By Rabbi Pinchos Lipschutz
Life is full of twists and turns. We think everything is set and that our lives will proceed according to one plan, and then things switch. We lose our job, the kollel is no longer satisfying, we receive an offer from an out-of-town community, someone gets sick r”l, and so on.
There are so many variables in life for which we cannot plan. How we deal with them determines whether we will succeed. We can either throw up our hands in desperation, filled with misery and gloom, or we can accept that everything that happens to us is from Hashem and realize that it is up to us to accept the change and make the best of it.
Those who have emunah and bitachon are able to remain optimistic in times of challenge and change, for they know that Hashem is looking out for them and that nothing happens by chance.
This week’s parsha, Lech Lecha, provides chizuk and direction for everyone. The posuk states that Hashem spoke to Avrohom Avinu and told him to leave his ancestral home and head to the land He would show him. The Sefas Emes (632) cites the Zohar that Hashem’s directive of Lech Lecha is directed toward everyone, but Avrohom was the only one who heard the call and followed it.
There is a bas kol that says to go out and proclaims to every Yid not to limit themselves to the familiar and comfortable. Hashem placed every person in this world for a purpose. Everyone has a task that they can perform and a mission that they can complete. Often, that requires for a person to leave their comfort zone and the place where they were born, grew up, and set up house.
We are all here to accomplish things with our lives. Sometimes, doing that requires stepping into the strange and foreboding. The urge to stay home and enjoy a simple, comfortable life is always there, not far from the surface, but our charge as children of Avrohom, Yitzchok, and Yaakov is to brave the challenges and effect change as we work to make the world a better place. Often, doing so involves grief, aggravation, rough days, lonely nights, and lots of hard work. Those who hear the bas kol are able to persevere and go on to accomplish, while those who don’t proceed with emunah and bitachon get deterred and dejected.
Avrohom Avinu hewed the path for us. When he heard the bas kol that nobody else heard or paid attention to, he made it easier for us to hear and follow it. Ever since his time, throughout our history, those who made a mark and difference followed Avrohom’s example, often leaving behind creature comforts, friends, and family to venture forth, knowing that if they worked lesheim Shomayim, Hashem would be there with them.
Avrohom left his home behind and followed Hashem’s voice to the Promised Land. His son, Yitzchok, also left his home and followed the voice into a strange land where the locals were not friendly to him. His son, Yaakov, left his parents’ home and went to live with his uncle Lovon, suffering much degradation and privation, but emerging married with children and many possessions. His son, Yosef, was sent by Hashgocha to a foreign land, followed there by Yaakov, the shevotim, and their families.
Moshe Rabbeinu grew up in royal splendor and left it all behind, only to be forced to flee to a foreign land. He returned to his people and became their savior. And so it has been throughout the ages up until our day.
World War I was a turning point for our people. Many were driven from their homes into exile, where they had little food and no heat. They suffered from disease, pestilence, starvation, and worse. They had no money and no income. When the war ended, those who didn’t hear the bas kol did not return to their shtetlach. They went to the big cities and severed their connections to Yiddishkeit. They no longer had any frum social ties. They sent their children to secular tarbut schools and became lost to our people. Others fled to America, where they were promptly swallowed up by waves of assimilation. Millions were lost forever.
They had left their homes, but they weren’t following Hashem and the direction to which He had directed them. They became overwhelmed by the situation they found themselves in and lacked the spiritual strength necessary to persevere.
The people who remained loyal to the bas kol followed it back to where they belonged, to places where there were shuls and botei medroshim for them and schools for their children. They struggled but survived as faithful Yidden.
Following the Holocaust, survivors faced awful choices. They had lost everything and were barely alive. Which way should they go? Should they give up on life? On humanity? On hope for a future? Should they wallow in self-pity and lose themselves to depression and despair?
Or should they follow the bas kol, which called on them not to lose faith in Hashem, but to follow Him to fresh terrain and rebuild their lives and communities?
Those who followed the bas kol went on to get married, have families, establish shuls, yeshivos, and communities, and help recreate that which was lost. It is thanks to those courageous souls that most of us are here today and that Torah communities and mosdos are flourishing here and around the world.
People in our day are faced with the dilemma of whether to stay where they are and lead nice, comfortable lives or to move to a place where people like them are needed to provide leadership. Some remain where they are and are productive in their comfort zones, but others break out of their boxes and spread their wings to bring and support Yiddishkeit in places as far from their homes as Choron was from Be’er Sheva.
Sometimes the challenge is whether to secure a good job or to go into chinuch, where the pay is not as good, but where the opportunity to make an impact on future generations makes up in spiritual reward and satisfaction for what may be lacking in financial compensation. Sometimes the challenge is whether to get involved in communal needs and assist organizations that work for the public benefit, such as bikur cholim and the like. It is never easy, and it takes commitment and dedication.
