Big Worries

(Part one)

I can’t quite remember who, but one Godol often gave an unusual kind of Brocho to a Choson and Kalloh when he spoke at a wedding. It was this, “You should have a life full of little worries.”

I am sure that upon hearing it, many of his listeners would have raised their eyebrows and been more than a little perplexed. Some might even have been offended, after all it seems at first more like a curse than a blessing. What the Rov meant was that you should have a life in which there is no BIG worry.

We had a normal life full of little worries, bringing up kids, money, family politics, money, community politics, money, school problems and money, until about five years ago.

My wife found a lump. It was technically a breast lump but it was so high that I thought it more a lower shoulder lump. The doctor who gave us the result of the biopsy was Spanish, I remember her words very clearly, “You have a leetle cancer.”

To this day I am almost amused by her use of the adjective “Leetle” the truth is that there is very little “Leetle” about Cancer. It is a BIG worry.

A third of human beings get this disease, there are even forms of it unique to Ashkenazi Jews. While recently on one of my lecture tours in Chicago, I was asked by two people to write down some thoughts that might be useful in helping people with a BIG worry. This is for them and anyone who might be worried about saying or doing the wrong thing when all you want to do is help.

There are two words in English which derive from the same Greek word and sound almost the same. The word is Pathos and it means to feel. The two English decedents of that word are of course Sympathy and Empathy.

The first means to feel sorry for someone. The second means to feel as though you are the person suffering. It is what the Mussar works say is essential in order to perform the Mitzva of “Noso B’Ol Im Chaveiro” Carrying your friends burden together with him. You have to be with him, able to feel and carry the pain.

The Gemora famously says if you visit a sick person, you take away a sixtieth of

their illness. Only if a certain condition is met however.

There are two explanations of what that condition is, one by Rashi and the other by the Ran. The visitor either has to be the same age as the person he is visiting or have the same “Mazal,” in other words the same life experience. That way, the person visiting easily sees himself as though it was him lying in bed ill. With the same background, age or circumstance, there is after all, no discernable reason why it could not be him lying there. In that way, you feel his pain and as there is only an exact and set amount of pain ordained for him from heaven, in feeling part of that pain you took it instead of him and that fraction is no longer available to give to him.

When you have a BIG worry, you need to be able to have access to people who can not just sympathise but empathise.

I knew a lady who was a counsellor in a hospital burns unit. Many times this smartly dressed and attractive woman, of in those days, forty something, would sit beside someone who was very badly burned indeed. Some had no facial features left. As she began to talk, she often experienced a very angry reaction, “What do you know about what I’m going through, have you ever been burned?”

It is difficult to express in writing, just the amount of anger and fury with which their words and sentiments were sometimes expressed. The counsellor remained calm and quietly replied, “No, I have never been burned, but both my parents were burned in Auschwitz.”

When she said that, the barrier was breached, then the patients would allow her to help them.

I call it an “Equivalence of suffering.” When you have a BIG worry you need to get help from someone who has an equivalence of suffering.

Thank G-d, most people, especially under the age of about thirty five, are not likely to have an equivalence of suffering. Yet often, especially if they are a Rov or a Rebbetzin, they will have to deal with people with BIG worries who are in very great pain indeed. These few pages are an attempt to offer some insight that might help at the very least, good people from making bad mistakes while attempting to do their best .

We are blessed by HaShem Yisborach in so many ways. One of them is that we both have a sense of humour. Medical research proves by the way, that people with Cancer who can laugh about their situation have an enormously better chance of defeating the disease than those who can’t.

Early on in our story, when the word “Leetle” was looming very large indeed, one of our very good friends phoned from Yerushalayim. She is Rebbetzin Liba Gottlieb and she gave us a great piece of advice, “Keep an Idiot book!”

We have found that an invaluable tip but let her explain what an idiot book is,

“Lots of people will say lots of really stupid things. Write them down and see what is the current dumbest comment.”

We haven’t done that literally but we do keep a “Top Ten.” Every now and again a particularly talented person, who is to Tact, what Ossama Bin Laden is to Roman Catholicism, will come along and depose the current number one!

