In Likutei Moharan I:17, Rebbe Nosson records the great pleasure and satisfaction of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov regarding the unusually large amount of gerim who converted in the year of 1806.

Furthermore, Rav Levi Yitzchak Bender also spoke with great pleasure and satisfaction of the entire village of Sinitsa he and his fellow Breslovers managed to convert at fearsome risk to their lives, with certain Breslovers displaying unbelievable courage and dedication in this endeavor.

But for a long time, this attitude and self-sacrifice puzzled me.

After all, Judaism forbids the proselytization of non-Jews. And not only are we forbidden from seeking out non-Jews to join our ranks, but we even force potential converts to prove their sincerity (both to the beit din and to themselves) by rejecting them several times before accepting them.

​And even then, the potential converts must undergo a course of study in order to really make sure they know what they're getting into (with the provision that they can back out at any time) and to prepare them to live as upright Jews straight out the gate of the final step of conversion.

Rebbe Nachman and Rav Bender clearly did not seek out converts.

Yet after seeing how sincere these potential converts were, these tzaddikim converted these gerim in great joy and — in the case of the later Breslover chassidim — with life-threatening dedication.

Why?

I believe the answer can be found on page 87 of Rav Ofer Erez's book Ahavat Kedumim: A Commentary on the Story of "The Lost Princess.

Rav Ofer Erez describes one of the ways to free and elevate hidden sparks trapped among the Nations:

Kosher conversion.

Using the example of Ruth, Rav Erez explains how back in Biblical times, a nation's ruler embodied the innate qualities that characterized that nation. This means that King Eglon of Moav embodied the tremendous gevurah and brazenness that characterized Moav.

In turn, his daughter Ruth inherited this same embodiment. However, due to Ruth's profound self-sacrifice and lofty spiritual stature, her conversion to Judaism literally sucked out and elevated any and all holy sparks trapped within the Moavite nation.

And so, emptied of its lifeforce, the Moavite nation ended up disappearing from the world stage. Even today, archeologists have managed to find very little left over from Moav.

In turn, Ruth passed on to her son Oved the now kashered and purified gevurah, with the Moavite brazenness now elevated to Jewish boldness.

It was these qualities inherited in their freed and sanctified form from his great-great- grandmother that enabled David Hamelech to fight so successfully against all enemies — spiritual and physical, human and animal.

And then I understood.

A person who converts for the right reasons releases and elevates the sparks imprisoned in whichever nation he or she comes from, and transfers those sparks of holiness to Am Yisrael.

This weakens the impure lifeforce of that nation while strengthening the holy lifeforce of the Jewish people.

In turn, every lost and trapped spark gathered back to its source in the Jewish people brings the entire world even closer to the Final Redemption.

And that's what Rebbe Nachman was so happy about and for what Rav Bender felt was worth risking a slow torturous death in the searing cold of Siberia.

Anything to hasten the Final Redemption, may it come speedily in our days.

Note: If I understand things correctly, sincere spiritually striving non-Jews needn't fear the downfall of their nation's negative power. Torah sources tell us that non-Jews will also live amid the Final Redemption, so we know that non-Jews do survive this process; may all decent God-fearing non-Jews merit this salvation.

For related posts, please see:
Converts in the Breslov Community
The Secret Saga of a Righteous Convert
How to Conquer Toxic Shame
(some fundamentals of releasing & elevating hidden & trapped sparks)

In Ahavat Kedumim: A Commentary on the Story of "The Lost Princess," Rav Ofer Erez quotes the Arizal in Shaar Hagilgulim:

Each person has a deficiency (chesaron) that needs to be filled and made whole.

It's like you're walking around mostly whole, but you have a gap or a hole in you somewhere. (When people speak of "feeling empty" or "missing something" or having "a hole in their heart," this is likely what they mean without realizing it.)

Yet as long as a person resists filling and completing what he lacks, he's incomplete, says Rav Erez.

So what do people do instead of filling that very real "hole"?

They seek vitality and pleasure from the material world.

This is the real root of all addictions and bad habits.

As Rav Erez says:

Interestingly, the Mesilat Yesharim also asserts that one of the purposes of existence in This World is to experience pleasure...not forbidden pleasure, but soul-pleasure.

Rav Erez notes that even if a man learns Torah and merits to come close to the Truth, and even if a person is okay from every aspect and truly strives to do the right thing, nonetheless Rebbe Nosson explains that even such a person still needs to merit finding his personal individual path in the world.

He goes on to say that this is the deeper meaning of the verse "Rachel weeps over her children...for they are not..." [Yirmeyahu/Jeremiah 31:14-16]:

There are so many voices out there (including the voice of your own yetzer hara) proclaiming the path you must take.

And yes, some of these voices are hints from Hashem as to your personal path in life.

But some are simply well-meaning people (or sometimes truly awful people) who are mistakenly projecting their rectification onto you (or simply trying to crush you), and trying to pull you off your path and onto theirs (either because their own path is working out so well for them and they feel it's the Ultimate Truth or because they can't appreciate yours).

However, it's very important and tremendously more gratifying to stick to your own path.

Most importantly, it's the way Hashem wants you to go.

(For more on Mesilat Yesharim and experiencing pleasure, please see HERE.)
The above translations are mine; therefore any errors are also mine.

When I was reading commentaries on Rebbe Nachman’s stories, I came across a shocking idea.

(Exasperatingly, I can’t find the exact phrase again, but I believe it was somewhere in Rav Levi Yitzchak Bender’s Leviat Hachen on “The Simpleton and the Sophisticate.”)
 
It was that polytheism and atheism are essentially the same...
Polytheism is a rationalist belief.
 
This boggled my mind because I'd always thought of idol-/star-/nature-worship as mythology-based. In fact, Greek and Roman idol-worship is stuffed with action-packed stories.

On the other hand, atheism is cold and deals with hard facts and complex stiff science.

