Today is November 27, 2008, the national holiday of Thanksgiving.  At this time, the fate and whereabouts of hostages remains uncertain after the terrorists killed and kept hostage those in the Chabad House in Bombay India. I am anguished regarding the fate of Rabbi and Rebbetzin Holtzberg and still hope to hear besoros tovos.  And there are many dead and injured.  Quite a few victims were Israelis and Jewish people. Korbons on erev Kislev.

The only clear message we are to derive from all sufferings and tragedies is teshuva.  Hashem desires for us to come closer, to do mitzvohs to enhance our connection to Him, to improve our middos so that we emulate His Attributes, to offer kindness to others in the form of good deeds and charity, to cry out in prayer to Hashem for rachamim and to speak to Hashem and include Him in every moment of our day.

The message of teshuva on erev Kislev is, to me, significant because I am remembering the messages from Tisha B’Av from Rabbi Mattesyahu Salomon and Rabbi Brevda.  In brief, Rabbi Salomon spoke to us through the Chofetz Chaim Heritage Foundation Tisha B’Av event about jealousy and how we suffer from it.  His was a call to us to realize this as the cause of all sinas.  His overall message was that in order to be worthy to receive the third Bais HaMikdosh, the third temple, all we need to do is eradicate the reason we lost the second Bais HaMikdosh in the first place, which was because of sinas chinum.  What teshuva have we to claim toward eradicating sinas chinum amongst us so that we are unified?  His message was to comprehend and overcome within us the midda of jealousy, kinna by telling ourselves when we suffer from it, we don’t want suffering Hashem, we only want YOU.

Rabbi Brevda spoke also about Tisha B’Av.  What moved me was his humble admission of the shame he feels year after year, reading the story of Kamsa and Bar Kamsa.  He tells over the story in elaborate detail about how the disagreement began, and how the story unfolded.  A person needs to listen to Rabbi Brevda’s shiur on this subject to see that this was something that is understandable now and happens every single day, and is not relegated to “the past” by any stretch of the imagination.  Without going into the details, the bottom line was that Bar Kamsa could not get over the shame and humiliation that was unjustly thrust upon him, and that none of the guests attempted to protect him from.  And, since all of the guests were prominent religious people, he did not subdue his anger, nor accept as a kaparah the total humiliation.  And, calling Bar Kamsa an apikoras, Rabbi Brevda retells how Bar Kamsa sabotaged the temple with a damaged offering and the results of his revenge were the loss of the second temple and exile. All because Bar Kamsa could not rise above the affront to his ego and the pain the entire matter had been causing his family for many years.  Not an easy test, but he surely did not rise to the occasion.

Not that Kamsa did…could he have tolerated the presence of this man at his simcha?  Could he have not spared his feelings, even when asked?  Again, the pain that he felt was handled in an openly embarrassing way.  He did not quietly seek the advice of any of the wise, learned guests who might have been able to gently escort Bar Kamsa home, with a respectful word of shalom.  Whatever the issues were, the lines were drawn in the sand, and the dispute and issues of kina last to this very day.

Are we closer or farther from overcoming the causes of sina (e.G., kina, ego) ?  Are we in touch with the ways these aspects of our makeup affect us enough to subdue them when need be?  And what would be a good enough reason to subdue them, when would that need actually be to choose to subdue our natural selves?

In our area, a drama unfolded regarding a 12 year old boy who was on life support.  His doctors declared him brain dead, including his brain stem.  The hospital wanted to turn off the life support and allow the boy to pass on.  Being ultra-Orthodox, the family asked for the life support to remain until the child pass on his own.  The hospital petitioned the courts to remove the support, wanting to give these life-saving resources to patients who could, in fact, recover.  Before the courts could decide, the boy did pass away, as soon as Shabbos came in on the Friday night after being declared brain dead. He was niftar on Shabbat, like a tzaddik.