A certain lady told my wife,

“You know, Mrs Cohen has the same as you and she got a Brocho from a Tzaddik that she should live to see all her children married. Why are you marrying off your children so quickly?”

This was said with absolute sincerity and curiosity… Da Da! Yes ladies and gentlemen… The new number One! Mrs ***** from Holland!

She has been topped a few times since then but she is still firmly there in pride of place in the top five.

When you are talking to someone who has a BIG worry, you are always walking in a minefield. It might be that on that particular day she or he might be in a state of mind where they are very sensitive and almost nothing will be the right thing to say.

Don’t “beat yourself up” because you failed and said the wrong thing. It may well be impossible sometimes to say the right thing. Before you call or visit, speak to the one nearest the person with the BIG worry and find out what their state of mind is at the time. They might be in the mood to hear encouraging words or simply welcome the chance to tell someone what is happening. They might not want to receive visitor at all. Asking the “expert,” the spouse or children is the safest first step.

There are a few other rules which almost always hold true.

Mention people you know or know of, who had the same condition twenty years ago or thirty years ago and today are fine. Hope is the most important weapon of all. My wife had a second cousin who had cancer seven times over thirty years!

Both breasts, bone, skin etc. she died last year aged seventy of a heart attack.

Her name was Dora and we think of her often, there are people, lots of people who beat and vanquish this disease and other diseases too. Listen out for Doras and file them away ready to introduce them to people who might need to meet them and hear about them.

In that last paragraph I used the words “vanquish” and “beat.” Words are important. Words scare. Remission is a word that suggests a temporary respite, I don’t use it.

In September of last year my wife was in the local hospital because of fluid building up in her lungs. One day I received a call from a nurse to come as the Consultant had given her bad news.

I was terrified that the recent scans had revealed that the disease had moved to the lungs. In fact this Doctor had different bad news. He told my wife that she had less than two weeks to live.

This was done without any consultation with myself and when I arrived he shared his prognosis with me. I didn’t think, I didn’t think the way a Jew should. I was in shock. I needn’t say that the hour or so we spent together afterwards were the most painful and difficult of our lives.

When the Consultant Oncologist in the Cancer Hospital where she is a patient, heard what had been said by this other Consultant, he sent a message that he strongly disagreed and wanted us back in his hospital. He had certainly not given up hope. This message was delivered by a junior doctor to our bedside with the caveat that her Consultant thought that it was “crazy” and there was no point.

Once you have, “Thrown in the towel” it is very difficult, almost impossible to pick it up again. Reconciled to dying you become ready and almost willing to die. Now we were being invited to start fighting all over again.

My wife asked me what I thought we should do and I told her that the decision had to be hers. There obviously had to be the will to fight, otherwise the best efforts of our Oncologist would be fruitless.

After a while my wife replied, “I suppose I am Mechuav (obliged) to carry on.” This was of course the right reply, the one the Torah would expect. She was not though able to give it with the determination that would make the “carrying on” successful. The damage of the Consultant’s words had overwhelmed her as it had me.

Before we left the hospital I phoned up our own G. P. (M.D.) and told him what had happened and to get hold of the Consultant and tell him to get back to my wife’s room and “Un-say” what he had said the day before. He tried and at our Oncologists insistence started her on Steroids (he had not given her this medication as he was quite convinced she was going to die.)

The next day we were transferred to Manchester’s famous Chrisite hospital (Tamoxiphen was discovered there.)

A junior doctor who initially saw my wife told me that she didn’t think that her boss (our optimistic Oncologist,) had realised how bad Chaya was and this doctor too thought that there was almost no hope at all.

At the Christie, I have a friend who has been a superb support to both of us. He is a senior Consultant Oncologist and I had alerted him to our story and arranged for him to visit my wife and challenge the pessimistic prognosis she had been given. All this helped a little bit to repair the damage, but only a little.

The next day I had a much better idea. My son stayed with Reb Mattisyohu Salamon Shlita while he was learning in Lakewood Yeshiva. I am a Talmid of Reb Mattisyohu. He spoke at our wedding.

At a prearranged time, while my wife’s sister and I were at her bedside, my Cell phone rang. I handed it to my wife and she looked perplexed as to who it might be. As she put the phone to her ear and heard Reb Mattisyohu’s voice, together with my sister in law, I watched a miracle.

