True Passion

Sometimes having the correct answer isn't always best.
 
"Dov, did you hear the prime minister's speech the other day?"
 
"Yeah. He did a good job. It was nice to see him speak so boldly."
 
"He may be the best public speaker in the Middle East."
 
Without thinking, I very sternly disagreed.
 
"No. He's not even close."
 
"Who? There is someone better?"
 
"Hands down, the most passionate speaker in the Middle East is Hassan Nasrallah."
 
In less than five minutes I was peering at my friend's front door.
 
The worst thing is that I still believe it. The head of Hizbullah is a monster. But as purely evil his message is, I have seen no man deliver it with as much energy and passion.
 
We don't have to love or even respect our enemies to appreciate their strengths. In fact, in acknowledging where they are outdoing us, we know where our own weaknesses are.
 
Nasrallah speaks with intensity, energy, and passion. I don't understand a word he is saying, but I can feel the excitement when he speaks. This must be how he can convince a group of people to commit the worst acts of human depravity.
 
This must have been how Hitler did it too.
 
The Lubavitcher Rebbe, of Blessed memory, tells us that words of the heart enter the heart. The past hundred years of history confirms this – for both good and evil.
 
It isn't the words of men like Hitler, Nasrallah, and another top speaker in the Middle East: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad which convince the unsuspecting to act, it is the conviction and belief which they convey them. With every word, they are communicating to their people that they embody what they are saying with every ounce of their being.

To the core of their bones, they are right, and they are on the side of all that is holy.
 
This is how they inspire their masses.
 
This is what we need, but from a source of holiness instead.
 
The world is mostly spiritual. The Middle East is the soul of the world. Nothing is physical here. It is the spirit that drives everything. Our current reality is a lesson in Gemara: Moshiach ben David will win the war of Gog and Magog not with M-16 or AK-47 rifles, but with his mouth. It will not be a war of weapons, but of ideas. It will be a battle of the soul against Amalek.
 
We are commanded every day to remember what Amalek did to us. The English wording talks about how Amalek encountered us on the way out of Egypt and stuck down our weak and tired. The Hebrew version is a little different. The exact translation is how Amalek cooled us on the way from Egypt.
 
The translation doesn't work so well in an English Siddur so the sentence needed to be polished a little to make it flow. However, if we take the literal meaning, we see that this is the key to Amalek. He is a cooler. The numerical value of Amalek is the same as the Hebrew word Safek, to doubt.
 
Amalek is the arch enemy of the Jewish People. His primary weapon is to destroy us by denying our spiritual existence its passion! We cannot be passionate about anything if we have doubts. We cannot harbor, or express a true conviction about what we believe in if we are not completely certain that it's the Truth.
 
In order for Am Yisrael to stand up to the world, we need to re-discover our passion. We need a starting point. Some place where we can reignite the fire deep within us. Our National mission is not mass conversion, holy war, or death. Our mission is education, spiritual enlightenment, and life.
 
We stand for every man, woman, and child on earth realizing his and her potential by connecting with the One Who gave it to us.
 
We stand for a world united in peace and harmony.
 
We stand for a world which focuses on growing both together and alongside each other.
 
Whenever we discuss our Holy Torah – we are championing a world the way it is supposed to be: happy, tranquil, and kind.
 
Compared to what the best speakers in the Middle East are putting behind their words – there should be absolutely no reason why they are the ones speaking with such emotion.
 
We need to rediscover all of this. We need to reinforce it deep inside us all the time. We need this core of conviction to permeate our entire being the way olive oil permeates the whole olive. This cannot be something reserved for the Jewish leadership– it must be the personal obligation of all of us!
 
Sounds impossible right?
 
It's not as hard as one would think. In fact – it's pretty simple.
 
We win the war the way Moshiach intended. We win the war through prayer.
 
After virtually memorizing all of the daily prayers in the Siddur, I have begun to recite the words in Hebrew while concentrating on the English written on the other side of the Artscroll book. For the first time in my life, I am becoming more fully aware of what I am saying directly to HaKadosh Baruch Hu.
 
When we daven, we are asking Hashem for peace. We ask Him to bless Israel with peace. We ask Him to bless the world with peace. We ask Hashem that we remain silent in the face of all those who wish to harm us. We ask that He nullify the plans of our enemies. We ask that He bless us with abundance. We acknowledge that all of our good fortune is a result of His kindness and our performing of His mitzvoth. We admit that harsh times are a direct result of our sins. When we ask for these things, we ask as a representative of Am Yisrael. We ask on behalf of our brothers and sisters.
 
We never ask that the nations of the earth will submit to our dominance. We ask that the nations of the world submit to His. We ask that the world will revert back to the way it was meant to be – a world of justice, Divine Effort, and growth.
 
Then, we realize that we are not merely asking Hashem. Asking requires verbal communication. Prayer is spiritual. When we recite the words, regardless of our comprehension of them, we are supplicating ourselves before Hashem with our entire being. We are communicating heart to Heart, neshama to Neshama. The very core of our existence is screaming out to our Maker on a level more intimate than anything possible in the physical realm.
 
As we slow our prayers down just enough to appreciate each word, we are no longer merely connecting to Hashem. We are making His Will our will. We are clearing more of our being for Him to enter. We are enabling Him to become a larger part of us.
 
This is the seat of our greatest convictions. It is where it all begins.
 
Like olive oil permeating the entire olive, this passion extends our entire being. Everything else we approach in life takes on a greater energy. Every meaning revealed to us is absorbed with greater intensity. Every mission man accepts upon himself is executed with great vigor and determination.
 
This is how we take back the true passion of this world. This is how we answer those who would misuse it.
 
 
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Dovber Halevi is the author of the financial book, How to Survive the Coming Decade of Anxiety. He writes for Breslev Israel and The Middle East Magazine. He lives with his wife and two children in Eretz Yisrael.