In those few days, the matter was on the front pages of the Washington Post.  In there, the reporters went around to get all the varying Jewish opinions. And there it was, in one article, for all the whole world to see.  Who thinks he should stay on, why so-and-so says it is okay to take him off life support, how brain dead qualifies people as organ donors, and all the various justifications with halachic proofs.  All the world who was following this story saw this variety of opinions, diversity. Not that there is anything wrong with diversity or at fault with sharing an opinion and view.  But I ask, how did we look to the world?  Does the non-Jewish world understand all these distinctions?  Of course not.  To the outside world, what must it look like?  It certainly did not look like unity.  And to Hashem, how did it look?

Focus now on the matter at hand in Israel regarding the Road Map and all the diverse opinions there.  Are we going to undergo a much larger scale microscopic examination by the world?  Do we realize that all these varying opinions, one Jewish view arguing with another Jewish group, weaken us and make us look foolish?

Our holy Torah is the blueprint for the world.  It is the path of peace and of life. It is an absolute.  It conveys the morals and laws by which the HaKodosh Baruch Hu wants us to live so that we can rise above ourselves and remain connected to Him.  He knows what we are.  Is it within our ability to make an attempt to reclaim our Torah as an absolute?  Within the discussion of differences within the Torah, is there a stream of thought that we can all recognize as absolute and thereby grab onto in order to unify? With all the varying opinions about how to accomplish peace, giving the land, not giving the land, the IDF, etc, what can we do within our control to find an absolute Torah value that can unify every Jew?  It may have nothing to do with Israel – it may simply be respect and love for every Jew as King Shlomo offers in Shiur HaShirum, that no matter how covered over we are, our essence and our ability to connect are beloved to Hashem.  This is what comes to my mind.  That we see every Jew for his neshama alongside his opinions and practices, and thereby, when we see another Jew, we see behind him a someone that Hashem loves. If we can restore Ahavas Yisroel in some way, perhaps that might be the teshuva to evoke the rachamim  of Hashem to bring the redemption, may we be zocheh to see Moshiach Tzidkeinu speedily and dedicate the Third Bais HaMikdosh as Chanukah approaches!

Reflections on Politics AKA the nature of mankind

This is NOT a political statement in support or opposition to ANY candidate.  Far be it.  The purpose of this article is an urgent call to every thinking person to show them that inherent in a person is a good inclination and a bad inclination, and that without this knowledge, the emotions of the heart can sometimes bring the body into a direction it does not really desire to go.

In Cheshbon HaNefesh, the author describes the connection between the heart, mind and body as follows – the emotions, the heart, are likened to horses that pull a carriage.  The carriage of course is the body.  In order to control the direction that the horses take the body, seichel sits in the driver’s seat.  Our intelligence must be the driver.

Taking intelligence one step further, we know that man, of himself, receives chochma only from the Torah.  By himself, mankind cannot derive chochma from his own efforts.  Chochma comes from Torah as a beginning idea.  When related ideas accumulate, we call this Bina. It becomes Daas, which is what we would call intelligence, after the ideas formulate with the emotions and have shape.  From here, we act.

Thus, it is very important that the beginning of the ideas be trustworthy. 

We have a commandment not to lie.  Why is lying such an averah?  Because when someone trusts us and we lie, we are changing their reality.  We take them out of the world of truth and bring them into a world of falsehood, where they develop Daas and subsequent actions that reflect unreality.  However, they do not know it.  If a person were to look at the definition of psychosis, it would be actions based on unfounded ideas, on thoughts that have no basis in reality.  Hmmm.  When we lie, we render the trusting soul who believes us to a stature of psychotic.  At some point, the original lie will be known and the person will have done things that they will have regretted.  The cumulative impact of the lie is very severe.  And, the greatest burden is on the one who committed the wrong deeds, even though it seems that the bigger averah should go to the one who lied. We are responsible for our actions and for determining for ourselves what is true.  - we should not be able to blame others for our not taking proper adult responsibility for our actions. G-d-forbid

Trusting our government is crucial.  Therefore, it is, for me, a great litmus test to see how government officials speak and refer to events, for me to understand their character and how they will be affecting our reality on a day to day basis.

