לעילוי נשמת ר' יעקב שלמה בן אפרים וויינבערג ז"ל
לרפ"ש להילד חיים יהודה מאיר בן דינה נ"י
It is common nowadays to hear people both privately and publicly bemoaning the spiritual plight of כלל ישראל. They lament the fact that we live in such an immoral generation, amidst גוים who they claim have sunk to the שער נ' (the lowest level) of טומאה (spiritual impurity). They worry about how our children will be able to survive spiritually when the שטן places such dangerous מכשולים (stumbling blocks) literally at their fingertips. They throw up their hands in despair exclaiming that they don’t see any hope for the future unless משיח comes real soon to save us from this spiritual conflagration which threatens to consume our souls. It is common to hear the refrain that “Never has it been so bad.” “Never has כלל ישראל faced such a daunting challenge.” The term “never” seems to be bandied about pretty freely. However, the parameters of its definition are actually quite narrow, restricted to the speaker’s extremely limited personal recollection and knowledge (or lack thereof) of Jewish history. It would seem that the wisdom of שלמה המלך in קהלת (ז' י') – אל תאמר מה היה שהימים הראשונים היו טובים מאלה כי לא מחכמה שאלת על זה – (Constantly complaining that life used to be much better [back in the good old days] comes from a lack of wisdom. ועיין רש"י for a different פשט.) – would apply to them.
There is an old German joke about an elderly person who while witnessing a powerful storm remarked that it was the worst storm they had ever encountered. A surprised onlooker questioned the veracity of this statement. Was this truly the very worst storm he had ever seen in his long life? The elderly person replied, “Yes. All the other storms stopped.”
It is the nature of people to attribute whatever hardship and challenge they are facing at the moment to be terrible. There is nothing as difficult as the present. Try and recall the pain and worry of a צרה you faced twenty years ago. As hard as you might try, you are only left with dim memories (although perhaps painful ones) of all the anguish you had felt at that time. The past has faded away, relegated to the file cabinets of history. The future is just a worrisome question mark. However, it is the struggles and יסורים we face at the present, which fill us with anxiety and trepidation, regardless of whether or not they are truly as terrible as those in the past.
Looking back in retrospect over the past few hundred years, is this generation’s challenge really more difficult than the accursed השכלה movement (which metamorphosed into the reform and conservative movements) which spiritually decimated countless communities? Is it truly worse than the advent, at the beginning of the twentieth century, of all the “ism” movements (communism, socialism, bundism, zionism, etc.) which wreaked havoc and led astray tens of thousands (perhaps hundreds of thousands) of young idealistic pure נשמות? Is it more difficult than the challenge faced by our grandparents of being forced to choose between sacrificing קדושת שבת or watching the gaunt faces of their dear children starving for some food? How many innumerable multitudes were unable to withstand that grueling ordeal and left the fold, with their subsequent generations becoming lost to כלל ישראל?
These are just a few of the more recent challenges which כלל ישראל has undergone in the past few hundred years. The toll they have wreaked upon us has been horrific, as over ninety percent of כלל ישראל have succumbed to the wiles of the שטן. This terrible statistic is even worse than what had occurred in מצרים, when eighty percent of כלל ישראל were found to not be ראוי (merit) for the גאולה and subsequently were נפטר during the מכה of חשך. Who knows all the difficult נסיונות (challenges) which כלל ישראל faced over the past couple millennia? Thus, the phrase “Never has it been so bad,” really just means that the speakers do not recall it being like this in the last forty–fifty years of their lifetime, which might be true. They are referring to the steady erosion in the morals of society to the extent that almost everything seems to have become permissible. Actually, none of the עבירות which currently pervade society are new, for they have been around for thousands of years. The only difference is the עזות (audacity) through which they are now being openly promoted, in order to try and strip away any guilt one might possibly feel for committing any impropriety.
However, just like כלל ישראל weathered all the previous spiritual storms, so too they will overcome whatever challenge the שטן is currently subjecting them to. Of course, every single איד who succumbs to the שטן is one קרבן too many. Thus, all the different programs and organizations who are doing something positive to combat our weaknesses are extremely necessary and important (and must be supported in their holy work). However, the entire way in which people view the world is actually somewhat misguided.
In the absolute stark reality of אין עוד מלבדו there is really absolutely nothing else besides הקב"ה. In order to create עולם הזה, ה' had to כביכול hide His essential מציאות and create the illusion as though there really are other things. Thus, the fabric of the essence of עולם הזה was created through the illusory act of ה' כביכול cloaking Himself so that He wouldn’t be recognizable. Every one of the ten מאמרים through which the world was created (in פר' בראשית) are therefore considered to be מלבושים (clothing כביכול) through which ה' disguised Himself to appear as something else. When looking at something now, you only see the לבוש of טבע (nature) not recognizing the underlying essence of הקב"ה in it.
ה' told משה רבינו that וראית את אחורי ופני לא יראו – And you will see My back, but My face may not be seen. When only looking at the back of someone it is much more difficult to recognize them. Thus, the idea expressed by ופני לא יראו – My face may not be seen – is referring to the הסתרת פנים of עולם הזה, the difficulty in recognizing that ה' is constantly controlling every single aspect of every single thing which occurs in the world. The הסתרת פנים of the אחורי (back), where it’s difficult to recognize ה', is a place of darkness and confusion, which allows the שטן to use his power of persuasion to convince a person to sin. The פני ה' on the other hand is the overwhelming ability to recognize the הנהגה of ה' which we will be זוכה to see לעתיד לבא. What is the מעלה that ה' was reassuring משה רבינו that although פני לא יראו – My face may not be seen, but at least וראית את אחורי – You will see My back. What was so good about that?