If you think he began by speaking gently and kindly to her you would be wrong, he was quite stern. He told her to remember who she was and what she was. He insisted that she recall that it is HaShem Yisborach who decides when a person passes away, not Doctors. Then he spoke gently and kindly to her.

I don’t know if you have ever watered a plant that has been wilting through lack of moisture. In a few minutes it comes to life before your eyes. Chaya came to life and the dreadful damage of the wicked words of the Consultant was at last undone.

Reb Mattisyohu phoned my wife ever day after that. Chaya also received calls from Lady Jacobovitz and Rebbetzin Ehrentreu (Dayan Erehtreu’s wife) from London and her fight-back was well on it’s way.

At that time, I got a call from a Talmida of mine in New Jersey who comes with her husband to hear me speak whenever I am in their State. She is a wise lady and I already cite an example of her wisdom in my book, “Dancing Through Time.”

She responded to an e-mail I had sent out requesting our friends Tefillos.

When I told her the story which appears in those last few paragraphs she said,

“You know Rabbi Rubinstein, the problem is that doctors think they’re gods…and people forget that G-d’s a doctor!”

Two months later, my wife and I spent a few days away in England’s beautiful Lake District. When we parked at Marks and Spencer’s (where else,) I offered to fetch a wheelchair for Chaya, who was still very weak. She refused and instead took one of the shopping trolleys and marched around the store filling it. I watched her in complete admiration. We had both, for a while, forgotten to “remember who she was.” Watching her now, it was very humbling, remembering again.

Writing this now, when it’s nearly April with my wonderful wife and I planning to spend a few days away together once again in the Lakes, I think this is a tale worth telling. And those words should be engraved in every Jewish mind “The problem is that doctors think they’re gods…and people forget that G-d’s a doctor.”

There is another obvious lesson to draw from this story. People who are special to the patient and who can make a difference, should be involved in helping them get well.

(By the way, the Doctor at the Christie who refused to give up, is one of the best people I have ever met. He is brilliant medically and has great people skills. I am more grateful to him than my writing skills could express. )

Be very careful though of those who are themselves survivors of a BIG worry and want to come and encourage someone else.

Such people fall into two categories, those want to come to help the sufferer and those who need to come because they need to help themselves. In telling others that they will get over things as they have, they really need to hear themselves saying those words. They are actually reassuring themselves, not the person who is ill.

The person receiving the visit will know the difference. The first will help, the second will not and could cause much damage.

Whenever there is confirmation of a BIG worry, the reaction of almost any person is, “Why me? What have I done wrong to deserve this?”

Those are two questions that are mandated by the Talmud at the beginning of Brochos. You are supposed to ask them when bad things happen. But sometimes, asking them can be as destructive as the diagnosis itself!

A friend of mine once asked the Gateshead Rov Zt’l a question in Halocho. My friend was involved in Kiruv at the time (he is now a Rosh Yeshiva) and he was surprised by the leniency of the answer he received. The Rov noted his surprise and said,

“There is a different Shulchan Oruch for Kiruv Rechokim!”

If I might paraphrase my Rov’s words,

“There is a different Shulchan Oruch for BIG worries!”

One night when our first course of Chemo-Therapy was about to begin, I awoke to find my wife sobbing and crying uncontrollably. Her state left me emotionally crippled, helpless and unable to think of anything to say. She asked, “Why me? What have I done wrong to deserve this?”

It was five O’clock in the morning and I suggested we went down stairs and phone Reb Mattisyohu in Lakewood. This was what he told my wife.

“I always say that this disease is a Hemshech (continuation) of the Gezar Din

(heavenly decree) against Klal Yisroel from the Second World War!

You would not say that someone who found themselves in Belsen or Dachau had done anything personally to deserve being there, rather it was a decree against the Jewish people as a whole. It’s exactly the same with this disease. Victims are not suffering for what they have done wrong. It is a Gezar Din against Kol Klal Yisroel… the whole Jewish people.”

Reb Mattisyohu has by the way an equivalence of suffering, His mother had this disease. His parents in law (whom I was privileged to know and have written about in two books) were in Buchenwald.