I am thinking back to President Nixon who resigned because of his Watergate lies.  And I am thinking back to President Clinton who reinforced the belief that lying in office is okay to do.  I am remembering the O.J. Simpson trial where the defense accused the police of racial prejudice and lying to frame O.J. Simpson, and playing on the emotions of the jury, prevailed with that defense in placing reasonable doubt in their minds.

How can we really know the truth?  We really can’t know ultimate truth. However, we can be aware of one basic point that can help us a great deal.

That basic point is the stark realization that we have an evil inclination and a good inclination.  What we learn from Rebbetzin Heller’s class on Netivos Yetzer Hara by the Maharal is that the ONLY enemy we have is the evil inclination.  Why?

Let’s go back to the Garden of Eden.  When Adom was formed, the snake, the evil inclination, was external to mankind.  Adom was not confused.  He saw the snake and with the way the world was set up at that time, Adom, who was incapable of doing anything he did not believe was the will of Hashem, believed that by eating of the tree of good and evil that he, Adom, would come into this lower world and resist the yetzer hara, the evil inclination, making such a wonderful Kiddush Hashem as to be pleasing to Hashem.  That was his purpose, to serve Hashem in this world by resisting the external yetzer hara.  However, when he did this, Hashem saw that man would become on a level that He did not create man for.  Hashem at that point cut the shefa to the yetzer hara and attached it to the shefa of man, placing mankind in a life and death battle with the yetzer hara.  Now, with the evil inclination internalized, the feelings and ideas that come to man are mixed up…man does not have the clarity tha Adom had in the Garden of Eden, the clarity that led him to believe he could come into this world and overcome the yetzer hara’s seductions.

The purpose of the yetzer hara is to spiritually destroy us.  As we know, the yetzer hara, the Accuser and the Angel of Death are one and the same, the Soton.  The role of this supernatural being is to test mankind and eventually to kill him and prosecute him. The yetzer hara is an expert on how to deceive and mislead us. The evil inclination often sounds very logical, like our best friend. The only antidote we know to the yetzer hara is Torah, for the Torah shows us the ways of the yetzer hara, reinforces for us our ability to choose the yetzer tov and to choose to involve ourselves in activities that we know straight from the Torah are ways to connect to Hashem and to grow spiritually in a positive direction.  We rely on Torah for our chochma, for helping us choose amongst the often confusing emotions and choices that face us each day.  We choose to listen to the yetzer tov so that we grow spiritually and receive Eternal reward.

The Maharal sets forth a detailed description of the basic machinations of the yetzer hara, our mortal enemy.  The evil inclination is the ONLY true enemy that mankind has.  The good news is that, with Hashem’s help, we actually can overcome it.  We cannot overcome it by our own efforts alone, for the Soton is an angel of Hashem and is far stronger than any man.  However, if a person asks Hashem to help him overcome his yetzer hara, Hashem helps.  Why?  Because the person has done the simple task of recognizing that he HAS a yetzer hara, that it is wrong to act on it, and that he chooses to act in a manner pleasing to Hashem.

And this is the point of this article.  I beseech every person to accept that he or she has a good inclination and an evil inclination, and not to consider this a benign ordinary fact of life but rather a crucial realization through which every person can defeat evil.

So, how does this translate? 

In math, we know that if A=B   and B= C, then A=C.  This is straight logic and is true.

Emotionally however, this does not hold.  If I live in a brick house and the Queen of England lives in a brick house, it does not make me the Queen of England.  Yet this is what happens emotionally with moral equivalents where there are grains of truth.