The reason why ה' hid Himself within the creation was that there should be the כח of בחירה (free will), whereby a person can choose whether to do טוב (listening to ה') or רע (not heeding the will of ה'). If either one of these two options would be more powerful than the other, then there would no longer be the ability to choose, for a person would just naturally follow along the path which was more convincing. Thus, to enable there to be בחירה there needs to be an exact equal balance between the two. Therefore, if a person wishes to understand the הנהגה of הקב"ה in this world, then all he has to do is study the כח הרע of the שטן, and then project the mirror image to deduce what must be the הנהגה הטוב, for the כח הטוב and the כח הרע are opposite sides of the same coin. Thus, ופני לא יראו – a person (even משה רבינו) can’t purely recognize the הנהגת ה' in עולם הזה for it would thereby remove the element of בחירה. However, וראית את אחורי – you can study the הסתרת פנים, the מקום where the שטן is active, and thereby deduce the הנהגה טובה of פני.
If someone has the מדה רעה of עצלות (laziness), that means they have the capability to accomplish great things and the שטן therefore, is trying to hold them back. If they anger easily, it means they have a strong sense of רחמים, which the שטן is busy blocking. If they are stingy, it means that their כח of חסד and צדקה will accomplish much in the world. Whatever מדות רעות or עבירות exist by someone are only לבושים (clothing) hiding the intrinsic power of that person’s נשמה. The same applies to כלל ישראל in its entirety. The unique challenges of each generation reveal the awesome power which that generation is able to accomplish.
In the last fifty years, there has been an ever increasing challenge in the ענין of קדושת עינים. What for thousands of years had been considered to be the norms of civilization with regards to modes of dress, have somehow disappeared almost overnight. Not only are we constantly assaulted by the total lack of any sense of decency, but at the same time there are also no longer any hiding places from the שטן, as the שטן is together with you wherever you might try escaping to, right at your fingertips. However, instead of feeling upset and despondent at the low spiritual state of our generation, we should instead be overjoyed.
If you were trying to catch someone’s attention who is looking elsewhere, you might resort to jumping up and down, waving your hands around, and calling out their name. The more desperate you are for them to look at you, the more noise and commotion you would make. The breathless frenetic pace of the steady stream of advancement in technology, whereby each individual is continuously challenged to remain pure and unsullied no matter where they are, is a dead giveaway of the desperation of the שטן. If the שטן is making such a commotion, trying so desperately that we should only be looking at him, that means that he is terrified that we might actually look in the opposite direction towards ה'.
As the כח הרע of the שטן grows ever stronger, causing more and more layers of לבוש to disappear, thereby revealing more and more of the מציאות of אדם, at the same time though, since אדם was created בצלם א‑לקים it means that in the mirror image the same thing is taking place in the spiritual realm of עניני קדושה (in order for the כח הבחירה to remain effective). As we are getting ever closer to the end of the days and the ימות המשיח approach even closer, ה' has כביכול been steadily removing layer after layer of the לבוש of טבע, getting ready to reveal Himself to us in all His majestic glory. As the לבושים are being removed it has become ever easier to recognize the יד ה' for those who look towards Him as He leaves His place of hiding.
(The world ran in a certain way until rather recently in history, when the revolution of technology started taking place. The pace of advancement in the past hundred years has been so breathtakingly rapid, that we cease to be amazed by it and take for granted things which not long ago would have been considered miraculous. Correspondingly, the level of לימוד התורה and the unbelievable סייעתא דשמיא which is discernable today are on a level that has not been seen for thousands of years. We have gotten so used to it, that we must be careful not to fall into the same trap as כלל ישראל did in the times of the בית המקדש and when they were sojourning in the מדבר, where they took the miraculous for granted and remained unaffected by it.)
If the שטן enables a person to amazingly connect with anybody in the world through just a click of a button, that means he desperately doesn’t want you to realize it is just as easy to connect with ה'. He wants you to continuously keep busy listening to anybody anywhere, so that you shouldn’t have a chance to hear internally the voice of ה' calling out your name in endearment., letting you know how much He loves you, and that you should keep strong for the גאולה is about to arrive. If ה' has granted us the בחירה to see whatever we want בעניני טומאה, that means that simultaneously we have also been granted the power to correspondingly see the same levels בעניני קדושה, for the כוחות of טוב ורע correspond to each other זה לעומת זה. (Even if we are unable to see the עניני קדושה utilizing our physical eyes, however we are granted access to see and understand things through the portal of wisdom וחכם עדיף מנביא.)
This is a remarkably awesome power which has possibly not been granted since the דור דעה in the מדבר. (It is the התחלה of the קיום of the פסוק – ומלאה הארץ דעה את ה' וגו' which will come true לעתיד לבא.)
As the שטן continues to grow more powerful and the noise of his commotion becomes increasingly deafening, we should be elated and celebrate, for it is a sure proof of our newfound ability to reach ever greater exalted heights of קדושה, which had previously been unattainable. We just need to hold out and stubbornly look the other way, and we will be זוכה to the unbelievable magnificent sight, which כלל ישראל has been yearning for since מתן תורה, of the revelation of ה' in all His majestic glory בב"א.