The exact same proportion of the Jewish people become ill with Cancer as were killed in the Holocaust, a third. People are often reduced to looking exactly like concentration camps inmates, emaciated going around with shaved heads. The emotional and psychological toll is similar too. We even refer to them sometimes by the same term, “Survivors.”

Here the Gemora’s formula for individuals, to ask “Why me?” is not appropriate. “Why US?” is instead the real question.

People who are ill with a BIG worry need to be encouraged not to “Beat themselves up.”

Reb Shlomo Brevda Shlita went to visit a friend of ours who suffers from M.S. She is a Rebbetzin who cried to him bitterly that she could not Daven properly. Whenever she tried, her mind just went blank. He told her, “My dear lady, you are just busy keeping your head above the water, no wonder you can’t Daven!”

The classic Jewish responses might not be appropriate or at least not appropriate, “just then.”

There is a different Shulchan Oruch for BIG worries!

The laws of Shabbos fall away to help a Choleh, other Halochos do to. The same is true with Hashkofos. The right words at the right time, the right thoughts at the right time, can heal.

The wrong thoughts or words can do profound harm. The right thoughts or words at the wrong time can cause harm too.

The greatest weapon is hope. The greatest “delivery system” for that weapon is Seichel.

Big Worries

(Part two)

There has been enough in the media both Jewish and secular recently about evolving medical attitudes to seriously ill people.

There was an excellent piece in the “Jewish Observer” about “Not for Resuscitation.” instructions given by Doctors without any consultation with family.

I was once in Har Nof in Jerusalem visiting my good friend Rabbi Professor Dovid Gottlieb Shlito. Someone came over and asked me if I was Rabbi YY Rubinstein. I was able, with more or less certainty, to reply that I was.

He looked rather embarrassed and said, “You won’t remember me…but you used to teach me at Jewish Youth Study Groups.” (JYSG, is a UK outreach organisation roughly equivalent to NCSY in the States.)

He continued, “I just want you to know that I am everything I am today because of you!”

He shook my hand and after he walked away, Rabbi Gottlieb turned and asked me, “Do you know who that is?” I could honestly reply that I hadn’t a clue. Rabbi Gottlieb looked at me, slowly nodded his head and announced, “Psssss!”

In case you are unfamiliar with Chareidi-Speak, “Psssss!” means “Wow! only more so. “Psssss!” is a sort of triple or quadruple “Wow!” It suggests something or someone very exceptional indeed.

Rabbi Gottlieb told me that this young Rabbi was exactly that, very exceptional.

Now at this point you might feel that writing this down demonstrates on my part a certain lack of humility and modesty. Nothing could be further from the truth

(modesty was one of the first Middos that I perfected)

The truth is, this story gives no credit to me at all. I had not and have not a clue who this “Psssss!” was or is. I can tell you of many young people who became close to my wife and I through this organisation and then went on to achieve great things. Many actually did become Rabbis and Rebbetzins.

The point is that this Rabbi (whom I am told by the way is a leading expert in medical Halocho and uses that expertise to help very many sick people,) heard something I said.

He listened. I was merely repeating the great ideas and concepts of Gedolim whose words I have studied. His listening meant that he chose and was able to grow and become a “Psssss!”

A Shiur or a sentence an idea or even a word can change a life.

We have to be increasingly on our guards against some medical professionals. They might have determined that there is no point in prolonging a life whose quality has been significantly diminished. They might act to deny us hearing a few words or even very many words that could change our lives, words that need to be said and need to be heard. They may rob us of a day or a month or a year or even years.

There is an area in dealing with BIG worries that seems similar but demands from us a different approach.

I once read about someone who was very ill indeed from an incurable disease. His Doctor had offered him an operation that would extend his life by six months but would be very painful. He went to discuss with Reb Moshe Feinstein Zt’l what he should do. The patient was a religious Jew and Reb Moshe told him, “You know already what you’re supposed to do… but I can’t tell you that you should do it.”

That story is a very important lesson when dealing with people with a BIG worry. They have to be allowed to deal with their situation in the way that is best for them. They might well ask for advice; medical, spiritual, spousal or whatever, but ultimately they have to make their decisions and the people offering the sought advice, have to know them and abide by them.