• Atheism deals with numbers, like carbon dating, light-years, temperatures, etc.
• Polytheism is rich with imagery and elaborate story plots
• Both are meant to explain the workings of the world.

As a child, I avidly read a watered-down account of Persephone’s abduction by Hades to the Underworld where Persephone unwittingly ate a few pomegranate seeds. Upon discovering her daughter’s whereabouts, Persephone’s distraught mother Demeter sought to rescue her, but the swallowed seeds gave Hades equal ownership of the hapless young goddess. And so it was decreed that Persephone spend part of the year in Hades (which causes the cold barren winter/autumn due to Demeter’s mourning over her daughter’s absence) and part of the year with her mother aboveground (which causes the world to revert back to its sunny, fruitful state).

And there you have a nifty mythological explanation for seasons.
 
Lesser known are the chaotic events popular in Welsh mythology.

Even fairy tales sometimes refer to European pagan mythology, such as Mother Holle and her magic feather pillow which, when shaken thoroughly enough, brings snow to the world.
 
As a child, I learned that people created these mythologies in place of science to explain the world around them. I did wonder who was the first to create these stories and didn’t that person realize he was creating a story from his own imagination? How did he convince others to believe these stories and why was that okay?

After all, these entities don’t actually exist, so it couldn’t have been that the story-weaver had any evidence of the events or even of the personages themselves. It made sense that the common masses trusted in these fantasies, but the people spinning these fantasies surely knew they weren’t true…right?

So how did it all develop?

But taking a moment to return to the Breslov view on it all:
Although my initial response was to ignore this shocking new theory (polytheism is a rationalist belief system like atheism), I realized that in a conflict of opinion, Rav Bender (and before him, Rebbe Nachman) would be right and I would be wrong.
 
So I started thinking about how it could be so.
 
And I realized that polytheism is simply the right-brained side of left-brained atheism.
 
In fact, real astrology contains the hard science of astronomy. The ancient astrologers were expert astronomers. Star charts from ancient Babylonia and Maya and the like show extensive and impressive scientific knowledge of astronomy. The top minds of ancient times weren’t necessarily superstitious storytellers; in sheer brainpower they equaled (if not surpassed) Einstein and all the rest, applying their genius to the hard facts of cosmic orbits.

And controversial (for some) as it is to say, Judaism actually acknowledges the validity of astrology, but forbids its use as misleading and detrimental to one’s emuna.

Relying solely on charted orbits and the like ignores the reality of Hashem’s Orchestration of those very orbits. Furthermore, Hashem can change these orbits and constellations at will, changing one’s destiny on which the original astrological predictions were based. There are numerous examples of this in Torah, whether it was Avraham Avinu’s astrological fate to remain childless or Moshe Rabbeinu’s downfall via water, which top Egyptian scientists of that time assumed this meant death through drowning.

(Note: Moshe Rabbeinu met his downfall by hitting a rock improperly to draw forth water, which condemned him to only seeing Eretz Yisrael rather than entering into Eretz Yisrael. We all know he didn’t drown in the end, but passed on via what’s known as a “Divine Kiss”—the most painless way to die. This is just one of thousands of examples why relying on even the most expert astrology is forbidden and ultimately useless.)
 
However, astrology does have its basis in fact and people could and did draw parallels—but that doesn’t mean it’s always reliable. Likewise, ibuprofen will often (though not always) reduce pain and swelling. Meteorology often (though not always) will give you an accurate weather report for the next day. Ultrasounds often (though not always) portray what your unborn baby looks like.

And these above things can also cause harm. Some people suffer serious side effects from ibuprofen, even when taken properly. You may prepare for a promised sunny day only to get caught in a chilly downpour. Ultrasound predictions (that later proved false) of deformed babies have caused unnecessary anguish and poor decisions.

(These are maybe not the best examples because practicing astrology is forbidden, but pain killers, weather reports, and ultrasounds are permitted. My point is that they are all based on science which is often true, but not infallible and never override Hashem’s Mastery over the world.)

When I was researching Venus, I was really shocked to discover that so much of what I’d been taught as fact had absolutely no basis in reality.

I mean NONE.

For example, I’d always heard that Venus is a hive of volcanic activity. I assumed that scientists had somehow discovered actual volcanoes or lava or clouds of volcanic ash.
 
Nope!
 
The only reason why scientists decided that Venus is rife with volcanic activity is because radar imaging revealed the Venusian surface to be relatively smooth.
This actually indicates that Venus could be a young planet as older planets tend to be pocked with erosion and meteor craters.

But for some reason (cough, anti-Velikovsky sentiment? cough!), scientists leaped to the conclusion that Venus is actually an ancient planet that "renews" its surface. Yet how can a surface be renewed, geologically speaking? Lots o’ lava! From this completely evidence-less assumption, scores of art portraying a volcanic lava-flooded Venusian surface decorate science books and magazines reporting on Venus.
 
And one you have a completely imaginary image, you’re crossing the line into mythology. Yes, many times the art is captioned with the following: An artist’s perspective of what [fill-in-the-blank] might look like. But the image is considered based on fact. The image is in place of the photograph we don’t have…allegedly based on scientific knowledge.
 
At least, that’s the assumption.
 
Furthermore, celebrity scientists like to hypothesize that Venus once housed a lush, hospitable environment…until the evil greenhouse gases appeared and transformed Venus into the hostile deadly environment we see today! Muwahahahaha… Sort of like how the evil Dementors appeared and cast a gloomy chill mist across the UK (until Harry Potter and his pals managed repel them all with a really strong Patronus spells and destroyed all Voldemort’s Horcruxes. Forget about sending a space mission…how can we get an anti-greenhouse-gas Patronus to Venus, guys?).
 
But at least they admit it’s a hypothesis. Imagine how I felt when reading a science magazine in which the writer describes a formerly lush, verdant Venus as a statement of fact.
 
