Questions and Answers
Questions a learner asks himself when he comes to live these things in practice
Q: I know how low I have fallen – how can I believe that Hashem chose me in particular?
A: This is what Yisrael claimed in Egypt, knowing how low they had fallen – "these and those are idol worshippers" – yet after they saw the miracles of the Yam Suf, they came to realize that the choice of them does not depend on anything. As in the parable of the inheritance: the toil is only so that one will guard it properly, but the inheritance itself is firm and secure regardless of anything.
Q: I am ready to give everything to Hashem – what more is demanded of me?
A: Giving up alone is not the essence of the test. The essence is not to entertain the thought that the love has moved from its place, and not to be confused by the claim of the Satan, "Hashem no longer wants you"; rather, to say like Avraham Avinu: "My love has not moved."
Q: I keep the mitzvos with precision and stringencies, yet I feel coldness and emptiness – what is missing?
A: This is avodah with the attribute of judgment alone. If one does not recognize Hashem's mercy and include it in his avodah, it has no continuity and ends in a feeling of emptiness; wholeness in avodah is joining mercy and judgment together.
Q: Is there no higher level than for one's soul to expire to Hashem in longing?
A: All of creation longs to return and be absorbed in Him; but the Jewish soul wants even more to reveal that Hashem is here, in our world. And this is His main desire – that the Jew live with emunah and in connection with Him, "not to be slaughtered, by the will of Hashem."
Q: How can I merit true teshuvah?
A: By leaving one's own honor and entering the honor of Hashem – hearing one's disgrace and lack of success, accepting it with love and remaining silent, and understanding that only connection with Hashem is true success.
May it be Your will that the merit of Yitzchak's ram stand for us to sweeten all judgments from upon us, and that we merit complete emunah in Hashem Yisbarach and in Moshe His servant – the extension of Moshe in every generation, the tzaddikim who illuminate for us what emunah is: emunah in the presence of Hashem, and emunah in His choice of the Jewish soul to bring the world to its perfection.