At the beginning of our story, my wife was very happy for people to know what was wrong. Some friends organised an evening where women were invited to a school hall to recite prayers for her recovery. Hundreds came. The numbers so huge that people has to participate by standing outside in the play ground. Chaya found this a tremendous support and Chizuk.

The type of woman who came also created Chizuk. Every type of woman came. Some were Chassidik with a little hat on top of their Shaytel and some were Litvish and had Shaytels without hats. Some were Mizrachi and wore scarves either all the time or just for this occasion and some never covered their hair at all.

I know of at least one young woman who had been a student of ours while at University and had told me many times that she didn’t believe in G-d. She was there reciting Tehillim with the rest, crying her eyes out.

Other people we know who have a BIG worry, prefer that no one knows.

Of course that means that prayers will not be said for them by hundreds and in our case thousands and thousands of others. We know that prayers can change everything and leave Doctors scratching their heads.

That though, is how they are able to deal with their situation and that is how all of us who are near those individuals have to proceed.

I mentioned before that sometimes finding the right words will prove impossible. We can’t know what is going on in the sufferers mind at any given time. Try to avoid Cliché. The sentiments behind the cliché might well be sincere and genuine but the formulistic nature of the words will rob them of the appearance of sincerity.

Be wary of being too encouraging! Phrases like “You’ll be fine.” can be deadly.

The person might well be thinking “What on earth does he/she know. Has she ever felt pain like this?”

The people nearest to the person with the BIG worry have the BIG worry too. They sometimes need handling which is as gentle and thoughtful as the person with the illness.

Once again all the things I mentioned about “equivalence of suffering” and the rest, apply to them as well.

Occasionally, people ask me how I am and I truthfully reply that I am fine. But a little thing, a silly thing, may distress me or provoke an angry response which is totally disproportionate to the incident. That is how I discover that I am not as “fine” as I imagined.

The people closest to the sufferer sometimes can do the greatest kindness by allowing themselves to be shouted at by the sufferer. The friends and family of the ones closest to the sufferer have to allow them to sometimes shout too.

How much should the children be told? That very much depends on the nature of the individual and of course their age.

My Rov, the Gateshead Rov Zt’l told me that the children should not be told when the situation is very bad. Since he said it, I heard of one teenager who has never forgiven her father for not sharing that news. The Rov himself has been Niftar since we spoke about the subject, so I was unable to tell him of this and ask for elaboration if “very bad situation” also applied to “the worse situation.”

My late mother in law, Oleha Ha Sholom, used to say, “Als ding muz zein mit a mos” everything should be with balance. Of course we never fail if we ask a Godol what we should do. The more we ask a Godol in fact, the better.

When our own “Doctor Mengele” pronounced his death sentence in September, thinking there was only days to go, I let my three married sons know relatively quickly, over two separate conversations (I assumed as young men they no longer fell into the Rov’s definition of children.)

Troubled by the story of the unforgiving teenager and unsure what my Rov would have said, I told my unmarried son in Yeshiva more gradually still.

To my Thirteen year old daughter I took a different approach. I asked if she was worried about Mummy and she replied that she wasn’t. I paused and replied clearly, “I am.” That was about as much as I thought appropriate.

I told nothing to my nine year old daughter. I didn’t feel the Rov’s Psak needed any clarification here at all. She knew that Mummy was not well and in hospital.

I am very glad I didn’t tell her any more.

Her mother came home and everything is more or less back to normal. She didn’t know how bad things were and so the last half a year have been for a little girl, worry free.

Big Worries

(Part 3)

I mentioned that being too encouraging can have the reverse results to the ones intended. Giving someone with a BIG worry, a book written by someone else with a BIG worry, might be a good idea or it might be the worse thing you could do. The sufferer might want to get away from their problems. Hearing of other people in the same situation, might well make matters worse. There is in fact a Midrash on the Sedra of Shemini, which makes that very point. Let me repeat, ask those nearest, if giving such a book would help or hinder.

The article which follows I published recently in HaModia. The central story it contains helped me enormously when I heard it first hand. I wrote it so that others might be able to gain the Chizuk of that story too.

The message though is subtle. I would not go along and tell the tale to someone who is suffering to make him feel better. If I did it might well make him feel worse.

