Noise in the News

2011

Lately, the so-called Palestinians have been making a lot of noise in the news, together with their applauding appeasers in Europe, threatening to declare statehood this coming September. Too many people in Israel are getting high-blood pressure from the Palestinian threat. That’s a shame; with one snap of Divine fingers, the Fatah and the Hamas could be at each other’s throat again, and the whole house of dominos just tumbles down.
 
Too bad the alarmists among us haven’t yet read The Garden of Emuna or listened to a Rabbi Shalom Arush CD. A person with even minimal emuna knows that what the Pallies and the silly UN do or don’t do has no influence on us whatsoever from a spiritual standpoint.
 
The Bucket Test
 
After our high-school varsity wrestling team won the county championship, a few of us started sticking our noses a little too high in the air thinking that we couldn’t be replaced. Our coach, an Irish coal-miner’s son from the hills of central Pennsylvania, had an uncanny down-home way of teaching us important lessons not only in athletics, but in life. He filled a bucket full of water, and none of us understood what he was doing. He then put the bucket in the middle of the practice mat and called on the star of our team to stand by the bucket.
 
The coach told the star to bend down, stick his arm in the bucket, and splash vigorously for about fifteen seconds. The star of the team did just as the coach said, and water splashed all over the place. The coach looked at his stopwatch, and when fifteen seconds were over, he told the star to stop splashing and to remove his arm from the bucket. The rest of the team sat in a semicircle looking at the coach’s bizarre bucket exercise in bewilderment. I personally had no idea what the coach was driving at.
 
The water in the bucket became less and less tempestuous. The moment they became completely still, the coach hit the top button of stopwatch, and declared, “Twenty-two seconds!” He then grabbed the star of the team by the ear and said, “You see how fast the water returned to normal after you pulled your arm out? That’s exactly how fast this team will forget about you once I kick your backside outta here. The next time any one of you guys gets sassy, you’re off the team, gold medals or not!” Needless to say, coach McNelis had an unbelievable influence on my life.
 
Decades later, after Hashem in his phenomenal grace led me to the world of Torah, I learned that the coach’s bucket exercise was right out of scripture. King Solomon says in Ecclesiastes (Chapter 1, verse 4), “A generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth endures forever.” In other words, one generation comes, makes a big splash in the bucket, but once it leaves, everything returns to normal.
 
The thought of the water in the bucket returning to its original state of total serenity should have a humbling effect on all of us. I remember asking myself at a moment of truth, when there was no logical chance that I’d live to see another sunrise, “What’s it all for?” The thundering realization that our chase after the accepted goals of a materialistic society is worth nothing more than a splash in the bucket is quite sobering. It makes a person rethink his or her priorities with dead earnest.
 
Here’s another sobering realization: the body finishes its eighty, ninety, or one hundred years on earth and takes nothing with it – no gold, no jewels, no currency, and no assets. The body decomposes and becomes dinner for the worms. Sure, we have to care for our body to keep it a healthy housing for the soul. But beyond that, any investment in bodily pleasures and material amenities is a total waste.
 
On the other hand, the soul transcends both time and space. Therefore, any investment in the soul is eternal. The soul takes its good deeds, its Torah learning, and its emuna wherever it goes, forever. No one can ever take away the soul’s assets. Anyone with minimal intelligence can therefore understand that one would be wise to invest in the soul rather than in the body. The body is no more than a splash in the bucket. The soul is here forever. Rebbe Nachman of Breslev, Rebbe Natan, the Ben Ish Chai and the Chafetz Chaim are just as alive today as they were in the flesh.
 
I invite both the Palestinians and the UN to take the bucket test. Any “turmoil” or “chaos” caused by whatever they do will calm down completely in the smallest period of time, especially if the Jewish nation makes teshuva, which they ultimately will.
 
There are those in Israel who naively think that the solution to our problems is a change of government. King Solomon has another message for those people with those of us with the short memories who longed for the Right when Left was in power, and longed for Left when the Right was in power. Both Right and Left failed miserably. Rather than turning to Hashem, the naïve voter that didn’t want to hear about teshuva and emuna invented a “Center,” which turned out to be an utter national disaster. “There is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9) – outside of new labels, the politicians are the same old deal, migrating from party to party for their own selfish gain.
 
Under the sun, there’s nothing new; above the sun, in the spiritual world, every moment is a new opportunity to declare a new beginning and to get close to Hashem.
 
King Solomon’s abovementioned passage from Ecclesiastes 1:4 describes the ever-so-temporary flesh-and-blood leaders when he says, “A generation goes and a generation comes.” But his father King David describes Hashem’s regime when he says (Psalms 145:13), “Your dominion is throughout every generation!” We’d be well-advised to put our trust in Hashem’s eternal power rather than suffer disappointments with man’s feeble temporary regime.
 
It’s high time to stop splashing in buckets and to come home to Hashem. How do we do that? Start with The Garden of Emuna. Then, continue with The Garden of Gratitudeand In Forest Fields. Now, listen to some emuna CDs. Pretty soon, you’ll find yourself in an oasis of inner peace, and you won’t even hear the noise in the news anymore. Blessings always!