Picture a crowded bus stop in Yerushalayim. A mother stands holding her sleeping baby. Finally, the bus arrives, packed with people, and she boards with her child in her arms. The ride is harrowing, as cars cut dangerously in front and the bus swerves sharply around the mountain curves, nearly skidding off a cliff. Everyone is tense, holding on tightly. Yet through it all, the baby sleeps soundly, safe in its mother’s embrace.
All of those frightening moments happened—the swerves, the close calls—but the baby never experienced them. To the child, none of it existed.
A group once debated the following question: did the baby “move”? From its perspective, nestled in the mother’s arms, no. It never shifted. Yet the bus traveled all the way from Yerushalayim to Bnei Brak. The mother moved, the bus moved, but the baby was carried effortlessly the entire way.
So too, if we live with true emunah, our lives are held in Hashem’s hands. Challenges, crises, and dangers swirl around us, but in Hashem’s embrace, we remain safe. From birth to death, we journey, but when we entrust ourselves to G-d, we are truly being carried.
Dovid HaMelech says, “Hashlech al Hashem yehavcha v’hu y’chalkelecha—Cast your burden upon Hashem and He will sustain you” (Tehillim 55:22).
Imagine a poor man trudging through the mud, carrying a sixty-pound pack. A wagon driver stops, takes him aboard, and offers him a ride. Gratefully, the man climbs into the wagon, but he refuses to take the heavy pack off his back. “It’s enough that you’re carrying me; I can’t ask you to carry my burden as well.”
The driver shakes his head: “Foolish man, whether you wear it or place it on the floor, I am carrying both you and your pack anyway!”
Hashem says the same to us. “I am already carrying you through life—your health, your livelihood, your very existence. Why do you insist on shouldering your worries? Place them on Me; I am bearing them already.”
A life of emunah is simply easier. When difficulties come, you know Whom to turn to. When success comes, you know it is a gift. You stop blaming yourself for things outside your control, because you realize you were never carrying them alone.
Shlomo Hamelech in Shir HaShirim (5:2) tells us: “Ani yeshena v’libi er, kol dodi dofek—I sleep, but my heart is awake; the voice of my Beloved knocks.” The Midrash (ibid.) teaches that this refers to Klal Yisrael in exile. Outwardly, we appear spiritually asleep and are distracted, disconnected and caught in nonsense. But our neshama is always awake.
Even when a Jew seems far from Torah, buried in distractions or aveiros, the soul is alive, waiting. A Jewish soul can never be destroyed. It can be dulled, it can be smothered, but it can never be killed. Deep down, the spark is always awake, waiting for Hashem’s knock.
That is the gift of Elul. Hashem calls to us: “Open for Me, My sister, My friend, My dove, My perfect one” (ibid.). Even if we answer, “I’ve removed my garments, I am unworthy, I am lost, I am spiritually undressed” (ibid. v.3), still the knock comes. Hashem does not give up on us.
I once spoke at a parlor meeting in South Fallsburg, New York for a new mikvah project. Some community members asked, “Why do we need a mikvah here? There’s already one nearby in Woodridge, in Monticello, in the camps. Why build another?”
I answered them as follows. When it comes to impurity, the yetzer hara never asks such questions. He never says, “There’s already a movie theater in Woodridge; why build another?” On the contrary, he builds one on every corner! But when it comes to holiness, suddenly people ask, “Why two shuls? Why two mikvaos?”
We must learn from the yetzer hara. If he multiplies darkness, we must multiply light. If he builds one house of sin after another, we must build one house of holiness after another. That is the spirit of Elul: to awaken, to build and to add.