That is for sure crossing the boundary into mythology. Now you’ve got this whole imaginary backdrop with the basic story plot (“Once upon a time, the Land of Venus was a lush, verdant paradise until one day, evil greenhouse gases appeared and destroyed the Eden-like kingdom…”). Now all you need are dementors, centaurs, and goddesses, and you’re all set for a new tale of mythology.

• Dinosaurs
  

Dinosaurs are a fully fleshed-out mythology. This is despite the fact that scientists keep making new discoveries about them which alters or even voids previous theories. I don’t question their existence; I question the mythology surrounding them. We don’t even know what they really looked like (reptilian skin or feathers?). Museums need to create fake bones in order to display full dinosaur skeletons. And while we’re told that dinosaurs died out when a large meteor hit the Earth, some scientists claim it was actually a virus that wiped out the reptilian (or is it avian?) species.
 
And look how many movies and “documentaries” we have that relate the mythologies of the dinosaurs, little of which is based on any verifiable evidence.

• Evolution

Evolution is another “science” which builds itself on assumption after assumption after assumption. Fortunately for my beleaguered brain, I don’t need to detail this here because Rivka Levy and Matt already have (links below). Suffice to say, we have the Neanderthal myth, Haeckels embryonic evolution myth, and more.

• Climatology

Climatology is another science that is rife with myth and rich imagery created by artists and storytellers. Movies portray a world flooded or frozen by global warming. (And how does global warming cause global cooling? Well, remember those Dementors which cast a gloomy chilly mist over the UK?...just kidding.) Documentaries show an aging ex-vice-president wearing badly applied makeup who weaves a whole mythology about global warming and its greenhouse gases (which likely originate from Slytherin's House, just like all the other evil guys).

Anyway, our tzaddikim proved right once again. Despite my previous assumption, atheism and polytheism are indeed merely different sides of the same heretical coin.
 
In a world without God, chas v’shalom, you need Persephone and Hades, Neanderthals and evolution embryos, a volcano-spewing old Venus that was once a lush paradise, imaginary horse evolution charts, and inescapable astrological determination.
 
But in a world with God, you can just have the Truth.

Clarification: The bulge on Venus labeled "Maat Mons" likely exists, as it was discovered by radar technology (which isn't completely accurate but still fairly good; see HERE for how accurate and affecting variables). However, there is no evidence as to its color or status. Meaning, there is nothing to prove it's a volcano. If you read original source articles on it, you'll see they contradict themselves and also rely on phrases like "thought to be" "crude [i.e. not exact] chronometric tool" "indicates" "implies" and so on.
Also, if they DO find volcanoes on Venus, then fine with me. (And some scientists see stuff on Venus that they think indicates lava flows and other signs of volcanic activity.) But they've been saying there are volcanoes long before the 1991 Magellan radar mapping and presenting it as fact with absolutely no evidence of volcanoes. You can't present something as fact with no evidence.

Related Posts:
Evolution is Not a Science by Matt
Yet Another Stunning Scientific Discovery: Heck, We Haven't Got a Clue!
The Venus Effect: Lots of Fun Insanity (Please scroll down to "Scientific Delusions" to read about the statement of Venus having once been "lush" and "verdant.")
The Kli Yakar on Parshat Bo (Please scroll down a bit to "How to Handle Threatening Stars and Planets" for an idea of how Judaism views astrology.)

Sometimes, Hashem seems to have higher standards for some people than others.
 
This doesn’t mean that He expects a regular person to reach the level of Moshe Rabbeinu; it means that He expects a “regular” person to push himself a lot more than He seems to expect of other people.

Just as one example:
A couple of people confided that before they started talking to Hashem and doing a raw, introspective evaluation of themselves, they feel like in hindsight, they were well on their way to developing a full-blown personality disorder.

They have shame and even some confusion (“How could I have even thought that way? Where was my brain??!”) about their past behavior. What’s astonishing is how they were able to sift through all that narcissism and victim mentality to reach the truth (both the beautiful and the ugly parts) about themselves—and then to get down to serious work on transforming themselves into the kind of people they were meant to be all along.
 
Because personality disorders indicate a lot of false beliefs (which the person honestly thinks are true), and which also knocks that person's instincts off balance (causing them to jump to false conclusions about themselves and others), it means that they have more mire than usual to wade through and a much harder job ahead of them.
 
Interestingly, most people don’t ever try to do this. In fact, even a lot of emotionally healthy people don’t sit down and do a regular cheshbon hanefesh or turn to God in their own words.

(Note: A “regular” cheshbon hanefesh doesn’t have to mean “daily”—although that’s the halachic ideal; “regular” can also mean weekly.)
 
And we see that a lot of people with emotional problems don’t do real teshuvah at all; this resistance is an inherent part of their emotional problems and mental health issues in the first place.
 
So why do some people get to work and some don’t?
 
And why do many emotionally healthy people (who presumably have less work to do and hence less inner shame to face) skimp on real raw self-scrutiny while this handful of emotionally unhealthy personality disordered people engage in the necessary self-scrutiny, when the latter have so much more muck to rake through, and therefore much more emotional pain during the process?
 
(In addition, most emotionally unhealthy people have experienced traumatic events not of their making, which they also need to remember and deal with. So it’s not just their own mistakes and transgressions, but very painful experiences perpetrated against them by the transgressions and mistakes of others.)
 
I don’t know the answer. I guess these people have certain amount of siyata d’Shmaya, maybe zechut avot (ancestral merit) or at least one very good and significant deed that opens the gates of teshuvah to them and earns them an extra measure of Heavenly Help to get them to where they need to go.
 
It’s truly a Divine Act of loving-kindness because the better we behave here, the more reward we receive for eternity over There. So when people are given a chance to identify their misdeeds and faulty thinking, regret them and change them, they are actually doing their ownselves a huge favor.
 