Others leave major kehillos and follow the bas kol to kollelim across the country that provide oxygen and life to communities of fine people committed to Torah lives. Others seek out rabbinic positions in shuls struggling to hold out against the Open Orthodox onslaught. By doing so, they keep good people good and rooted in the wellspring of Torah. They keep the community alive and provide guidance and direction for young and old.
They follow the bas kol that Avrohom followed, choosing the more difficult path, following Hashem’s direction to seize a mission and then looking forward to a sense of accomplishment, armed with the promise of earning blessings and greatness.
Nobody said it would be easy, but blessed are those who hear the bas kol in every generation, dedicating their lives to following it and where it leads them.
Rav Yeshayah Cheshin descended from talmidim of the Vilna Gaon who followed his directive almost 300 years ago to leave Lita and move to Eretz Yisroel. The journey from Vilna to Yerushalayim was arduous, and when they arrived in the barren, forsaken land, deprivation of all types greeted them. Life was very tough.
Rav Yeshayah lived during the time when Rav Yehoshua Leib Diskin was rov in Yerushalayim and Rav Yeshayah served as a rebbi in the famed Yeshiva Eitz Chaim. In his sefer Divrei Yeshayah, he wrote of the difficult trip and transition his ancestors endured as they left Lita and went to Eretz Yisroel.
“In order to know and understand the enthusiasm and mesirus nefesh of the Talmidei HaGra and how they placed themselves in danger for a year to travel in small boats on treacherous waters, and what they endured in their initial settlement at a time of plagues and diseases, as well as pogroms, it is first necessary to study their spiritual foundation.
“It was a product of the storm that their rebbi, the Gra, created to gather in the exiles and to settle Eretz Yisroel, to which they were moser nefesh. They went through fire and water to hasten the redemption in this way, as our rebbi, the Gra, discusses in his seforim.
“Who is there who can tell the sad tales of what the early settlers endured? Plagues and pogroms, lack of water, poverty, and myriad diseases. Who is there who can tell of their bravery and obstinacy to maintain the settlement that teetered daily and threatened to fall apart due to the many tragedies and hardships? It is only because of the strength of their emunah to follow their rebbi, the Gra, and his blessings to them that they were able to remain there with an unshakable tenacity that no person can describe.”
And then he writes something quite fascinating, which I had never heard of, and I wonder if you did. Listen to this: “In the earlier period following the initial settlement, when there was a time of communal need, the residents of Yerushalayim would daven and say, ‘Help us in the merit of the Talmidei HaGra who came to settle in the Holy Land.’
“On Mondays and Thursdays, they would add to Tachanun the following phrase: ‘With Your goodness, please remove Your anger from Your people, from Your city, and from Your land, in the merit of the Torah, in the merit of acts of chesed, and in the merit of the students of the Gra who initiated the first [Jewish] settlement in the Holy Land.’
“They would then go to the kevorim of the leading students of the Gra, Rav Hillel and Rav Mendel of Shklov, as well as Rav Saadia of Mohilov, and daven for salvation.”
The Vilna Gaon heard the bas kol of Lech Lecha and taught his students to hear it and follow it. Thanks to them, Eretz Yisroel is now settled from north to south and east to west with Jews, and although there are still many problems and difficulties, we can hear the footsteps of Moshiach approaching.
The greatness and zechus of people who follow the bas kol is so significant that in times of greater difficulty, people would daven to be saved in the merit of those intrepid baalei emunah and bitachon who gave up all to follow the call.
In our day and in our lives, when we face ups and downs, when things are tough and not going the way we want, we should think of those heroes who went before us, who gave up everything to answer Hashem’s steady call, which promises blessings to those who maintain their faith in Him and dedicate their lives to improving and bettering the world.
Whatever befalls us, whatever betrayals we face, and when we are forced to change our course of action and look at the world and our existence differently, we should never despair. We should know that what happens is from Hashem, Who is guiding us to a better situation, a place from where we can experience brocha and hatzlocha and help prepare the world for Moshiach, just like those courageous souls throughout the ages, from Avrohom Avinu until today.
“Lech lecha el ha’aretz asher areka. Follow Me to where I will send you,” says Hashem, “and there you will find blessing.”
We don’t merit for Hashem to speak to us verbally, but He does so through various occurrences that happen to us in life, which we must view through the lens of Torah. If we know that we are here for a purpose and that everything that happens to us is from Hashem, and if we dedicate our lives to Torah, avodah, mitzvos, and maasim tovim, then we will be able to pick up the signals and follow them to where they are leading us.
Our zaides and bubbes always had Hashem in their lives and never lost sight of their obligations in this world. There is no reason we should not be the same. Let us follow their example, handed down to them and us from Avrohom Avinu, and earn for ourselves a world of opportunity and brocha, which will lead us all to the geulah sheleimah bekarov.