Travelling With Hashem by Rabbi Y R Rubin

Travelling With Hashem

By Harav Y. R. Rubin Shlita

 

“Yes, Bubby, I checked. My passport is in my pocket.”

Whenever we visited the Rebbetzin’s mother in Eretz Yisroel we would go through this pantomime wherein we would check, for the tenth time, our pockets to prove we had in fact not forgotten our precious passports. I think it was a throwback from when she was a young immigrant in America and a passport was vital in a strange, new land.

This feeling of being a stranger in a foreign land is ingrained in the Yiddishe DNA, part of the reason we’ve been able to survive thousands of years of galus. That bit of edginess has driven us to create wondrous communities wherever Hashem has led us, and allowed for borders that has keep our uniqueness whole.

Back “in the day” we would say that a Torah Yid can travel the world with a can opener and a tin of tuna. Today, it’s good business to be kosher, and many multinational companies have jumped on the bandwagon. We can travel far and wide with not much worry – yet we need more than a bite to eat to be Yidden today. It’s not the passport that we might leave at home but rather more definitive markers of who we are.

Every Yid has a responsibility to carry his Torah ideals wherever he goes, and to be aware that he is part of the whole that is Klal Yisrael.

Parashas Re’eh opens with Hashem’s statement: “Re’eh, Anochi nosein lifneichem hayom brachah uklallah… – See, I present before you today a blessing and a curse. The blessing: that you hearken to the commandments of Hashem, your G-d, that I command you today. And the curse: if you do not hearken to the commandments of Hashem…”

The word “see” is singular, while “before you” is plural. The Oznayim LaTorah explains that Chazal tell us a person should view himself as having an equal number of good deeds and bad ones, while the rest of the world is equally divided between righteous and wicked acts. Whenever a person does a mitzvah, he tips the balance for the whole world to the side of merit. If he sins, he brings about the opposite.

Yes, we travel – and along with our passport we carry our connection to Hashem and His people.

We may conclude from this, he continues, that each and every Yid can bring the blessing or the curse on all Klal Yisrael. That’s why “see” is in the singular, addressed to every individual personally, whereas “before you” is in the plural, for the blessing and the curse are meant for the entire Klal Yisrael. “Not only is your fate, but the fate of the entire Jewish People in the hands of each one of us.”

Let’s do some simple maths:

There are roughly 7,000,000,000 (seven billion) humans living on Earth, of which 13,000,000 (thirteen million) are Jews. Of these, about 1,300,000 (one million, three hundred thousand) are frum Yidden, ka”h.

These are staggering numbers. Our small speck of mankind is keeping the entire world in existence. We of the Torah world – our mitzvos and our chessed – form the energy that keeps everything else going. Without Torah, nothing can exist.

This may sound daunting, but it has always been Hashem’s plan. We don’t measure strength by the numbers of our Nation, but rather by our Torah adherence.

Yes, we travel – and along with our passport we carry our connection to Hashem and His people.

There was a venerable Rebbetzin who was struggling in her senior  years with a challenged memory, she was want to say, “Ich vais nisht ver ich bin, ich vais nisht vie ich bin, uber ich vais yah Vemens ich bin – I don’t know who I am, I don’t know where I am, but I certainly know Whose I am.” Ingrained her very essence was her connection with Hashem.

We are now entering the month of Ellul, the time where each of us must work on our connection and our belief. May the power of the eternal Yiddishe Neshomah guide us and allow us to be always be aware of whose we are.