ANYONE using this kind of emotional manipulation, in my opinion, is hoping the horses will run the carriage of those who trust them into a direction that they may not really wish to go but that the speaker would LIKE them to go.  Therefore, it is incumbent on us to THINK!  Is what we are being told true?  It may sound good and trigger our emotional responses, but, is it true?  If it is not true, it says a great deal about the person saying it. To me, it means the person is trying to manipulate me rather than respect my intelligence. If it is true, then I need to consider what the response is from the opponent.  Does he admit or deny and support with apologies or explanations?  Or does he avoid the fact with a smoke screen of moral equivalents and emotion packed fears? 

Very often, it is impossible to really know what is true.  Every person is a universe unto themselves and we all perceive things based on our experiences, history and education.  One person may see something in a totally different way from another. That is why we have a democracy…even with all the self-interest and bias, somehow, as long as people are thinking and aware of human nature, it can come out to a decent position.  The conditional element here is that people have to THINK and not just react or feel.

What has undermined our thinking?  I remember when MTV started, short, superficial videos of life.  I remember thinking to myself how empty they are, how shallow a look at life.  But we now have a second generation of people and they probably do not share my perspective since this is normal to them, just like they don’t remember what life was like before microwave ovens.  We had to take the food out in the morning to defrost to make something in the evening. 

The next thing that has undermined our thinking is the lack of needing to know how to do math because of calculators.  I am not picking on calculators specifically, because I know they also enhance mathematical ability.  However, I know many people who do not remember their basic math skills and rely on the calculator now.  I am not convinced that is best. A good example again of this is GPS, which I recently have and really love.  Before, I had to have a map, check my directions, make sure I knew where I was going.  Now, I just turn on the GPS and it tells left, right, straight, etc.  Again, I don’t have to think.  And even the internet has interfered with our thinking.  Information is so readily and easily available, I don’t have to remember much as long as I have my laptop.  I love all these conveniences, but have we made ourselves so stupid that we don’t know how to think?

Remember, we need to think because our seichel has to be in the drivers seat or our emotions will be the horses charging in a direction that our bodies may not want to go. And the yetzer hara runs wild with our emotions if it is not checked by Torah, truth and intelligence.

So, it is incumbent upon us to understand and accept that we have a yetzer hara.  It is our responsibility to get an accurate job description for the Soton so that we can spot it within our own thinking.  And, it is our duty to joyously refuse to listen to the Soton’s suggestions, rationalizations and seductions. And when we do, we are taking out our personal garbage.  If every person does this, we will restore decency and justice to the world.

Please don’t allow your life energy to be persuaded into believing something that is not true.  Don’t be satisfied with answers from anyone whose statements are not factual, no matter how many moral equivalents or emotional analogies are evoked.  If we do, we as a nation will go into psychosis - we have to trust our leaders. Something is not necessarily true just because it strikes an emotional chord. It needs to be based on facts that are verifiable. And if the facts were true at one time and a person's positions changed, we need to hear facts and evidence to verify that the original fact is no longer in play.

And if someone is challenged to respond to a fact that is verifiable and they evoke an emotional chord or a moral equivalent instead of answering honestly, please see through that.  It is politics but for every voter, it drives us to act as if we suffer from psychosis.

Stock market crash is the backdrop to Rosh Hashana.

Arutz 7 has a report that autistics in Eretz Yisroel are predicting the end of the world. 

Kassam rockets falling on Sderot

Rabbi in South Fallsburg says this is our last year in Golus.

Taliban have reorganized and strengthened in Afghanistan.

Osama Bin Laden is alive in the hills of Pakistan.

Russia is at war with Georgia.

Democratic and Republican candidates for Vice President debate each other discussing how to handle all these domestic and international issues.

Corruption in the Israeli government reported.

Wow.

During these 10 days we are instructed to look inside ourselves and to confess our sins and to repent.  I think of this as every Jew taking out of the world their personal garbage.  Imagine for a moment if everyone, Jew and non-Jew actually did this…if everyone truly looked inside, saw the futility of negative thinking and hurtful actions, repented, and resolved on how they plan to be kind and implemented it instead.  What could happen?  What would the world look like?  Would we have headlines like we have now?

