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Emunah Chushis

"The idea of eternity lives in all of us. We thirst to live in a belief which raises our small personality to a higher coherence - a coherence which is human and yet superhuman, absolute and yet steadily growing and developing, ideal and yet real."


Noah was a complete tzaddik! How do we know this? Because the pasuk in the Torah with Unkelus tells us so! "Noah Ish Tzaddik - Gvar zakai shlim". A Tzaddik Shalem!!

That being the case how do we explain the fact that later on the Torah tells us that Noach didn't want to go into the ark because he was of small faith. He wasn't completely sure that the mabul would actually come. So he only entered when the water forced him to do so [7/7 with Rashi].

The Navi defines a Tzaddik as one who LIVES by his faith. "Tzaddik biemunaso yichye" - The chiyus, the vitality, of a Tzaddik is his faith. So how is it that a Tzaddik such as Noach was of small faith??

???????? [Such a good question I wanted to give an individual paragraph to the question marks.]

The Mussar Masters [Rav Henach Leibowitz and others] derive a lesson from here that is the very building block of our spiritual existence. There is such a thing as Emunah Chushis [sensory, concrete faith] and something else called Emunah Sichlis [intellectual faith]. Noach had Emunah Sichlis - but it wasn't REAL enough. It remained to much in the realm of the abstract. He was lacking in Emunah Chushis.

Sweetest friends - all of us have Emunah Sichlis. But what EVERYBODY needs to work on is Emunah Chushis. That G-d should no less real and present than you yourself. One should feel that if he does an aveirah it means he will lose all of his money and his right arm. A second aveirah - left arm and kidneys. G-d is REAL. Not just a fairytale. Reward and punishment is also real. Just because it doesn't happen immediately doesn't mean it is not going to happen. The consequences of our actions are eternal. Forever. la'NETZAAAAAACH!!

When one does a mitzva he should feel tremendously elated!! A MITZVA! WOW! I connected to the Source of all Goodness. G-d Himself. We are now connected FOREVER! Pleasure that cannot be described by the feeble medium of language. All for one small act. How many mitzvos do we perform every day? Thousands and thousands!! Every word of Torah and tefilla, every second that we are wearing tzitzis, every second we are in Israel [if we are lucky enough to be here], every time a mother does a small act of chessed for her child etc. etc.

Sweetest friends, the upshot of our words is that if one has Emunah Chushis he will live a life of constant unremitting simcha. Believe your actions have meaning and you will be happy. If you do something wrong, no problemo, Chico [sorry for calling you "Chico", I got carried away], you can fix it! We call that "Teshuva". Proper teshuva turns aveiros into mitzvos.

With hard work we can get there. We can make G-d real. Not like the planet Mars - something I believe is out there but that has no real affect on my life but something concrete, omnipresent and omniscient.

The Source Of All Existence.

יה"ר שנזכה לעלות מעלה מעלה באמונה טהורה יציבה ואיתנה בבורא כל העולמים


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About me

  • I'm Rabbi Ally Ehrman
  • From Old City Jerusalem, Israel
  • I am a Rebbe in Yeshivat Netiv Aryeh.
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