Enough of the Fluff

Before I got into Breslev, I used to love doing all the other ‘fluffy’ self-help classes and courses on offer to the observant Jewish public. I used to go to shiurim from visiting guest speakers, telling me how to be a better Jew / mum / daughter / sister / wife / whatever; I used to go to parenting courses (loads and loads of them…); I used to go to ulpan classes; Sabbath cookery courses; pathetic classes given by the Kabbalah Center where they seemed to talk an awful lot about the zodiac and very little about Judaism; shabbatons in Gateshead; weekends away with outreach organizations – you name it, I signed up for it.
 
And when I got to Israel, that trend continued. Within a few weeks’ of being here, I found out about a nice, fluffy Jewish women’s group in English that would be meeting weekly, and that would help us discover our inner Jewish woman.
 
Great!
 
And I quite enjoyed the first couple of weeks, even though I found it quite ‘fluffy’ and more talk than action. But then, I got burgled. Twice. First, they took my credit card and ran up thousands of pounds of illegal purchases in Ramallah. Then, they broke into my house while my husband was away in the UK on business, and took pretty much everything valuable that we owned.
 
I was furious with Hashem. I was so angry! Here I was, I’d just made aliyah; I’d just shelled out thousands of pounds to help a relative get married; I was just starting to try to find my feet – and G-d had me burgled! (And no, we didn’t have insurance.)
 
For the life of me (then…), I couldn’t work it out. What had I done to deserve such a thing? This was a couple of months before Hashem sent me Rabbi Lazer Brody, and the beginning of the answer to that question. But in the meantime, I was full of righteous indignation, ‘poor me’, and complaints against G-d and G-d’s justice.
 
I took a big bag of this anger and moaning with me to my nice, fluffy, Jewish women’s group the week after it happened, and when the woman started going on about G-d always giving us what we need, boy, did I let her have it.
 
“If Hashem always gives us what we need, why did He arrange for my credit card to get stolen and so much of my money to be spent? If He always gives us what we need, why did He take away my laptop, printer, phone, jewellery, camera? How was I meant to get all the unfinished work back? How was I meant to cover the cost of replacing all my possessions?” I wanted to know.
 
Poor woman. She didn’t really know what to say. Or maybe, she did know what to say, but she could see that I really didn’t have the ears to hear it at that point. So instead, one of the other participants started to tell me her story
.
She explained how a few years’ back, her house had been attacked by a big swarm of termites. The termites had chewed into a whole bunch of supporting beams, and the woman and her family had to move out while it was being completely redone. (I started to wonder why she was telling me all this.)
 
Once the reconstruction work was done, the family moved back in – only to be burgled and have everything stolen a few weeks’ later. I waited for the conclusion, or ‘helpful’ advice, but the woman just kept on talking.
 
A little while after the burglary, something else happened, then something else, then something else. Finally, one of her children got sick – and he died.
 
When she said that, I felt like someone had just punched me in the chest. I really can’t say if my brain truly registered the message the woman, and G-d, was trying to get across to me; but I think my soul absorbed it 100%.
 
I shut up. I felt very upset. And I never went back to that class. The soft, fluffy, class ended up teaching me a profoundly important lesson, that has been amplified for me with every new emuna CD I listen to, or emuna book I read.
 
Today, I thank G-d for that burglary. I thank G-d that instead of hitting me with something really serious, G-d forbid, He was so kind to teach me the lesson of emuna primarily via my possessions and income.
 
A few weeks’ later, Rabbi Brody reiterated what my soul already knew, but what my head was struggling to really accept: there are people with terrible problems. There are people with terrible illnesses, G-d forbid; terribly sick children, G-d forbid; terrible marriage problems, terrible issues with their children, G-d forbid.
 
Why? Because Hashem wants all of us to wake up. Rabbi Brody explained to me that if we were being prodded into spiritual consciousness by money problems, that was actually one of the mildest ways G-d could use to get our attention.
 
He was right. He was so right. And today, I am so very grateful that Hashem was kind enough to pick that route for us.
 
But recently, that woman’s story also brought something else to mind. In Rav Arush’s book, The Garden of Gratitude, he writes extensively about how we need to be grateful for the tiny tribulations G-d sends us, and how we have to be careful to thank Hashem for all the trying circumstances He sends us.
 
He emphasizes again and again, that if we wake up with the ‘small’ things, Hashem won’t have to send us ‘big’ things, G-d forbid. If we wake up with a job loss; or a burglary; or a speeding ticket; or an unpleasant but otherwise harmless insult – He won’t have to send us anything worse.
 
But now, let’s define what it means to ‘wake up’, because it seems to me that so many people are being sent increasingly loud messages from G-d, only to blow them off. When a person wakes up, or starts to wake up, it means they take a good, hard look at their lives, and they do some serious soul-searching to find out what G-d wants from them.
 
It means they take the time to start to read serious Jewish books, by serious Jewish leaders, that set out how a Jew should behave – and they start to take them seriously. Instead of belittling ideas about dressing and acting modestly; or getting rid of the TV and internet; or cutting down on eating out or holidays abroad, a person who is really trying to ‘wake up’ will ask themselves: what do I need to change or improve in these areas? Is it really OK to wear my jeans and not cover my hair? Is it really OK to watch someone whom I’m not married to perform intimate acts with someone they are not married to? (I’m talking about a G-rated peck on the cheek here, not even anything more disgusting…)
 
Does G-d want me to spend three hours in the mall having coffee with my girlfriends, or would He prefer me to spend a bit more time with my kids? Does He prefer that I have simpler food for Shabbat lunch and a great dvar torah, or 15 courses and non-stop conversation about work and the best dry-cleaner in town?
 
These were some of the questions I had to start to ask myself; each person will have their own list.
 
But the point is, if a person doesn’t start to ask themselves ‘What does G-d want?’ – even if they are nowhere near actually doing what G-d wants – it’s a sign that they really aren’t waking up.
 
People are being hit by so many hard things at the moment. We are all seeing it, we are all hearing about it, we are all experiencing it ourselves, G-d forbid. G-d doesn’t want to up the ante. He doesn’t want to graduate from the ‘easy’ financial and minor health stuff to the much harder stuff.
 
If we wake up, He doesn’t have too.
 
But if we continue to blow Him off, and continue to kid ourselves that it’s OK to watch movies (but not on Shabbat); or it’s OK to Facebook (but only for an hour a day); or it’s OK to spend Pesach in a five star hotel in Portugal (because it’s non-gebrochts); or it’s OK to wear a knee-skimming tight skirt (as long as it’s designer, and black)  – then, we really are asking for trouble. Enough of the fluff!