Having said that, it’s still grueling work.

If you need to get to Level 10, then starting from Level Minus 5 is a lot harder than starting from Level Seven...or even starting from Level Zero.
 
For example, I think we’ve all met the following types of parents:

• Parent A possesses both the innate nature and the upbringing to be a good parent.
• Parent B lacks the innate nature associated with good parenting, but received a good upbringing and fairly decent modeling as to how to be a good parent.
• Parent C possesses the innate nature to be a good parent, but underwent an abusive upbringing or received poor modeling from own parents.
• Parent D lacks both the innate nature and upbringing or any kind of positive parental modeling.

 
(And certainly, there are also different gradations within each type with regard to how much innate nature one receives and how exemplary or abusive the upbringing and parental modeling was.)
 
Needless to say, Parent D is going to have to work a LOT harder to just reach the innate level of Parent B or C, while reaching the level that comes naturally to Parent A is going to seem nearly impossible to Parent D.
 
(And sometimes, Hashem throws Parent D a particularly difficult spouse and/or particularly challenging children into the mix.)

We see that things aren't dished out equally and that some people have a lot more strikes against them from the outset.
 
Again, it seems that Hashem simply has higher expectations of some people than He does others.

Fortunately, Hashem judges us solely on according to ourselves. He will never judge Parent D according to the results of Parent A. In fact, He won’t even judge Parent D’s good days against Parent A’s “bad” days. Society might do so, but they’re wrong to do so.
 
Whatever effort you make? That’s what you get judged on.
 
If you clawed yourself up from Level Minus Five to Level Zero, then you’ve struggled and accomplished a lot more than a Level Seven who pushed himself up to Level Eight…even though the latter appears tremendously more accomplished than you do.
 
People can disparage a person on Level Zero. And the pinch is that people may be right when they state that “you’re only on Level Zero.”
 
But only Hashem knows where you’ve really come from and that your “Zero” is another person’s “Eight.”
 
And Hashem’s POV is all that matters.
_______________

May we all merit to complete our tikkun in this lifetime without suffering or humiliation.

False humility is all the rage today.
 
Many people mistakenly believe that despair is a form of humility.
 
How many times have you heard people say (or have said yourself):

• "I'm just an amoeba compared to..."
• "I could NEVER do what s/he does..."
• "Only truly great people can..."
• "Only tzaddikim can..."
• "I'm just not on that level."

 
It's a bit of a trick question because the truth is that, for example, I really am an amoeba compared to Rav Meir Shapiro ztz"l.

But that doesn't mean that I'm really like an amoeba.

I have more than one cell, for example...and Hashem fully expects me to use my multi-celled self to the best of my ability.
 
And maybe you really can't, say, carry out hospitality or visiting the sick or learning Torah b'hasmadah on the level that certain people can. However, you have your own specialties and potential that Hashem planted within you for the purpose of cultivating.
 
And while you really may not be "on that level," or that "only tzaddikim" or "only truly great people" can behave in a particular manner, this is often said as an excuse to not even try. Many people seem to feel that just the attempt at trying is an act of pride or arrogance.
 
Just to be clear:
Sometimes, you really aren't on a particular level and you're facing someone with unrealistic expectations who's pressuring you unfairly. It's fine to tell them that theoretically they're right, but that you just aren't on that level.

That's not making excuses. It's just the truth.

Unfortunately, spiritually unhealthy people demand that others behave like perfect angels in order to be satisfied and they are wrong to pressure you to either attain or maintain such an impossible standard.
 
All in all, it's just about being honest with yourself and whether you're honestly trying or whether you've perhaps written yourself off and are hiding behind your own smallness as an excuse for not even trying.
 
So whichever one applies to you, I don't know.

That answer can be found within yourself.

Anyway, there are many situations people find themselves in which seem overwhelming and hit them at their weakest points. It's very painful and stressful, and can push a person to his or her personal breaking point.

Some common (yet strenuous) struggles that ordinary people face are:

• Staying "present" (i.e. not disassociating or "blanking out") when life gets tough
• Not losing their temper when exhausted or attacked in some way
• Being happy and hopeful even when faced with ill finances or ill health
• Being patient when faced with irritating or irrational behavior or events
• Resist indulging in forbidden or unhelpful behaviors when bored or stressed
• Much, much more

(Needless to say, there are also severely challenging circumstances, like life-endangering health problems, abuse, terrorism, and more.)

This is when people need chizuk from others.

(If you don't have anyone who can give you chizuk, you can say the above to yourself. You can also write yourself a letter of chizuk.)
 
However, a quick 'n' cheery brush-off like, "Well, it's all from Hashem!" or "Just daven!" or "Just have emuna!" are usually not helpful at the breaking point.

(Note: Breaking points aren't nice 'n' neat. They can also come one after the other in quick succession. People who freak out, become desperate, or shut down in this type of situation aren't weird or pathetic; they need chizuk, tefillah, and practical hands-on help if possible)

Ideally, chizuk consists of support, empathy, and validation, such as:

• Telling people their strong points, their good points
• Showing genuine admiration or appreciation for how much work they've done or are willing to do on themselves
• Acknowledging & sympathizing with the difficulty and stress of it all
• Offering to pray for them
• Reminding them that Hashem really does love them, that they'll see tremendous reward for their efforts one day, etc.
• Reminding them that their struggles, efforts, and prayers really are meaningful in the big picture and are having a very real effect, even if they can't perceive this
• Whatever else you can think of that's sincere & helpful

 
Maybe you honestly believe you don't have what it takes.

Maybe other people reinforce this false belief.

But if Hashem is putting you in this kind of situation, apparently He knows that you're up to the challenge.

Even if you can't make it now, eventually you will.

