Rav Elchanan Wasserman, Hy”d, elaborates on the pasuk vehe’emin baHashem vayachsheveha lo tzedakah and he trusted in Hashem, and He reckoned it to him as righteousness (Bereishis 15:6). One can ask, what is the big deal that Avraham Avinu trusted Hashem in what He told him? Who would not believe if Hashem promised you something?!
Explains Rav Elchanan: There are multiple levels in emunah. Even when it seems to a person that his emunah is ironclad... he feels his emunah as though he was seeing it with his very own eyes, and he feels that he arrived at the pinnacle of emunah, the truth is that there are levels of emunah that are even greater than seeing it!
For, even when we see something (that is, we feel it so strongly it is as though we have seen it), a person can still be mistaken. Sometimes we “see things,” but we don’t see them correctly. For example, a person prepares a shiur, and he sees something in a sefer, and he is confident that he saw a certain point being made, and he even repeats it in his shiur... but later, when he comes back to it, he realizes that his eyes fooled him, and it doesn’t say what he thought it did. The sense of sight can make mistakes, too!
True Emunah Is Stronger Than Sight
Therefore, the Torah testifies regarding Avraham Avinu, vehe’emin baHashem, he had the highest level of complete emunah—much stronger even than having seen it. When the Torah says vehe’emin, and he believed, it means even stronger than sight!
The same applies with regard to Kriyas Yam Suf, where the Torah testifies vaya’aminu baHashem uveMoshe avdo. The Yiddishe kinder attained a level of emunah that is even greater and clearer than sight. They then attained a level of deep and powerful understanding that “all our affairs and happenings are all miracles... they do not involve nature and the ‘course of the world’” on a much greater level than is imaginable!
