B"H
THOUGHTS FOR THE MONTH OF CHESHVAN
Dear Friends:
The Holidays
are over. Not just the holidays since Rosh Hashana,
but the entire cycle of holidays beginning with Passover. We
now enter a period of long winter nights and cold days, in
which the sun often seems barely to make it over the horizon. The
rainy season is the subject of intense prayer with regard
to our Holy Land , but there are
also cities in America , especially
in the Pacific Northwest , where
rain falls for almost the entire winter. In large sections
of America , snow has already blanketed
our sukkahs. It seems that cold and darkness surround
us.
It is very
easy to feel depressed. With "zman simchasainu," the
Season of our Happiness behind us, what is there to sustain
us and give us simcha?
On Simchas
Torah we read of the death of our Leader and Eternal Rabbi
Moses. "The Children of Israel bewailed
Moses in the Plains of Moab for
thirty days... Never again has there arisen in Israel a
prophet like Moses..." [1]
How will
we survive this dark winter? How will the Children
of Israel survive without Moses? How will we survive
the long Exile that suddenly seems to loom upon us as the
days shrink and darkness seems to surround us as the night
suddenly descended upon our Father Jacob as he fled from
Esau? [2] The
summer is over! "... the silver cord snaps and the
golden bowl is shattered and the pitcher is broken at the
fountain and the wheel is smashed at the pit. Thus
the dust returns to the ground, as it was, and the spirit
returns to G-d Who gave it. Futility of futilities
- said Koheles - All is futile!" [3]
Where is
the Light within the darkness?
My dear friends,
our Father in Heaven never leaves us alone. There is
a reason that the culmination of our entire Holiday cycle,
both the cycle beginning with Passover and the cycle beginning
with Rosh Hashana, end with Simchas Torah.
G-d is giving
us a message, very loud and very clear. Please listen
to the holy words of the Haftara for Simchas Torah, the words
addressed by the Master of the Universe to Joshua after the
death of Moses, and the words that echo down through history,
down through our seemingly endless Exile, to this very day,
to this very moment.
These are
the words of G-d:
"As I
was with Moses so will I be with you. I will not
let you part from Me nor will I abandon you. Strengthen
yourself and persevere ... according to all the Torah that
My servant Moses has commanded you. Do not deviate
to the right or to the left, that you may succeed wherever
you may go. The Book of the Torah is not to leave
your mouth. You should contemplate it day and night
in order to observe, to do all that is written in it. For
then you will make your ways successful and then you will
become understanding...."
My friends,
the Holiday season leaves us with
one clear point of light, and that light is focused on one
place and one place only: The Torah handed down from Mount
Sinai . There is no other light in the
world. If anyone thinks there is any other wisdom in
the world, any political system, any game plan, any philosophy,
any understanding apart from the Torah, he or she is a victim
of total delusion.
LOOK AT THE
WORLD TODAY!
Let's not
mince words, my friends. Israel is
a mess, with a government that totally ignores and rejects
Torah! We Children of Israel throughout the world are
surrounded by vicious enemies, who, in the words of King
David, "approach ... to devour my flesh." [4] Were
Chassidim not attacked in Brooklyn on
Simchas Torah? Nation fights nation. If a small
plane veers into a building in New York City ,
the entire world jumps, believing (and not without reason)
that World War III has begun. If the Children of Israel
feels besieged we stand in front of the United Nations --
a congregation of our enemies, constantly plotting to destroy
us, G-d forbid! - and beg them to listen to us.
WHAT IS WRONG
WITH US?
Did we or
did we not hear the voice of G-d speaking to Joshua? Did
He or did He not say, "The Book of the Torah is not to
leave your mouth. You should contemplate it day and
night in order to observe, to do all that is written in it. For
then you will make your ways successful and then you will
become understanding...."?
I would really
like to know how any of us, looking at today's world, could
for one second suspect that there is any other way of surviving
without the Torah. . Forget alien
philosophies. Didn't G-d tell Joshua, "Do not deviate
to the right or to the left"?
Is the Torah
not enough? Am I smarter than the Torah? Am I
smarter than G-d?
My dear friends,
there IS light in the darkness. The world is filled with
light. It is the light of the Torah, but that is the
ONLY light. If we let that light fill the world, if
we subordinate our own egos (and again, my friends, I do
not for one moment exclude myself from these words, quite
the contrary!), our own ideas, our own desires, and become
again One Nation devoted to G-d and His Torah, we will see
a year so bright that such light has never been seen since
the first moment of Creation in the Garden of Eden!
We have only
to bring it into the world.
Why should
the light not shine in the winter? Why should Exile
not end right now? Why should it not be Purim right
now, when the Jews had "light and gladness and joy and
honor." [5] After
all, Yom Kippur is really "K'Purim," like Purim!
If we, the
Children of Israel, wake up... if we, the Children of Israel
open our eyes and throw away our attachment to alien values,
if we open up the Book of the Torah and heed the words of
G-d to Joshua, we will see a Light in the Darkness that is
eternal and illuminates "the four corners of the earth" forever.
It is all
up to us!
With hope
for eternal Simcha in the Torah,
Roy S. Neuberger
