What’s G-d Doing?

Rabbi Arush makes the point time and time again that emuna is not for an elite few; emuna is for everyone. That's why he's made an effort to get his book The Garden of Emuna translated into so many languages, including German and Farsi, the language they speak in Iran. We want everyone to know about G-d! When you trace it all back to what each of us really wants, regardless of the Evil One's propaganda and lies, no one really wants any more bloodshed in the world, or any more terrible tragedies.
 
But it takes a lot to break out of the existing patterns and the conditioning that go back so far, and make people think that it's right to hate or use violence to solve their national or personal problems. Again, the answer is for the violent person to connect to G-d, and to start asking himself: “How is the violence really helping me? How is it really furthering my own causes? How is it really protecting my family, or giving me more hope or quality of life?”
 
At the time of writing this, we are being sent some very dramatic, harsh messages. Let's recall that it was only several months ago that Hurricane Sandy smashed into the East coast, and destroyed so many religious Jewish places and communities. Why is that? In Long Beach, where I used to live and learn in yeshiva before I moved to Israel, many of the homes of the rabbis who I used to learn with were terribly ruined.
 
Why was that? Why did G-d do that?
 
Why is it that in the aftermath of that storm, when I pick up a Jewish newspaper to read about the effects of the storm I mainly read about the good, kind acts that so many Jews did for each other? I'm not saying that it isn't wonderful to hear about all those organizations, and all those people, who rallied around the cause to help out in any way they could, giving money, or donating food, or letting strangers stay in their homes whose own houses were flooded and unlivable. That's all great; but I read six or seven pages of all these amazing stories, and I didn't find even one sentence about what it all means, or what message G-d was trying to give these religious communities. No one's talking about how a religious person is meant to react, religiously, to Hurricane Sandy, or what we're all meant to be doing to get out of this very harsh spiritual situation, to start breaking the severe judgments that are hanging over us.
 
Sure, we can leave G-d out of the picture, and only talk about kind people, and avoid looking at what needs to change. And if we do that, then of course nothing's going to change, at least from our end of the equation. But that's not bonding to G-d. That's not asking the hard questions that are going to lead to some amazing breakthroughs and progress for us. So many of us shy away from asking ourselves tough questions like this. Until I met Rabbi Arush, I also didn't use to ask myself these tough questions – but they are the ignition, the starter fuel for real growth, and real clarity, and real connection. And if we don't ignite the process, nothing is going to move or improve. Period.
 
During the last Gaza episode it was a Friday night, when a siren went off in Jerusalem because rockets were being fired in our direction from Gaza. It was the first time a siren like that was heard in Jerusalem since the Gulf War in 1991. Women and children were running through the streets for cover. The men stayed in synagogue and said extra Psalms in response to the situation. All week, children in parts of Israel that haven't heard sirens before were coming home from school shaken and frightened. They – unlike the children of Israel who live near Gaza or the Lebanese border –  never experienced being under rocket attack before, or having to go into bomb shelters, or seeing their parents and teachers frightened.
 
These things wake you up. They make you realize that no one is immune to G-d's very big, very scary, very dramatic messages. In the US, the hurricane came. And a few weeks ago, it was Boston. In Israel, another round of war came with no promises of peace in the future. Other things are coming too, all over the world. G-d isn't doing these things to make us afraid, or sad. He's doing them to wake us up, and to make us realize that if we're close to Him, then we have nothing to worry about. The people who are talking to G-d every day, the people who are absorbed in Torah and who are not being distracted by the headlines discussing all the details of the war – or the hurricane, or the stock market crash, or the latest huge environmental disaster – the "emuna" people – the ones who are focusing on faith-strengthening and coming back to G-d – those people are still on an even keel. They are still functioning, and they aren't paralyzed by fear, even when the situation gets incredibly frightening. Let's be one of them.