• A

  Anonymous -11 years ago

  Question
  Rabbi Paltiel, you explained the concept of all the curses being blessings. Yet you also said that all of these curses befell the Jewish people in our history, since we did not obey G-d. But if these curses are really blessings, then it is not good that they befell us?
  
  
  
  Also, if these are really blessings, why will they happen only if we don't listen to G-d? They should happen if we obey G-d? and why do we read them in a low voice?

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  • A

    Anonymous -11 years ago

    Re: Question
     Answer: You ask very powerful and disturbing questions. But I’ll try to answer the questions without sounding like we approve of Yiddishe Tzuris C”V.
    
    I hope I’m not wrong in attempting this.
    
    I begin by quoting (and breaking down) your questions.
    
    Rabbi Paltiel,
    
    1) You explained the concept of all the curses being blessings.
    
    Comment: But they don’t feel that way to us. So, when we read about it in the Torah and they are (at least to us at this moment theoretical) we see the spirit of the words. They are in fact (spiritually) blessings. We pray that they come down to our earth this way also.
    
    2) Yet you also said that all of these curses befell the Jewish people in our history,
    
    Comment: When something happens to a person (even if he knows and believes it is from G-d) when it hurts we scream and protest. There is no contradiction (at least not for most levels of people except for the very holiest ones) between believing in Hashem and feeling and responding to pain as such. The Rebbe so often would say “when it hurts one screams”!
    
    3) Since we did not obey G-d.
    
    Comment: This is why these challenges came down to us as bad and painful. Though everything is ultimately corrective (makes us better) and is therefore good, we do not experience it as good, and therefore object and ask Hashem to take it away and never bring it back.
    
    If we needed to go through these challenges but had not been sinners we experience them very differently and they wouldn’t be painful in the same way.
    
    I’ll explain this to you: Two people that are both made to run 20 or more miles a day and collapse with exhaustion at the end of the run may feel very differently about the very same pain based on what they know to be the pains cause and purpose.  If one was training for the Olympics or some marathon they would see the one forcing them as a trainer that they may actually pay to give them this pain. If the other is being punished for some crime and is being made to labor like this he will feel quite differently about the very same pain.
    
    Why we endure something can have a real affect on how we endure it.
    
    4) But if these curses are really blessings, then it is not good that they befell us?
    
    Answer: See what I wrote by number 3.
    
    It is not Jewish to ask for pain, but it is also not Jewish to not accept and endure it. This is not only a religious truth but a social and psychological one. When G-d gives us a bitter pill we swallow it. We don’t have a choice in the matter in either case but we take it in the long tradition of Jewish resilience and survival actually coming out stronger after the pain than before it.
    
    But to celebrate pain, never! We believe in life and goodness, what the Lubavitcher Rebbe always calls “Tov hanira vihanigla” visible and revealed good.
    
    So, is suffering good or bad? Clearly it is not one or the other but a complex mix of the two and it has profound connotations (of who we were) and implications (as to where we are heading).
    
    
    
                    5) Also, if these are really blessings, why will they happen only if we don't listen to G-d?
    
    Oi. They’ll only happen negatively if we don’t listen to G-d.
    
    6) They should happen if we obey G-d?
    
    Answer: There are two possibilities that both could be. A. They shouldn’t happen to Tzadikim, B. they should.
    
    Let us analyze each possibility.
    
    A. Tzuris should happen to Tzadikim also, as they are “hidden blessings”. If this were true, then the Tzadik would experience it quite differently than we do as I explained above in point 3. As Chassidus explains of what Rabbi Akiva said, that he’d waited for the chance to fulfill the Mitzva of “Loving Hashem with your entire Soul” which is explained to mean even if it cost you your life. Rabbi Akiva was brutally murdered and he experienced enormous pain yet, Chassidus says, his desire for this “opportunity” made the experience for a Tzadik like him delightful.
    
    B. It should not happen to the righteous. There are two pathways to G-d, the straight path of the Tzadika and the roundabout, circuitous path of the Baal Teshuva. These paths are both legitimate to G-d and they provide Him with “two different delights” (Tanya ch. 27).
    
    In other words when one has sinned this (after the fact) opens up a path of the Baal Teshuav which is not open to the Tzadik. The Tzadik has great advantage in many ways, but the advantage of the Baal Teshuva is not amongst them.
    
    The Baal Teshuva in his journey sometimes encounters pain that the Tzadik does not, that if viewed in the “enlightened” view of this Maamar means that the Tzadik is somehow “missing out” on this.
    
    This is true as they are two worlds and approaches to one’s relationship with his Creator.
    
    7) And why do we read them in a low voice?
    
    Answer: All the information listed above should suffice to answer this question as well.
    
     
    

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• NO

  nusi offenberg -11 years ago

  my mistake ?
  Sorry... i heard you say 8,9, and 10  or ches, tes and yud = 22 ; but it equals 27
  
  
  
  I think you meant Hei  not yud  or i heard wrong.

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  • A

    anONYMOUS -5 years ago

    The Rabbi said the word is:

    Ches Tes and Hei

    8+9+5= 22

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• NO

  Nusi Offenberg -11 years ago

  8 , 9 , and 10
  8 ,9      , and 10 equal   27  and  NOT  22?
  
  
  
  Please explain...  would like to understand...
  
  
  
                    Nusi

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Yossi Paltiel

• May 4, 2012
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• 12 Iyyar 5772
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• 383 views

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