“If I had to point out the day I became a mentch,” someone told me, “I would have to say it was the day I discovered the sefer Shaar Habitachon. My life can be divided into two parts: life before this discovery and life after it.”
I asked him to tell me, “What changes did you make? Did you do something different from what you had been doing until then?”
He told me that he hadn’t changed anything. “Whatever I did before, I still do now, but whereas I used to feel pressured and angry, I now act with the feeling of being on a mission, and with the joy of doing what Hashem wants of me.”
This Yid reminded me of a story from one of the maggidim. He related that in past generations there were people who would disconnect from this world for a period of time. They literally behaved as the mishnah in Avos describes it, eating bread with salt and drinking water in measure, and then these people literally felt, “How fortunate you are and how good it is for you.” They became closer and closer to Hakadosh Baruch Hu.
One of the disciples asked: How can this be? In some jails, where criminals remain for many years, they sleep on the floor without a mattress, and once a day they get a slice of bread and a cup of water. When these criminals are discharged, not only do they not improve their ways, but they often become much worse.
The maggid smiled and said, “True; if you feel like a criminal in jail, then it has no effect on you; but if you do it with a feeling of joy and the desire to draw closer to Hashem, then it works.”
Each year, Pesach is the time of our freedom, and true freedom is a life of emunah.
There are people who recoil at the idea of emunah. They suspect that living with true emunah will obligate them to transform their whole lives, to leave behind everything they were accustomed to doing until now, and they are afraid to make such changes.
But the truth is that emunah enlightens one’s life. Emunah brings a person to a place of freedom. He can now do exactly the same thing he did before, when he was feeling so pressured, and do it with the feeling of being on a mission, and with joy and satisfaction.
Emunah is acquired through consistency, through learning Shaar Habitachon, and through listening again and again to messages of emunah.
May Hashem enable us this Yom Tov to go from slavery to redemption and from darkness to great light.
Gut Shabbat
Pinchas Shefer
Pesach 5784 ■ Issue 161
