A Mother’s Heart

Translated from Rabbi Arush’s feature article in the weekly Chut shel Chessed newsletter. The articles focus on his main message of “Loving others as yourself” and on emuna.

 

I don’t know if the following story really happened, or whether it’s an urban legend, but it definitely has a very strong message to give over. They say that Thomas Edison, the inventor of the light bulb and many other inventions, was a very problematic child. It reached the point where it was decided to expel him from school. The school sent a letter to his mother, listing his misdeeds and their negative assessment regarding his skills and intellectual abilities and mentioning his unsuitability for any learning framework whatsoever.  

The mother read the letter, while little Thomas was looked on intently. She didn’t reveal her feelings, just smiled lovingly at her son. When she finished reading, Thomas asked her: “Mother, what did the principal write to you?”, and the mother replied: “He writes that you’re such a good student and so successful, that their school is not challenging enough for such a smart boy as you are, and he recommends that we find some other place where you will be able to best express your tremendous potential.” 

Thomas was very impressed. Full of a feeling of self-importance, he worked hard at realizing that tremendous potential he had within him, as his mother said, and he learned by himself and did well, to the point that he produced important inventions that amazed the world.  

Years later, when his mother passed away, Thomas was going over her possessions and discovered, much to his surprise, that letter among them. He read the harsh predictions in the letter and burst into tears.  

At that moment he understood that he owes all his success and all his world-changing inventions to his mother’s noble soul and sensitivity towards him. He understood for the first time his mother’s deep wisdom: she didn’t want her son, Thomas, to grow up with low self-esteem and bad thoughts about himself; rather, she wanted him to grow up healthy and happy, feeling that he is successful and appreciated by everyone. Only after the painful farewell did he understand: Mother, I owe you my life. 

The Beginning of Life 

A person who has low self-esteem, who feels like a failure, who knocks himself down and blames himself ceaselessly – has no chance of succeeding, neither in material matters nor in spiritual ones; neither in academic studies, nor in life. Life begins when a person recognizes his own value, loves himself, knows that his aspirations are good and knows that Hashem loves him and appreciates him and sees only the good in him and his good aspirations. 

And that is precisely the parasha of Balak. Balak and Bilaam are the stern principal, looking only for the bad in the Jewish People, searching for weak points and an auspicious time to curse, cause damage, and to destroy. On the other end, the holy Shechina (Divine Presence), the merciful mother, blesses and praises the Jewish People, emphasizes every good point, sees the potential and reveals the Creator’s infinite love for the Jewish People. 

Let’s pick out a few gems from the blessings the Shechina placed in the mouth of Bilaam, that wicked person, and see what the Holy One, Blessed be He, thinks of us and what He wants us to think about ourselves: “How can I curse? G-d has not cursed. How can I anger? Hashem is not angry.” “My message was to bless; when He blesses, I cannot reverse it.” And if you may think this is subject to change, Hashem says clearly: “G-d is not man to be capricious, or mortal to change His mind.” “Who has counted the dust of Yaakov or numbered a quarter of Yisrael?… How good are your tents, Yaakov, your dwelling places, Yisrael… Those who bless you are blessed and those who curse you are cursed.” 

Do Not Heed Him 

Chazal say that from Bilaam’s blessings you know what he was thinking; in other words, from Bilaam’s blessings you can understand where he was searching for the faults and what were his evil thoughts about the Jewish People. And those same evil thoughts still exist in the world in the form of the nations’ hatred of the Jews, and the hatred of the amei ha’aretz (Jews who have no Torah) towards those who learn Torah, in finding fault in tzaddikim and holy communities, especially in the baalei teshuva in our generation. 

And our work, fellow Jews, is to listen to the voice of the Shechina, to believe the good things that the loving mother says, and not to listen and allow into our hearts even something of the criticisms and incitements of the yetzer hara (evil inclination), which is only trying to break you and present you negatively so that you will give up completely on improving and correcting yourself.  

Rabbi Nachman says that the sins are always shouting inside the person. What are they shouting? “You are bad, you are evil, you did us (you did these sin), and that means that there is no hope for you…” And so, the person sinks deeper and deeper into his bad thoughts and has no strength to extricate himself from them. This is called “kol havara” – a sort of echo that distorts the original voice. And what is the original voice? The original voice is the sound of the shofar, which is the voice of the tzaddik, from the word shufra – good – who sees the good and tells the people how good and beloved they are, and then naturally they are capable of “shapru ma’aseichem” – improve your deeds, hinted to by the shofar. 

It is enough to read one sentence from Rabbi Nachman’s teachings to understand what we are talking about: “Whoever knows the holiness of Yisrael, where they are coming from, and knows spirituality and fineness of Yisrael, knows that Yisrael are completely distanced from sin, and the sin is not connected to them at all, due to the extent of their holiness from their root and the extent of their fineness and spirituality.” 

You Shall Ignore Them 

This is what Rabbi Nachman says about a passuk from our parasha, “He saw no iniquity in Yaakov and saw no perversity in Yisrael”. Says Rabbi Nachman: “The way of Hashem yitbarach (may He be blessed) is to look at the good things one does, and even if there is within them also something that isn’t good – He doesn’t look at it.” Hashem doesn’t look at it because he wants you, too, to avoid looking at it, and He wants you to know that He appreciates you and sees every one of your good points!” 

That is the key to a person’s success in material and spiritual matters and for truly coming closer to Hashem. Believe in yourself! Believe that Hashem loves you in every situation! Believe that you are good! Believe that Hashem sees only the good in you! 

I heard a story about a simple Jew who was far from being a tzaddik, who once withstood a nisayon (a test) in some matter, but no one knew of it. One day, one of the great luminaries of the generation saw him and called him over: “I know what you did, and I envy you!” And that Jew became stronger spiritually and said to himself: “If that tzaddik knows and is envious of me, then certainly the Creator of the World knows and is proud of me!’ That was the sweet thought of that simple Jew, and how right he was! 

And that is exactly what we should think of ourselves regarding any good deed we do: Hashem can see that deed and is happy about it. He does not see the bad and He doesn’t want us to see it, either. When a person is joyous all day long, he takes care of all that is bad in him during the hour of hitbodedut and doesn’t think about it at all, neither before nor after that hour. All day long he thinks only of the good in himself, about his good aspirations, about how much he really wants his will to be like Hashem’s will. He doesn’t get confused when he fails and things don’t go well, because he knows and believes that his aspirations are clean and good, and that Hashem knows that and takes it into account and looks only at that. He knows that Hashem believes in him; he knows that Hashem wants to help him and have mercy on him and draw him closer. 

This is the sweet message of Parashat Balak, which one would think is not connected to the flow of the Torah narrative, as the Gemara says in masechet Bava Batra: “Moshe wrote his book and Parashat Balak. And Rashi explains: “his prophecy and his parables, even though they are not needed by Moshe and his Torah and the order of his deeds.” Why was it written anyway? To empower the Jewish People and to announce and reveal to them how much Hashem loves them and what He thinks of them both generally, and of each one of them particularly, because from that we are strengthened and receive the ability to come close to Hashem and to never become weakened by everything we go through.