Jewish Heritage Connection

Dvar Torah" Torah Portion: Beha'aloscha
Rabbi Dovid Saks

Recently, I was in Florida at an airshow. It was breathtaking; the speed, formation, and precision; the ascending and descending planes, and of course the thunderous sound.
My interest and attention were especially drawn to air flight since I had just read a letter that the great ethical teacher, Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe o.b.m., had written to his student who was in the doldrums.
He wrote that the following thought occurred to him while he was on a flight.
In general, we can describe the trajectory of one’s life and the pursuit of his accomplishments as taking a road trip towards one’s desired destination. There are times when we must stop, yield, or speed up. We will encounter hills, dips, bumps, tickets, and accidents. All this happens when one is rooted on the ground through the journey of life. However, if one adds air travel to his life’s journey, he will realize that there are opportunities to ascend, and there are also times when we will descend.
When we pray, perform Chesed and Tzadaka, observe Mitzvos, trust and believe in G-d and when we study the Torah we are ascending. However, there are times when we are sidetracked and descend from the spiritual highs that we accomplished. The good news is that it doesn’t mean we are grounded for life. We always have the ability to rise up and take off. However long was the duration of the descent, a Jew always has the inner ability to pick himself up!
In the Book of Mishlai - Proverbs, King Solomon writes, “For seven times a Tzadik – a righteous person – falls, and he arises.”
Baal Haturim explains that this refers to our forefather Yaacov, who was a Tzadik, and was faced with seven challenges, yet he arose from each of them. The seven challenges were; his hateful brother Aisav, his deceitful father-in-law Lavan, wrestling with the Angel, when his daughter Dina was held captive, when Yosef was missing, when Shimon killed the males of Shechem and when he was troubled when Binyamin had to leave him to go the Egypt. Yaacov was faced with all these challenges, yet he found the ability to get back on his feet and rise.
The Medrash teaches us that the seven falls in the verse are referring to seven holy Temples that we had, and then went out of use or fell. They were; the Mishkan which accompanied the Jews in the desert; once they came into the Land of Israel, they built four Tabernacles, in Gilgal, Nov, Givon and Shilo; and then they built the first and second Temples in Jerusalem. These seven fell. The verse continues, and it will get up – this refers to the Third and everlasting Temple, that will descend from the Heavens when the Moshiach will arrive.
But how do we arise after we have fallen from our level of spirituality?
Our Chasidic Masters quote a Talmudic passage which questions the action of lowering an ax behind one’s back in order to bring it up with force. Is it considered an action of lowering, or do we look at the lowering the ax as part of raising the ax, since we are lowering it to give force to bring it up with additional strength.
Say our Chasidic Masters, if one views their spiritual descent as a descent, it is quite challenging to raise oneself up. However, if one views their feelings of spiritual void as an impetus to raise themselves higher, to gain or regain renewed strength, then the pitfall serves to help him to rise, ascend, elevate himself and grow!
I recently read what the late Rabbi Yitzchok Alster o.b.m. said how his influential Rebbe, Rabbi Yitzchok Hutner o.b.m., was able to introduce and teach novel Torah thoughts to budding scholars.
“There are times when you are faced with a puddle of water in front of you. You have a choice, to avoid it completely, go around it, sludge through it… or to take a leap over it.” He continued, “Rabbi Hutner had the talent to raise us up to soar and fly over that which we didn’t think we had the ability to do or achieve!
So, the message is that we must just dive in! Err, what I really meant to say is … we need to raise ourselves and take off!