Uncertainty

      To live is to live in uncertainty. Everything that seems certain one minute can turn uncertain the next minute. All we know for certain is the present and that is only if we are truly self aware. To live with confidence is to live knowing that only Hashem knows what is going to happen  and to have faith that everything in life will be for the best.
      Easier said than done....

fear of g-d vs love of g-d

if the reason you follow the torah is due to fear of g-d , well that grows old fast, especially when one's alleged fear of g-d is often really fear of peer pressure. i think that after awhile a person has to observe the mitzvos because of their love of g-d which a lot of the time is really their love of doing the mitzvos. 

of course in the end it really has to be a mixture of the two philosophies. if you only do mitzvos because you love g-d , then you may figure you don't have to do so much because heck he will forgive you , he loves you and he will understand. you need a little fear of h-shem so you actually stay observant.

we have no prophets in 5770

there are no prophets in 5770. this seems obvious, but not to everyone, especially those who seem to have a pat reason for every disaster that has befallen human kind lately.

when i heard that people were saying that hurricane katrina happened because of the gaza pull out i was sure someone was making that one up. why would poor blacks in new orleans who probably never have met a jew in their life be the receptors of the punishment for the israeli pull out from gaza? its too pat. one can connect every dot to form any conclusion one wants. i don't buy it.

after the disaster in haiti someone told me that they thought this happened because the people of haiti practise avodah zarah. well isnt that a simple solution.

others like to say that the holocaust began in germany because reform judaism began there. well, what about the fact that at the same time sara schnierer started the bais yaakov movement to counter the spiritual decline and many of her students were brutally murdered al kiddush hashem.

the problem i have with all these "reasons" for these tragedies is because they make life too simplistic. furthermore, we do not have any prophets in modern times, so there is NO WAY of knowing that any of these conjectures of these rabbis are real or not. there is however a reason we do not have prophets these days. this i do know. probably because if we knew the true reasons for these tragedies we wouldn't be able to handle it or perhaps no one would listen to them anyway, so its better they are not around for us not to listen to. or we would be too petty if we knew the real reasons these tragedies have befallen mankind. oops! we are being petty which is exactly why we dont have prophets or know the true reasons for any travesty .

all this finger pointing is rather useless. bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people and though we have to believe there is a reason it is not necessary for us to know what the reason is . sometimes its best to just put one's faith in hashem and assume he has his reasons but we as people aren't wise enough to understand them. THIS is what i was always taught.

a matter of faith

a few years ago i read the book the spirit catches you and you fall down by anne fadiman. its about a child of Hmong immigrants in merced california who has epilepsy and the culture clash with the hospital , doctors and modern medicine. though they did not denounce doctors and modern medicine they had their own version of faith healing and rituals which they incorporated into their child's treatment. it was difficult to communicate with them even with a translator because there weren't words in their language to convey the western information that needed to be transmitted to them.
the title of the book is the Hmong definition of an epileptic seizure. to them it is like g-d is lifting them up and then lets go and then they have a seizure. the Hmong consider this to be very spiritual.
what really struck me as interesting in this book were the rituals the Hmong performed to help treat their child. they didn't make much medical sense which frustrated the medical professionals, but some of their rituals actually helped her, though they were quite unusual. ( unfortunately i read the book a few years ago so i don't remember exactly what they were).
this made me really think . because these people really had faith that their rituals would change their child's fate it did help her. it did not cure her, but the authorities all saw that this child was well taken care of and by her behavior was a child who was loved and knew how to love others. they also saw that ultimately the beliefs and rituals of this family probably did not make her any worse for wear if not maybe even better off.
this of course made me think a lot about the power of faith and prayer. does prayer work proportionate to how much a person believes in it, or does it work because it works? i have heard that a patient will heal quicker if he has confidence that his doctor will cure him. on the other hand , i have heard that if someone prays for someone else, even if the person doesn't know about it they will (or it will help) them get better. perhaps it is only crucial for the person doing the prayer or ritual to have faith in what they are doing .
i prefer to believe that prayer does help and that it is real. we don't always get want we ask for, but i think that it is important to ask anyway. perhaps prayer is meant to be a lesson. we pray to get want we want. it is important to ask for what we need in life even if we may not get it. the point is not whether we get what we need and want but that we try . also, the more that we believe in change, hope and recovery the more it will happen.