I've found Miriam Adahan's book 30 Seconds to Emotional Health to be very helpful in breaking this all down to bite-size pieces, both in identifying what needs polishing up and also with choosing baby-steps to take, steps which really do reap powerful results. This book also emphasizes the goal of using ordeals to become a better person (i.e. the kind of person Hashem intends for you to be) and it covers a wide variety of situations and relationships.
(It seems to be out-of-print, but you can contact the author to ask where to purchase it or borrow a copy from a friend or a frum book library.)

For a related post, please see:
Being Who God Wants You to Be

One of the things I’m trying to work on now is how to build oneself through suffering.

I hate suffering.

Even the one time I finally gave birth with no pain relief after having tried twice before to do so...this "accomplishment" didn't imbue me with any feelings of empowerment or triumph or confidence, like it seems to for many other women. I just felt seriously traumatized and resolved never to even attempt that again.

(The fact that it was a vacuum-birth compounded the trauma and despite all the propaganda to the contrary, the very experienced & expensive labor coach actually could do nothing to alleviate neither the physical nor the emotional trauma of the event. From what others have described, I suppose I was supposed to feel heroic for going to such lengths to provide for my baby's life and health. But I didn't have any choice because maternal instinct automatically puts the baby's life before the mother's comfort and convenience, and you just end up instinctively submitting to anything that saves the baby. So where's the empowerment or triumph? Nowhere, of course. Instead, I just felt this odd combination of gratitude and trauma. Anyway, later, when I mentioned how traumatic I'd found it, the labor coach responded as if I was a defective outlier, making me feel much worse. So much for support and "coaching"!)

Anyway, my point is that suffering never inspires me to feel like a Big Plucky Winner. I just want the ordeal over with.

So I found the idea of using trials and tribulations to guide me in self-introspection was practical and effective. Likewise, showing gratitude for suffering also reaped a lot of reward. (This idea is found throughout millennia of Jewish sources and concentrated into Garden of Emuna.) And sure enough, cheshbon hanefesh and gratitude often lightened or removed the ordeal. But even when they didn't, at least I had the assurance that the ordeal contained real meaning and would eventually lead to a good outcome.

Yet Hashem bumped me over to a different level around Elul-Tishrei, and I realized I was missing something very important.

I didn’t really understand the deeper purpose of suffering until my most recent reading of the latest Hebrew edition of Garden of Emuna and Rav Ofer Erez’s book Ahavat Kedumim.

Again, the concepts in these books run throughout millennia of Jewish scholarship and are emphasized in all classic Jewish books of mussar, but I guess I couldn't figure out the practical application of these core concepts until I read the above two books.

Or maybe I just wasn't ready for it.
 
Anyway...building oneself through suffering via different kinds of ordeals is a running theme throughout Tanach and Jewish history.
 
For example, Yosef Hatzaddik never would’ve merited to be known as “Hatzaddik” if it hadn’t been for resisting Potifar’s wife, then dancing and praying his way through 22 years in an ancient Egyptian dungeon.
 
No tzaddik in Jewish history became great just by virtue of being raised by great people or being born with superior qualities. They all faced frightening and seemingly unjust tribulations.
 
In short, in order to become the kind of unmarried young man who can resist the temptations of one of the most beautiful women to ever exist, you have to face the challenge of being tempted by one of the most beautiful women to ever exist—and do so as a young unmarried red-blooded male—like Yosef Hatzaddik.
 
In order to become the kind of woman whose emuna and prayers produce the miracle of giving birth in old age despite not having a womb, then you need to face the challenge of not having the right anatomy and years of childless marriage without losing your emuna, like Sara Imeinu.
 
In order to become the kind of Jew who loves the Jewish people so much that even when your own people turn on you without any justice or provocation, you still beg Hashem to show them compassion and even display willingness to forfeit your life on their behalf, then you need to baselessly slandered and unjustly persecuted nearly to death by your own people, just like with Yirmiyahu (Jeremiah) Hanavi.

Bringing this down to our own level, this means that in order to become the kind of person who keeps your head in even the most aggravating situations, then you need to be put in the most aggravating situations.

In this way, you allow Hashem to guide you toward fulfilling your authentic potential.
 
But what if you feel it’s too much for you? What if you don’t want it THAT much or else you feel like there is just no chance you could ever reach that level?
 
Well…Hashem decided otherwise, whether you like it or not.

It's very, very strenuous...and it's meant to be that way.

I don't mean to minimize the complexity and difficulty of this struggle.

Like all spiritual efforts, talking about it is much easier than doing it.

Now, maybe you already know all this. Hopefully, you already know all this! Hopefully, this post is old news for you.

Or you might be feeling emotionally swamped and overwhelmed.

You might feel like you're just not up to it.

If that's the case, then please realize the following:

Hashem created you with the potential to be amazing.

You maybe just don't know it yet.

Comparing yourself to others not only impedes self-improvement, it warps any chance at authentic self-improvement.

It leads to superficial "improvement" and can even foster bad traits. In this way, comparing yourself to others forces you down a path completely wrong for you. So you think you're improving, but in reality? You're actually falling behind. You're regressing.

When you look at another person and admire what she's doing, that's good.

But you can't imitate her.

Yes, you can learn from her. You can adapt the qualities you admire in her for yourself.

But you can't emulate her exactly, nor should you.

This gets tricky because sometimes, a person you respect may encourage you to:

• be like another person 
• conform to some amorphous "ideal" upheld in a particular venue
• be like him- or herself

When discussing what they think you should be doing, that person can chuckle or smirk in a way that makes you feel incompetent or lazy for not doing what they recommend.

They may have no idea that their chuckling and smiling is a form of ridicule, and instead think they're just being gentle or good-natured.

Regardless, it's important not to give in when you're feeling overwhelmed or uncomfortable with the advice.