I mentioned this to people over Rosh Hashana, intelligent, educated people, men and women.  For the most part, the vote was that this is too hard.  TOO HARD!!  No matter how I spoke about it, I was uninteresting.  The conversation drifted back to blame for the stock market, the importance of talking to regimes we don’t agree with like Iran and other things that the ordinary person truly has no direct ability to impact.  I once again tried to suggest that by short circuiting the power of the yetzer hara by each Jew doing this internal work, we would have a positive effect on the world in the way Hashem maintains the world.  Blank stares, too hard.

So, I pulled out Tomer Devorah and tried to share details of the Thirteen Attributes that we read at this time.  Here we are told that not only is it not too hard, but that we should not forget to do it when the opportunity arises so that these traits of Hashem will remain visible in the world.  Very nice, TOO HARD!

When I hear that, I think of Rebbetzin Heller’s series on the Maharal (www.naaleh.com). In that series, we learn that the yetzer hara is a blemish that feeds off lack, and that the yetzer hara takes us in the wrong direction through anger, jealousy, laziness, desires and more, sounding like a very intelligent great friend.  Being that the yetzer hara, the Soton and the Angel of Death are one and the same, it appears to be a reasonable statement that the only enemy we HAVE is the yetzer hara, who manifests itself through the manner of different people who find it simply too hard to say NO to the yetzer hara.  I do not mean to sound judgmental here, for I am also constantly pursued by negative, insecure thinking.  But what I have learned is that if I give in and act on the yetzer hara’s seductive suggestions, I myself bring that negative thing into the world, the thing I am afraid of, the thing I judge to be inappropriate, the thing that I don’t like.  By allowing it space in my mind, it may lead to an action or a word and now it is alive in Olam Hazeh!  I have given birth to an avenging angel of some kind whose existence is beyond my control until I regret it, do teshuva, and remove it!  And worst of all, I probably did it because I believed it would help me or someone else!

Let’s digress for a moment.  We met the yetzer hara in the Garden of Eden, when it was external to mankind.  Adom did not have an internal yetzer hara. He saw the evil inclination and saw the world and believed he could do great sanctification of Hashem’s name by coming into this lower world and still resisting the evil inclination (which was external).  He ate from the apple.  Hashem then changed the flow of energy to mankind…He cut the shefa from the yetzer hara and reattached it to the shefa flowing to mankind, so that now the yetzer hara would be internalized, causing confusion.  He required that man should labor for the good that Hashem had been providing in abundance in Gan Eden, and that women should have unusual desire for their husbands and pain in childbirth.  When mankind acts in accordance with the yetzer hara, it creates EVIL indeterminate forces through which Hashem sustains the world.  Likewise, when mankind acts in accordance with the yetzer tov, the good inclination, it creates GOOD indeterminate forces through which Hashem sustains the world in accordance. And here we are.

We all hope every day that Eliyahu HaNavi appear to announce the coming of Moshiach.  What is it that we wait for?  We wait for Olam Haba, the World of Truth, the return of Gan Eden.  Yet I believe our ability to have Olam Haba is not an instant tea….we have to brew it, we have to build it within ourselves, we have to prepare ourselves.

If we want the return of Gan Eden, and if what is different about us now is that the yetzer hara is internalized instead of external, I am suggesting that we begin “spitting out” the yetzer hara every moment of every day.  Got a fear?  Tell yourself “We don’t want fear Hashem, we only want You” (dismiss the fear, fear only Hashem in awe, Who only does good.)

Then my friends, what do we make of all the suffering?  Surely we see the suffering and evil in the world…how do we say it is good just because it comes from Hashem?  That is correct because there is a two world picture going on.  Hashem has not changed.  He WAS IS AND WILL ALWAYS BE, kind, tolerant, patient, merciful, all thirteen attributes.

