The Privilege of Having Different Problems

This is a theme I've discussed a lot lately because it is very present in my mind. We all know that Israeli society is going through a very tough time. We all know the problems we are having.

In order to portray these problems within a broader, more positive, picture, we tried talking about all the good things which have come out, and still come out, of the State of Israel. Today, I want to take this a step forward. Today, I want to say “Ashreinu Shezchinu LeHyot Et MashBerenu”! I want to express gratitude for the privilege we have of being in a generation that is going through the crises we are going through.

No, I am not hallucinating. I am not crazy. I see things very clearly, and I know how tough our current challenges are. However, there is a great difference between the challenges we fact today and the challenges we have faced for the past 2000 years. This difference is so fundamental that we should truly consider ourselves privileged to be in a generation whose problems are that of ours.



In Shir Hashirim, we are presented with one of the greatest love stories every written. This love story, explained by Hazal as a parable between God and the Jewish People, describers the love of a woman (Klal Israel) and her beloved. At one point, they get separated and the woman looks for her beloved everywhere. She cannot find him. She is extremely sad but keeps looking, and looking and looking. All she can think about is her beloved. Nothing else comes through her mind. She is looking everywhere for him. However, at one point, after showering, the woman lies down for a rest and then, suddenly, she hears her beloved knocking on the door and screaming her name! KOL DODI DOFEK! We would expect her to jump up and open the door! However, instead, she finds excuses not to open, explaining that “she took off her clothes, how will I wear them again?” and that her “feet are clean, how will I dirty them?”. Now, we all know that women take a while to get dressed, but what is the deeper meaning here? God is knocking on the door of history, calling for Klal Israel to come back to him, to his land and to his torah, and Klal Israel simply says “I just too off my clothes”, “my feet are clear, I do not want to get them dirty”. What are these clothes which were taken away and why are they so hard to put back on? What does it mean that klal israel doesn't want to get it's feet dirty?

Both these answers are answered by Midrash Shir Hashirim Rabba and describe the deeper reasons for all the difficulties Klal Israel is going through.

Lets start with the dirty feet since I will want to concentrate afterwards on the clothing. The Midrash explains that this was Knesset Israel's complaint to God, during the time of the second temple and, in my opinion, in our days also, that God could have given us a great tsaddik to bring the redemption! Why did he have to go through Koresh the goy? Why did you have to go through Herzl the Kofer? Why not bring our redemption through righteous people? We will not answer the question right now but its clear that this complaint of the Jewish People, and the reality that our leadership does not believe and follow Jewish values, both are the source of enormous difficulties for our generation (both the complaint and the reality).

However, I want to concentrate on the second question. What are those clothes and why are they so hard to put back on?
The midrash explains that when the temple was destroyed, the babylonians had taken away two important pieces of clothing from the Jewish People and they would not be able to wear them again. Those were the clothes of the king and the clothes of the high priests. These two clothings symbolize two different things which the Jewish People used to deal with constantly before the exile and which become non-existing during the exile.

The clothing of the king refers to the idea of self-determination. During the exile, this idea was taken away from Jewish consciousness. How could we possibly once again live through self determination? How can we know how to properly run a state? How can we know how to properly run a political system? All those questions are hard. So Knesset Israel was and many still are scared, and prefer not to touch this question rather than go through all the difficulties which we will go through if we do try. However, thank God, some people took the initiative and brought back political independence to the Jewish People. Yes, all those difficulties we were afraid of are not happening. We are once again learning how to lead a country – and we're not really the best at it all the time. To be honest, we're pretty amazing, but we're not as good as we could be. But slowly slowly we will learn once again and soon our political system will be holier than most batei midrashim.

The clothing of the High Priest refers to the national spiritual service. The job of the High Priest was not to be a holy man for himself, but rather to do God's service in the name of the Jewish People. During our exile, all our spiritual questions were limited to how well we, individual jews, can be as good as possible. And so our spiritual problems were mostly to find a good community, find a good school for our children, find a good neighbor – everything to make our personal religious practice better. Today, this has all changed. The religious question which one must ask himself is what does the shabbat mean for State? Does this mean we should close the airspace over Israel even though non jewish pilots would need to fly over it for different reasons? What do we do during a year of shmitta if this year will at once sponsor terrorism and tremendously hurt the israeli agriculture? Etc..T he questions are questions of national spirituality. How do we once again build a mamlechet kohanim vegoy kadosh – a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. Even individual halachot can take national ramifications – like a soldier keeping shabbat! And yes, there are obstacles on the way. Some people want to remove the Jewish Character from the State of Israel. However, we are slowly rebuilding our national spiritual life.

You see, all our problems today are signs that we are taking on the challenge of bringing the redemption hands on. We are not backing down, even if many would want us to. And so, some people look at what the redemption is supposed to be and start getting depressed, realizing we are not there yet. However, every destination has a road leading to it, and while it might be more comfortable sitting at home than walking on that road, you are much closer to the destination when walking on that road.

Slowly, slowly, we are once again becoming a nation which can lead itself. We are once again connecting with the concepts of national spirituality and righteousness rather than simply individual religiosity. Why is it so hard? Why is it taking so long? Because the way God created the world, we need to earn the rewards we get and therefore the redemption will only come through our own actions. So, slowly slowly, God is leading us towards a process, sometimes painful, which will ultimately lead to our redemption.

There is a story in the gemara of many Amoraim which did not want to be around during our time, the time of Ikveta Demeshicha. It was too painful for them. However, Rav Yossef, who looked deeper and say that these times were really times of incredible strength rather than weaknesses, and that the challenges were challenges which represented the incredible courage and growth of Klal Israel to keep moving forward in the process of redemption, disagreed. Rav Yossef said: “Let the Messiah come even when I will have to sit in the shadow of his donkey’s dung”. Yes, it won't be easy, but even sitting in the donkey's dung, I will be able to see that this whole painful process is leading towards the incredible result of our long awaited redemption.