I've personally capitulated because I honestly believed the hype, then found myself in a situation I didn't know how to get out of (because I went in blind to it in the first place, so couldn't find my way out). Sometimes, it had a terrible effect on my family or health because I'm simply not enough of a high-energy multi-tasker to juggle what other people seem to be able to juggle.

And everything just collapsed, leaving me with a complicated mess to clean up.

Aliza called to vent about how bad she felt when her local N'Shei called her to cook a meal for a family in need (due to birth or illness). She barely manages to get her cooking together for Shabbat. During the week, she prepares sandwiches as the main meal of the day. Even just one salad or one kugel or one side dish simply isn't up her alley. She felt petty and resentful that she was even asked and thus forced to turn them down.

However, Aliza was the kind of person you could call in the middle of the night to watch your children if you needed to rush off to the hospital to give birth. She cheerfully arrived at your home and then got your older children off to school in the morning. In fact, she was great with kids and her home was often open to her neighbors' children.

And she did all this happily.

I tried convincing Aliza that her brand of chessed was actually rarer and more necessary than the conventional meal preparation. In many communities, it's not that hard to find someone to volunteer to make a meal (or at least part of a meal). Furthermore, a family can also order a meal, depending on their location.

But how many people can you call in the middle of the night to come over and watch your kids?

Maybe people want to do it, but they just can't.

Anyway, Aliza ultimately wasn't consoled. Books and lectures are filled with stories of wonderful ladies making food for others. It's a very common chessed in the frum community, so you also know a lot of women who do it.

Because it seemed like something simple that "everyone else" was doing, Aliza saw herself as defective because she couldn't do it too.

And that's too bad.

Aliza's chessed was very precious and obviously exactly what Hashem wanted her to be doing. Yet she could not see it that way.

Sometimes other people pressure you to be a certain way. It works for them so wonderfully, they think this is the golden path for everyone.

Perhaps they mean well. But if you give into their pressure, you can find yourself feeling like you're wearing an ill-fitting shirt that's too small and itchy.

By the way, sometimes another person is right: You do need to go down a certain path or take on a certain task.

But not necessarily right now. And not necessarily in the way they mean for you to do it. It has to be done according to your capabilities and resources, not theirs.

Even our tzaddikim were not carbon copies of each other. While all have been tremendous Torah scholars, some were known for their unwavering hasmadah, some were known for their great chessed, some displayed wonderful social skills while others did not. Some were geniuses at leadership and community organization. Some excelled in redeeming captives or assisting agunahs or dealing with medical issues.

This list could go on and on, but you get the picture.

If you give up your own unique flavor imbued within you by Hashem, then the world actually loses something...even if it's only your one small corner of the world, it's still a loss.

You were put here to fulfill your mission, not someone else's.

Depending on your situation, this can be hard. People, social expectations, and your own insecurities can pull you in different directions.

So what to do?

• If the pressure is coming from others, take a quiet moment to evaluate their opinions and feel free discard whatever doesn't seem right for you (or right for you at this time; maybe later it will be right for you).

 

• If the pressure is coming from yourself, take a quiet moment to ask yourself if these expectations are right for you at this moment.

You can either talk this out with Hashem or write this down and make lists about the issues or a mind-map, or combine the talking and writing together.
__________
For a related post, please see:
How to Treat Yourself Right

According to Judaism, the proper way to deal with life's unpleasantness is to engage in some soul-searching by combing through your deeds and actions in order to reveal the message God enclosed within the the unpleasant experience.

So yes, if someone was mean and nasty to you, it could mean that you are mean and nasty to others (when you think you're just being "honest" or "funny" or "self-protective" or "helpful" or "just giving them what they deserve"). And that now you need to remove the klippah of "mean and nasty" in order to allow the real kind and compassionate you to shine through.

It could also mean that you haven't been mean and nasty per se, but that in some tiny way, you haven't been as kind or compassionate as God expects you to be.

However, it could also mean that you're being mean and nasty to yourself.

Halacha (Jewish Law) forbids you to:

• abuse yourself (cutting, addictions, anti-hygiene, masochism, etc.) 
• kill yourself
• speak lashon hara (slander) about yourself
  
• see yourself as all bad or as innately bad

As discussed in previous posts, authentic teshuvah and self-improvement requires you to find at least one good point in yourself.

So if someone is unforgiving of you (no matter how hard you've tried to make amends, no matter how much genuine remorse you feel, and no matter whether you may not have done something - or anything - so bad), it could be that you need to work on forgiving yourself.

If you find yourself facing killjoys and critics, it could be you're being too harsh and critical on yourself.

Indeed, some people seem to be pretty forgiving or encouraging of others while being very harsh on themselves.

And, as most of you already know, people who literally despise themselves almost always relate to others in an unforgiving, disdainful, critical, and controlling manner.

I once suffered from several ingrown toenails.

Discussing it with Hashem led me to realize that I'd been turning a lot of anger inward on myself, symbolized by the nails turning against their own flesh.

Over the past years, I keep running into people who judge and compare unfavorably. Sometimes they're talking about others with no connection to me, sometimes it's a well-intentioned hint to me, and sometimes it's outright slap-in-my-face criticism.

For example, my 2.5-year-old was recently sick with Hand Foot & Mouth Disease (HFMD). (My own familiarity with this disease in name only, I discovered it's similar to chicken pox, but only on the face, hands, and feet.) It's called machalat hapeh v'hagefayim ("disease of the mouth and limbs") in Hebrew, not to be confused with machalat hapeh ("disease of the mouth" - herpangina?).

When an acquaintance remarked on not having seen us for a while and I explained why, she rushed to declare, "I know all about it! Ora's quadruplets ALL had machalat hapeh at the SAME time!"
(Ora's quads are now in their mid-20s and married.)

The exchange left me disgruntled. First of all, she hadn't even bothered to hear what I actually said (my son hadn't had machalat hapeh, he'd had HFMD). Secondly, she referred to an event that had occurred with quadruplets over 2 decades ago...to what purpose?