In our world, we see terrible tyrants, terrorists, evil murderers, corruption and more trying to dominate nations and systems.  We see their success and we are inclined to align ourselves with the biggest ones, to avoid harm to ourselves.  This is human nature, this is the way corruption works.  The locus of control in our minds shifts to obey the one causing pain in order to stop the pain from being inflicted upon us. If only we can convince this big bully that we really like them, perhaps they will stop trying to destroy us. Or perhaps even worse, we begin to emulate the biggest bullies, seeing them as powerful and deciding that we can accomplish more by such tactics. Sound like a good idea to you?

Let’s look at an analogy.  If a person takes all the colors of paint and mixes them together, we get brown or black, muddy, darkness.  If a person takes all the colors of light and mixes them together, we get white light.  It makes little sense – why don’t all the lights make a dark light?  My own thought on this is to show us that there is a two world picture.  When we suffer, we believe that Hashem is sending this for our good even though we don’t understand it.  It is a kaparah, a cleansing, something to bring us to a higher plane.  And this brings us comfort.  When our grandparents died in Auschwitz at the hands of Hitler, Hamach Shemo, there was terrible suffering, just as there is now with the terrorists.  Yet, with Hashem in the picture, we understand that we are to draw close, to emulate Him, to shine His Light. And we feel better knowing that we are in Hashem’s Hand and not in the hands of man. White light instead of brown mud. We never want to be the cause of harm to any Jew, for there will wait for us an avenging angel and what shall we then say to Hashem? Oh, everyone was doing that?

My point is that not only isn’t it too hard to work on overcoming the yetzer hara, but it brings us the greatest pleasure that there is on earth, to live close to Hashem Yisborach.  It is the Emes.  Is it better to live in Olam HaSheker, with solutions that man has created to solve problems arising from living in Olam Hasheker?  Or is it worth a little fortitude to take a look inside and find the point of truth within us, the point of truth that knows we are all going to die one day and meet our Creator and explain what we did with our lives to bring His Middos into the world?  What will we say?  It was too hard?

May we resolve during this time to find shiurim (on www.naaleh.com, the Maharal series with Rebbetzin Heller on how the yetzer hara is a great place to start) or seforim (Derech Hashem, The Knowing Heart, Duties of the Heart, Tomer Devorah, Tanya and more) that guide us in understanding our nature and how to rise above our limitations and use our free will to cleave to Hashem through acts of kindness and emulating His Middos.

And may we merit to see the Moshiach speedily in our day with protection for Klal Yisroel.

One cannot help but remember the tragic losses of lives that occurred seven years ago. The images are perpetual. Seven years later, we remember what happened, what happened because of sheer hatred.

Have we stepped closer to a resolution of the causes of that tragedy? Militarily, we have been at war. Politically, we have expressed influence. We have Presidential candidates debating on whether these efforts have been successful or not.

My reflections today attempt to uncover the root of such vitriolic and destructive hatred. My thoughts here are intended for all but are written from a Jewish perspective.

In our world, because of the inherent reality of lack, we are competitors. That is the basis of our economy, of our lives. Healthy competition. We have things we lack (and therefore want) and we have healthy constructive ways to provide fulfillment of those needs and wants.

Yet, as part of human nature, when there is competition for certain things, there can be jealousy. When we lack something and normal means of acquiring it do not prevail (usually because the control of the system is not in our hands) our sense of lack often may trigger a jealousy of those who do not lack that same thing. Many of us when faced with these jealous emotions will resolve them with acceptance, prayer, compensation, goal-setting or other activities that empower us so that we do not feel we are lacking anything.   From there, we can move forward healthfully.

But perhaps there are circumstances whereby we are not successful in empowering ourselves or accepting something. What would be something lacking that may not be in a system we control? Love. Our own self-esteem and confidence.

