A happy life.
Many who hear this expression imagine money, a big house, nachas. Everything flowing along peacefully. Anyone who has all of this is a happy person.
If you get to know people, you discover that joy in life has nothing to do with that list. A happy life is a life of emunah, a life with Hakadosh Baruch Hu; only this brings happiness.
On the fifth day of Chanukah there was a terrible car accident in Modiin Illit. Shoshana Kook, a five-year-old girl, was killed, R”l.
This is a terrible tragedy that could cause a family to collapse. If something like this were to happen to a non-Jew, he would likely be completely broken and would spend his days bemoaning his fate. He might also try to take revenge on the driver and on anyone else who could be labeled as guilty. He’d blame the municipality, the lawmakers, and anyone else indirectly connected to the accident. All the family members would walk around depressed, angry, or revengeful.
All this could be the reaction of someone who does not believe. But this tragedy hit the Kook family, and it’s amazing to see how they accepted it.
Harav Hagaon Reb Refael shlita’s hesped for his daughter echoed throughout the world. The father stood in front of his daughter’s aron and inspired the crowd that had come to cry at her levayah. “There was no accident here,” he shouted out to them. “There is no one at fault. There is only one Hashem, Who is good and does good!
I was zocheh to speak to Reb Refael a number of times since then, and I gained much chizuk from him.
In his interview on the phone line, you can hear how he turns everything around, how his pain only strengthens his emunah more and more. A happy man is a man with emunah, a man who knows that everything comes from Hashem. Everything that happens in the world is Him. Ein od milvado.
The holy mekubal Rav Moshe Dovid Vali, a disciple of the Ramchal, wrote in his sefer (Mishlei 22:19), “There is no middah that benefits a person as much as the middah of bitachon.”
Emunah and bitachon are the recipe for a good life, a happy life.
Yidden who have made the commitment to learn from sifrei emunah or to hear shiurim and stories of emunah testify that their lives have changed from one extreme to the other. They walk around shining.
May it be Hashem’s will that we no longer hear of tragedies and pain.
Gut Shabbat
Pinchas Shefer