Yes, I know things could be worse. Yes, I'm grateful that I didn't have four down with any illness all at one time.

However...

When my son developed HFMD, I'd not fully recovered from being very sick with an unrelated illness myself. Because HFMD is highly contagious we'd been cooped up for over a week, and I'd been wrapped up with caring for an illness for which I'd no prior experience. Finally, he'd only just started his first gan 2 weeks before his illness, which meant that we'd need to start the acclimation process all over again. 

What happened to "Refuah shlaima" or "I'm glad he's feeling better" or "I'm sorry to hear you guys have been having a hard time"?

She's usually a warm and likable person, so it's easy to chalk up her inappropriate response to the kind of insensitivity we all commit sometimes.

Yet a talk with Hashem about her irrelevant comparison revealed that I kept comparing myself (often unfavorably) to others.

And this is wrong.

Sure, we all know that we shouldn't compare ourselves to others, but it can be difficult to avoid such comparisons when we honestly feel that others manage better or when people actually tell us outright that we're falling short compared to "everyone else."

However, Judaism only ever commands you to fulfill YOUR unique potential, and no one else's.

You only ever measure yourself against who you were an hour ago or a day ago.

With such different natures, talents, life situations, backgrounds, environments, flaws, and resources, one human being really can't be compared to another.

Comparing yourself to another person is not only useless, it's nonsensical if you really think about it.

Today, when many women think of prayer, they think of praying from a book.

It could be Tehillim, Perek Shirah, a siddur, or anything else. This is all VERY good and truly powerful. As per the psak of many gedolei hador, I also daven some form of Shacharit every day, and Mincha usually too. And like many others, I've also seen much blessing and received great comfort from Tehillim and other types of techinot and tefillot.

But that hasn't necessarily been the traditional way for Jewish women to bond with Hashem. (Even when women were literate, formal prayers accompanied personal outpourings, they didn't replace heart-to-heart talks with their Creator.)

Yet many women today seem to have lost the ability or desire to connect with Hashem in a personal manner.

However, as you'll see, women were gifted with the perfect qualities for creating a powerful bond with their Creator.

Women tend to be very good at relationships.

And even when we're not good at relationships, we're still very relationship-oriented.

We love to bond with our friends (in fact, even the slang "BFF" definitely has a female association), we love to bond with our family members, and even our material possessions. We crave a feeling of connection with our husband and children.

As mentioned, inanimate objects can also be the source of a relationship.

For example, many women have an object, jewelry, certain articles of clothing, or furniture to which they feel a strong emotional attachment...in other words, they have a relationship with that article.

Books, certain prayers, appliances...a Yerushalmi woman once told me that her washing machine and dryer were her best friends. It's completely normal for a woman to speak this way. Rebbetzin Esther Baila Schwartz once enthused in all sincerity that the sefer Netivot Shalom was her new best friend.

My mother-in-law told me about a widow in Morocco who used to visit her recently niftar husband at his grave. What's a grave? Just a marker and some dirt. Yet she sat there for hours every day telling him about her day, how her life was going and how much she missed him, who'd been nice to her, certain that he could hear her. She had no problem keeping up a one-sided conversation with her dearly departed soulmate.

Of course, when a woman puts too much of her ego into her relationships, that's the negative side of this otherwise useful and enjoyable attribute. If she feels that her home must always look perfect (because it reflects her and her need to seem perfect) or that her children or husband must fit into a narrow box of her choosing or if she feels closest to her friends or her mother when they're gossiping, etc., then that's a negative investment in relationships.

But Hashem made women with this orientation toward relationships. He wants us to be this way.

Why? Because it's so wonderful!

When channeled properly, it spurs women on to great things, which is why women tend to be the force behind chessed organizations (in addition to unofficial personal acts of chessed) in every frum community.

It's also the secret to being a good mother and a good wife.

A woman's innate orientation toward relationship is also why Jewish women have always played such a key role in our national salvation: our relationship with God.

Just as one example: The prayers of Leah Imeinu changed human history.

Just her prayers.

Nothing else. Not talking to the "right" people, not manipulating things (the one manipulation of marrying Yaakov without his knowledge was forced upon her by her father), not being assertive ("I'm NOT marrying Esav and that's that!")...just davening.

If you can have a relationship with an inanimate object (whether it's a holy book or your favorite childhood doll), then you can certainly have a relationship with Hashem.

And this is where a woman power and influence really lie.

Countless jokes have been made over the fact that out of the 10 measures of speech, 9 were bequeathed to women. (Kiddushin 49b)

But like anything else, this gift can be used for the good as much as it can be used for the bad. Sure, extra speech can mean more verbal abuse, verbal passive-aggression, well-aimed barbs, gossip, slander, rumor-mongering, and just plain aimless meaningless blather.

But it can also mean more verbal support and encouragement, verbal comfort, eloquence and articulateness, more compliments and praise, the ability to teach and explain, to uplift people with funny or inspiring stories, and more.

A woman's voice is made for positive speech. Sure, it can also be shrill and sharp. But think of the happy shriek of a woman when her child does something good or her husband brings home just the right gift. Think of the welcoming singsong tone many women use to greet their children or wake them up. Think of the soft sympathetic tone many women use to comfort others or to deliver unwanted yet beneficial truths to their friends or family members.

Think of the low, soft tones of a mother singing her child to sleep.

And yes, most women tend to talk a lot more than men. A lot more.

Which is absolutely perfect for hitbodedut!

Because of a woman's innate ability for relationships and speech, women have exactly what it takes to open up in conversation with her Creator.

In a sense, women were created for prayer. So many of a woman's innate tendencies and life experiences lean toward the greater ability to forge an intimate and sincere connection with Hashem.