Examples of this are sibling rivalry. Also, we may see this in the broken hearted, in love and unrequited love. The one that lacks the love they feel they deserve can become jealous and can be overcome with competition and hatred and a desire to lower a person in the eyes of others. It is an erroneous belief stemming from the lowest parts of human nature to believe that if we can lower  a person in the eyes of others that we become the more beloved one. I am certain that every person reading this can recall a story from their own life or from history or from the Bible where they can see an example of how this operates and the outcome. The outcome is usually human tragedy, loss, destruction, and pain. And for no successful purpose, because the objective was to win love from someone who most likely is (or if the jealous attack was a hidden one, someone who would most likely be- if it were revealed to them -)  repulsed  by these actions.  Ask yourself, would you love and trust someone who stooped to such tactics? Would you want that person in your intimate circle affecting your own emotions?

If a person is without conscience,  truly caring nothing for the one they are jealous of, perhaps there is a sense of victory and success at eliminating the competition. Rather cold-blooded and calculated, but the simple formula is fulfilled.  Elimination of the competitor means no more competition. But gaining the object of one’s desires…how can that be advanced?   And, how would we feel about ourselves if we set material and external goals as a justifiable object of our desires, no matter what the cost in money or human life?

What we saw on September 11 was an example of people claiming, in the name of a Higher Consciousness, victory and success. This is confusing. Most people respect religious goals of other people. On principle, living in a democratic country with freedom of religion and thought, we do not ever question someone’s claim that this brings them closer to their religious goals. In our country, this is sacrosanct, the foundation of our freedom. Thus, claiming this destruction in the name of a religious goal categorizes this action, in our way of thinking, as something besides hatred, jealousy, and viciousness.

In a one world picture of competition, a simplistic picture of conquering one’s enemy can seem as though it is a victory, for it appears as though the Higher Consciousness is on the side of the victor because the tragedy was permitted. One can make that erroneous assumption only in a one world picture. Are we favored by the Higher Consciousness for eliminating our competitor? Have we been blessed to be able to do so? Are these universal truths? Let us look at this from the perspective of the Torah, which teaches us that hatred is unjustifiable.

What we know from Torah is that we are able to control our thoughts, speech and deed. The internal struggle that each person has is to come to the understanding that at all times we have real choice, and that choice is whether we will conduct ourselves in a way that is pleasing to the Higher Consciousness or in a way in which the Higher Consciousness will use us for His purposes, which we cannot begin to understand. Our efforts and conduct are in our control. The consequences of our efforts are in the hands of the Higher Power, who determined even before we acted whatever loss would be incurred. Our eternal souls will be rewarded or punished based on our choices. In a two world picture therefore, if a person is successful in harming another, it is not a logical conclusion that, because it is the Divine Will that someone is harmed, that the one responsible for the action that leads to the suffering is beloved to the Divine One.

The basic premise of what I want to bring out is that the Holy One did not create mankind and the world so that we will kill each other and thereby come closer to Him. He created us so that we would bring His Middos into the world and serve Him and shine a light wherever we find darkness. We are here to fix and mend things within ourselves so that we can ascend to Heaven when the time comes. If we did not need to fix and mend anything, we would not be here. We would have not been born.

Take a look around at all the diverse people on this planet. It becomes quite clear that the Holy One likes diversity. He did not create everyone the same, neither with the same intelligence, looks, talents, personality or challenges. Each person sees the world in their own way and interacts with the world in his or her own belief system. We have free choice. Are we going to serve the Holy One or are we going to serve His Purposes? Are we going to build, fix and mend or are we going to destroy?

And further, can we, through jealous, hateful acts, tear down, in the eyes of the Holy One, anyone? Here in lies the answer. In the eyes of the Holy One, human hatred and jealousy do not tear down anyone except the deliverer of misdeeds. A person who so badly succumbs to their jealous and thereby hateful nature as to speak poorly of another or cause another pain has torn down only his own image in the eyes of the Holy One. Why? The answer is that if we are connected to the Holy One, if that is truly our primary love relationship, we see each other with love and respect as His creations. It would never be my place to try to diminish another – if I disagree with someone or feel they might be misguided, it would be out of love and concern for that person that I attend to the matter. 