If the same person reads that same story in HaModia the message that could not and perhaps should not have been offered directly, might be accepted if discovered indirectly.

I hope to publish it in my next book. It will appear along with many other essays. It will not be part of a book about coping with illness. In that way it might go on to help other people with BIG worries.

Finding strategies that allow people to be helped without feeling they are being “Targeted” for help, are often very powerful weapons.

A Very Tight Schedule

Sitting on a plane recently flying to San Diego I found myself beside a very gregarious Doctor. He was on his way to medical Conference and asked me what I did myself and when I told him he was delighted. He told me that he had always wanted to meet a Rabbi.

Almost every time I returned to the Sefer I was learning, my companion would start up another conversation. He wanted to know what book I was reading. It was, not unusually for me, the commentary of the Alshich HaKodesh on Chumash. I wondered exactly how to explain this to a non-Jewish physician. I told him it was a sixteenth century work on the Bible.

He looked very impressed if a little perplexed. “Isn’t that a little bit out of date?” he asked and I told him that it certainly wasn’t and that it was in fact my favourite book, “In fact, I read it every week!”

It was plain that he found the thought of someone in 2004 reading a sixteenth century work every week very strange but that that did not slow my energetic and cheery medical friend down.

He decided to tell me about his favourite “book” “It’s not quite as old as yours.” He joked, “It was written in 1939.” It is called the “The greatest gift.”

I expect that it would be a work on a medical theme but it was not.

I was treated to a précis of the story of “The greatest gift.” Politeness compelled me to listen as he outlined the story, soon politeness turned to interest, as this book started ringing some very Jewish bells.

It is a tale of a man who grows up in a small American town but has ambitions to leave and head to the “big city.” He never actually fulfils his dream and eventually marries and settles down in the town of his birth. He keeps planning to make it to the big city but somehow he never does.

His life is quite ordinary. He is a very kind person who spends his time helping many of his neighbours with loans and practical assistance.

The story culminates when this person reaches a crisis not of his own making. The crisis could see him going to jail and there seems to be no one to help him.

He thinks of taking his own life but because he had been such a good person, Heaven decides to lend a hand. In his despair he blurts out that he wishes that he had never been born and that wish is turned to reality. He then sees the same town and it’s inhabitants the way they would have been without him having been there.

The quiet town is now a noisy Babylon. People whom he had managed to help and were good and kind folk were now twisted and bitter. His wife never married and of course his children were never born.

The message they are sending him from heaven gets through and he begs to be “born again” even if he will have to return to his crisis.

The Netziv Zt’l once made a Siyum. When he spoke he recalled that his father had once thought that the only future for his son would be if he sought him an apprenticeship. As a boy he was having little success in his learning. The young Netziv was given six months to improve and of course applied himself and succeeded.

He told the people at the Siyum what would have happened if he had failed to make the required effort.

“One day I would have been standing in front of the Beis Din Shel Maalo. They would ask me who I am and I would reply “Naftoli Tvi Yehudah Berlin.” They would ask me to describe my life and I would reply that I was born into a good Jewish family went to yeshiva and eventually went on to become a business man. I was successful had Chavrusos, gave Tzedokah and raised a loyal Jewish family.

“Then they will ask me, had I ever heard of a Sefer called Hemek Shayla and I would reply “No!” Then they would ask me if I have heard of a Sefer called Hemek Dovor and again I would reply No!”

“That’s strange” they would tell me, “You wrote them!”

“There must be some mistake!” I would reply, “ I never wrote Seforim, I told you I was a business man.”

The Beis Din Shel Maloh would look at me sternly, “But you could have!”

It is an interesting to consider what would be worse, looking back at our lives and realising all the mistakes that we made and the bad things we did or looking back at our lives and realising all the great things we could have done but didn’t. Looking back and seeing all the people we could have helped or inspired but didn’t. people who would have been good and kind if we had played our full part but without us became bitter and twisted.

When I was in America during that recent trip, I noticed the words of the Ohr HaChayim HaKodesh on the Sedra of VaYichi for the first time.

They are merely a variation on the words of Dovod HaMelech that I say every Shabbos in Shachris. Yet the way the Ohr Hachayim put them brought the idea home to me with enormous force.