Because so many women haven't seen their mothers or grandmothers talk straight to Hashem as if He was their One True Good Friend, because they often haven't been encouraged to turn to Him in their own words and develop a relationship with Him in their own unique and personal way, many women today find it hard to do this.

It's okay to find it hard. It's quite understandable.

And it's also important to remember that the Geula (Redemption) is supposed to come in the merit of righteous women. And based on everything I've learned, I'm sure that  forging a relationship with Hashem via heartfelt discussions paves the way to the upcoming Geula.

If Hashem created women with the ability and orientation for relationships, plus the greater need for verbal expression, then this must mean He really loves us.

After all, He imbued us with the exact qualities most conducive for having a relationship with Him.

It took me a long time to figure out why it's so hard to prove the inaccuracy of atheism.

There is a lot of running around in circles and leap-frogging.

Atheists present a point. Believers scramble to prove it wrong...and eventually succeed. Then atheists leap-frog over that with another point, which propels believers to scramble again...and so on.

It's never-ending.

It also confuses things that, unless they're formerly frum and knowledgeable Jews, atheists have a very poor and not-completely-accurate knowledge of what the Tanach and the Torah Sages actually say and mean about God and the Universe.

(And then the same former frummies get their atheist information from the very atheists who themselves are Jewishly ignorant, making it all a self-reinforcing pattern.)

In addition, to confuse things even more, the vast majority of atheists in the world have a concept of God and religion as defined by Christianity, which is not an accurate version of God and religion (except for the parts they borrowed from us).

So to begin with, atheists argue against concepts that either aren't true (but which millions of people sincerely believe to be true) or are a mixture of truth and non-truth.

Understandably confusing, indeed.

Anyway, I was involved in kiruv for a while and read tons of stuff on my own spiritual journey prior to that, both material that supported the Torah point of view and material that opposed it.

And the back-and-forth runaround just never stopped.

Eventually, I realized that the atheist mistake is in the way of thinking.

To whittle it down to a digestible parable, let's say that there's a giant puzzle comprised of thousands of pieces.

People are told that the pieces all go together to create a scene of a beach lapped by a wide sea on one side and surrounded by lush trees on the other side.

There are gray rocks near the sun-bleached sand. In the background, snow-capped mountains rise toward a blue sky dotted with clouds of white and gray.

Kind of like this:

Or this:

(I couldn't find a photo that literally resembles the puzzle picture described in this post, but hopefully the above give you some idea...)

But there's no existent picture of this scene to guide people in putting it together.
People need to work it out on their own.

So what happens?

People who believe in the described image go along and look at a mottled gray piece and say, "Huh. This must be one of the clouds or one of the rocks."

They look at a blue piece and surmise, "This is either the sea or the sky. Hm. It actually seems more like a sky-blue than a sea-blue, so I'll go with that."

A green piece leads to a more solid consensus ("Trees!") while a piece containing a bit of white and blue leads most to think it's part of the sky and only question whether the white indicates a cloud or snow, while others point out that it could be part of the sea with some very white sea foam.

But a minority of people look at all the scattered pieces and say, "I don't see any picture here. And certainly not a beach scene. I just see random bits scattered about."

Yet when you show them a bit of sea-lapped shoreline, these skeptics say, "Okay. But you say that there are snow-capped mountains in this supposed picture. I don't see any snow here."

The snow is in another part of the picture, you say.

"Prove it!" say the skeptics. "I don't see any connection. Anyway, the beach is hot and snow is cold, so what you're saying is impossible."

Right! you say. You can't have snow on the beach or on the trees lining the beach. That's why the snow is farther away and higher up on tall mountains.

"Now you're engaging in apologetics," say the skeptics.

The skeptics take each puzzle piece on its own and thoroughly examine each one under the best microscopes and then make the following declarations:

"There's no snow on this piece! You said there are snow-capped mountains in the picture, but this piece is green, for crying out loud. Snow is white, not green."

"Okay now, this other piece is white like snow, but our experiments prove that this is the white of a cloud, not snow."

"And this piece is clearly the color of sun-bleached sand. No snow and no possibility of snow because it's clearly way too hot."

But when they do find pieces with snow, the conversation goes as follows:

"Well, yes, we have found pieces that clearly show snow...several in fact. However, there is no sign of any sea or trees or rocks on these pieces. Even when we put them together, we just see snow with possibly a bit of sky in the background. So our conclusion is that all these pieces are clearly random and don't make any picture at all, and certainly not a picture of a tree-lined beach."

And then they weave theories to support their views (based on the individual puzzle pieces they examined exhaustively under microscopes), then compile these increasingly elaborate and complex theories into academic theses and books.

Any plea for them to try to look at the puzzle pieces as a whole picture falls on deaf ears.

You're written off as disingenuous, engaging in apologetics, brainwashed, uneducated, sadly uninformed, or just plain naive.

NOTE: The vast majority have no idea they're doing this. They honestly don't see it.

And yes, some skeptics may appreciate your faith in the existence of such a scene and they may appreciate your belief in an order to the thousands of puzzle pieces for the inspiration and purpose it gives you, but they still view your belief as inaccurate and unscientific.

Now let's say that you guys have finally managed to put together a continuous line of puzzle pieces that stretch from the trees on the beach, over the water, and to the snow-capped mountains and the sky above them.

It clearly shows all the elements stated to be in the picture and it shows them as interconnected...exactly as predicted.

You present this to the skeptics, who look at this narrow but consistent line of tiny pieces and say, "Okay, but you claim there's an elaborate picture supposedly made up of all these pieces. This skimpy little line is clearly not an actual picture of the scene described in your claims. I mean, I can hardly make out anything on these pieces anyway."

This is admittedly an oversimplification of the real dynamics, but I think it reflects the experience of the whole back-and-forth between those who believe in God and the Torah narrative and those who actively oppose and deny it.

(Many of the rest who don't believe are merely caught up in the theories spun by the most active and insistent opposers and deniers.)