Every Little Movement

Translated by Aaron Yoseph
 
 
A person wants to be a Tsaddik, but the years go by and he feels that he hasn’t moved forward at all – the time seems to have been wasted. The Rebbe teaches us that there are hidden things going on in our lives, and that nothing went to waste. What you went through – “These are the words that Moshe spoke to the Bnei Yisroel…”
 
Moshe Rabeinu reminded us of all the places where we slipped up and angered Hashem. We could have been in Eretz Yisroel in three days, but we messed up and had to wander around in the wilderness for forty years. What a waste of time! Then Moshe Rabeinu came and taught us that those 42 journeys were actually all “al pi Hashem,” – they were Divinely decreed. “Here you fixed this, there you fixed that.” He rebuked us in a way that brought us back to life and filled us with hope and enthusiasm. “After you did this, you regretted it, and transformed the descent into a far greater ascent. You rectified very great things!” This is the secrets, the hidden, deeper dimension of the Torah – how everything in the world and in our lives is Torah. The Rebbe said that there’s no despair – why? – because there’s Torah everywhere.
 
There’s Eretz Yisroel itself – when we arrive at our destination – things go smoothly. We have a schedule of learning and praying, Chatzos and hisbodedus. We’re flying. Then there’s the derech to Eretz Yisroel, the journey to Eretz Yisroel – when we haven’t yet arrived and things don’t go quite to plan. That’s life for most of us in this world – we need to eat, sleep, go out to make money, we have to deal with people, with ourselves… Moshe Rabeinu taught us that the journey is also part of serving Hashem.
 
A person looks at himself and sees the days going by, how he slipped up here and there, and he daydreams about sitting in the beis hamedrash and learning all day. He wants things to be like before Adam’s sin. If not for the sin of the Eitz HaDaas, Hashem would have run the world just with kindness, and everyone could sit and learn all day and night. But Adam fell, the creation fell with him, and Hashem wants us to put things right.
 
Even knowing this, a person looks at his day and thinks to himself, “But what am I fixing? I’m just making things worse!” He doesn’t realise that there is Torah in everything. In every food he eats there are sparks connected to his soul. By saying a bracha as best he can and being happy – he fixes everything. If he cries about the situation and complains, then he does fail to fix things. These are the secrets of the Torah. To know that Hashem is with us wherever we are.
 
When a person accepts his situation and carries out his mission with joy, knowing that Hashem is with him, then he comes to the Beis HaMedrash and knows before whom he’s standing. He can pray from his heart. Whatever challenges he faces, he knows that it’s all part of his tikkun, what he needs to go through. The Yetser Hora has no power over him – he knows that he’s doing what he’s meant to be doing – he’s correcting the world. If he slips up, he just gets up again and starts again. There’s no looking back. He doesn’t stay outside, saying, “Oh well, this obviously isn’t for me. I’m not cut out for serving Hashem and learning and davening.” No! He goes straight back through the door and carries on. This is the greatness of Klal Yisroel – we use our stubbornness to not give up. When someone does give up it’s because he thinks that despair is a good place to live, as if will be good for him there.
 
The Rebbe said that there’s no despair in the world. How do we comfort someone who has been through all he’s been through? We let him know that there’s Torah everywhere and that he fixed things where he was, even if it doesn’t feel like it. When you he something, when he bought something from the shops. Even in the slip-ups, if a person has a desire to come back and do teshuva – then he elevates the sparks from the place that he fell to, and it was all worth it in the end. This is the light of the Baal Shem Tov. Everything is filled with holiness, the letters of the Aleph-beis are filled with kedushah, and they are the building blocks of everything in the world. We raise up the good from them, then the angels take what we raised up and make great things from them. This is the deeper dimension of the Torah.
 
This is Emunas Chachamim – to believe in what the Tsaddikim teach us. A person knows that the world is not meaningless, and that his life is not meaningless. With every move, a Jew crowns Hashem as King over the world. The Rebbe said that if we would see the deeper dimension of the world, we would see how thousands of spiritual worlds hang on each Jews every move.