For example, if a person turns their foot and sprains an ankle, we do not cut off the foot in anger. Instead, we nurture the ankle, bandage it, elevate it and otherwise attend to it. We are not angry at the foot. It is the same with our fellow man. If someone is suffering from a negative experience or emotion, we try to help the person, we might suggest therapy for anger management or the like.

The goal is to bring the person back to a position of health, of positive thinking, of love and respect for each other.

When there is unbridled hatred and unhealthy competition that includes win at all costs tactics, including the death and destruction of others, a red flag needs to go up. Where are we?

If as a whole, mankind comes to compete to its own destruction, what have we accomplished? Have we enacted the highest part of ourselves or the lowest? And when we tire of seeing people die because they are hated, will we face our own natures and realize that we cannot as a race achieve the peace and any kind of utopia until we divest ourselves of the very cause of our own destructive nature, which is hatred based in jealousy-generated unhealthy competition.

What actions can people take to combat such influences? The successful actions that each person can take are internal to ourselves, because that is the arena that have the commandment to control. We must try our best to overcome our own jealousies and hatreds and to see that these are ultimately futile. We must not indulge them in ourselves or rationalize them. When we choose with our free will to send them out of our lives, we will not see others who indulge these negative traits as having been successful or victorious, but rather has having fallen victim to their own human nature. When we can see that we can have some success with our own nature, we may understand better how others may not. We may have sympathy for their failures, but it takes away support for their erroneous goals.

Imagine that your children come home from school and each one got A’s on their report card and one got a C. The one who got the C is upset and starts speaking poorly about the teachers and how they didn’t help him. As the parents, you know that this child did not do his homework and did not study. Let’s say that the child has no learning disability, that it was just a lack of self-discipline that caused the low performance. Yet the child insists it is because of the teacher, because of something that happened in his class – placing the blame outside of himself. As the parent, would you then take up the child’s cause and go to the teacher and complain? What good would it do? Even if the teacher did every single thing you demanded, the child would still not succeed! That is not the root cause of the child’s poor performance, even though the child claims it. You as the parent understand the child does not know how to discipline himself to conform to the requirements. Is it a lack of motivation? Is it a lack of caring? Is it a lack of confidence? Whatever it is, a good parent would focus on the child’s strengths and reinforce the child’s positive qualities and address the child’s study behaviors and negative emotions, but would be smart enough to not go to the school with a self-blinding picture of reality, a hope and prayer that this support will miraculously cause the child to obtain self-discipline and learning skills. Every person has to reach down to a point of truth within themselves and accept themselves in order to move forward and rise above their limitations.

Let us give each other fortitude so that those who fall victim to their lower urges are not rewarded with our sympathies for whatever cause they blame for their hatred. We can sympathize with their inability to overcome their nature, with their difficulty in their own internal struggle, with their confusion in choosing such an erroneous response, but hardly should that ever translate to sympathy for the cause they are blaming or putting forward, especially when more than reasonable effort over decades has offered to provide a solution for that cause, only to be rejected as not enough, not good enough.

If we accept a world-view where mankind is created by the Holy One in diverse manner for His Purposes to serve Him in a pleasing way, it changes the way we see the causes of hateful acts.

Let us place the responsibility for hateful acts where they belong, on the perpetrators’ failure to overcome the lower nature common to every person alive, and not on the ones the perpetrators would blame out of frustration, hatred, jealousy, confusion or other intense destructive emotions. Why? Because anyone who is successful at blaming others for their own failure to regulate themselves in a positive manner (or anyone successful in obscuring their failure with their own internal struggle or anyone confusing themselves about their failure with their internal struggle) will continue to do that, never seeing that it is in fact their own failure to overcome the negative emotions generated by their sense of lack. No matter how difficult the circumstances are, no matter what is lacking or for how long, healthy competition requires compromise and accommodation, healthy boundaries, diversity and it needs peace. Let us all divest ourselves of unhealthy competition, jealousy, hatred, unreasonableness and let mankind as a whole be good citizens of the world.

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Teacher: Mrs. Shira Smiles