Dovid Ha Melech says,

“The days of our lives are seventy years and if we have strength eighty years and their achievements are toil and pain and they pass quickly and fly away.”

The Ohr Chayim HaKodesh quotes the Ari Zal.

“A soul is divisible into many parts or “sparks.” Each day of those seventy or eighty years is a day when one of those sparks, that fraction of his soul, can be perfected. Those seventy years are about 25,000 days.”

Each day and the proper exploitation of each day, matches exactly the task set for perfecting the soul that was sent here… day by day, task by task..

I looked at the words “25,000 days.” Somehow expressed in that way, it doesn’t seem very long at all, in fact a very tight schedule.

Dovid HaMelech said, “The achievements of those days are toil and struggle” when I arrived in San Diego, I heard someone explain exactly what that meant.

I was a guest at a Shul called Beis Yakov for a Shabbos. One of the three talks I gave was on the difficult subject of “Human Suffering.” Afterwards the Kehilla and myself went into the Shul hall for the Seudah Shilishis.

An elderly gentleman approached me and explained that he was scheduled to speak at the Tisch and told me, “Rabbi, you have said everything I wanted to say!”

He was a survivor of Auschwitz. When he spoke I indeed heard some of the things I had talked about but they were spoken with far greater authority and depth than I could give them.

“Once a group of us boys were standing by a barracks in Auschwitz. We were only maybe two hundred yards for the chimneys of the crematoria. One of the boys said, “I am happy that I’m in Auschwitz!”

We all looked at him as though he was mad and many screamed at him, “Are you Meshuga?” The speaker replied, “No I’m not mad. And where would I be if I was not happy? Still in Auschwitz!”

I listened to this story with my mind literally reeling, struggling to understand the point that the speaker was making. He continued.

“The Gemora tells the story of the Famous Nochom Ish Gamzu. Whatever circumstance befell him he greeted with the words “Gam Zu L’Tova” This will also be good! The way to read those words is “Gam zu….L’Tova!” It is your job to make something good… even of the worst situation!”

This was what the young man’s seemingly insane statement meant.

The speaker continued,

“After Yaakov fought with the Angel that had hit him on the thigh, he limped. After that incident the Torah reports, “And Yakkov came Sholeim, the city of Shechem.” It should of course say “And Yakov came to Sholeim, the city of Shechem.

The Medrash explains that when he came to the city of Shechem he was “Sholeim” Perfect!

But the Torah just told us that he suffered a wound and now limped. How could he be called perfect?

The Sefas Emes Zt’l explains,

“After Yakov withstood all the pain of his previous struggles he is called Sholeim, Perfect. This is the idea behind the statement that a Tzaddik will fall seven times and still rise up. He will “rise up” specifically through having fallen. This is exactly what the Zohar means when it comments on the Posuk in Tehillim, “There are many bad things that befall a Tzaddik”. It is specifically from those that the Tzaddik turns his potential greatness into real greatness….That from all the difficulties that a Tzadik has to bear, he gains Shleimus, perfection!”

As if all of those words, coming from someone who had gone through so much pain were not literally mind boggling, he concluded with one last thought.

“If you haven’t suffered, you haven’t lived. If you haven’t suffered you’re NUTHIN! How else can you know what others are going though when they suffer. How else will you know what to do to help them?”

The words of the Ohr HaChayim have been combining with the words of that survivor and remerging in my thoughts again and again for days and weeks.

The time that we have to perfect ourselves is usually only 25,000 days. Each day is there for the fraction of our souls that we are meant to refine.

We might have to look back one day and cry bitter tears regretting that we failed to use that very small amount of time wisely. The imprint of each wasted day might well be seen in the bad things we did and the mistakes we made.

Probably more painful still, will be looking at the potential for greatness we could have realised even when those days, as Dovid HaMelech says were “Mostly toil and pain.”

But even in “Toil and pain” lies the potential for “Achievements” and ultimately the achievement that we were sent here in the first place to accomplish, a soul that grew though Torah, Tefillah and Chessed. That’s how every spark within us has it’s day when it was tended and refined so that it stopped being a spark and burst into a flame.