So, I didn’t check the news since motzash, BH.

Yesterday night, after I got back from a hectic day out, i went online a little to unwind from the two hour traffic jam I got stuck in, trying to cross Jerusalem, and that’s when I read about what happened at Bondi Beach.

I hope Hashem will give all the wounded a speedy and easy recovery.

What was amazing, to me at least, was that it was dafka a Syrian national, Ahmed al Ahmed, who tackled one of the gunman and saved many lives by doing so.

If you believe that the actions of one individual can change the whole world for good or for bad, then Ahmed al Ahmed put some tremendous ‘good’ into the world with his actions and mesirut nefesh.

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What struck me as strange, or at least, notable, was that yet again, it’s Pakistani nationals who were attacking Chabad – same as happened at the Mumbai Chabad House.

And if you saw the video of one of those attackers firing off his rounds from the bridge, it’s obvious he got some military training, somewhere.

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As to whatever else was going on…. I am not going to speculate, because we already know that nothing is at it really seems, these days.

And the truth will eventually come out about everything.

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Instead, let’s remember the Three Rules of Emuna, encapsulated by Rav Arush, but actually just brought down from the Gemara and other solid Jewish sources.

They are:

1. God is doing everything – Ein Od Milvado.

2. Everything God does is for our ultimate good, or perhaps it’s easier to understand and grasp this point if we rephrase it to say that everything that God does is for our spiritual good, ultimately. More on that below.

3. Everything is a message, a hint, a clue, about what God wants us to work on, fix, change, recognise, acknowledge and make teshuva about.

And the 4th ‘rule’ I’ll add to this, rooted in Breslov sources, is that sometimes, souls come down to this world with very, very difficult tikkunim they need to rectify from previous lifetimes.

Breslov sources and the Rav emphasis that the only way to get a ‘discount’ on past life tikkunim ilke this – which manifest as severe suffering in this world – is to draw close to the True Tzaddikim.

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Here’s a snippet from Advice (English BRI translation of Rav Natan’s Likutei Etzot[1]), from ‘Tzaddik, #25’:

There are people whose souls are severely damaged.

Even when they come to the Tzaddik they are still sunk in all their bodily desires and have not moved away from the profane and closer to the sacred by even a single hair’s breadth. It might seem an impossible task to elevate these souls and renew them like an unborn child in the womb.

But there is a Tzaddik who has reached the most awesome of levels and who does have the power to elevate even souls which are as severely damaged as these. He can renew them like a newly-formed child growing in the womb.

A person who is aware of what he has done to his soul and who wants to take himself in hand and return to God should plead and beg of God to take pity upon him and make him worthy of drawing close to such a Tzaddik. Happy is he, who finds such a Tzaddik.

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Many Jews get uncomfortable with this kind of language.

We’ve been in exile so long, specifically, the exile of Edom, where Esav tried to dress up as ‘Yaakov’ and to steal and subvert some of Judaism’s most sublime esoteric teachings about what a True Tzaddik really is, and what he can do, that this stuff gives many of us kind of yucky vibes…

This is the hester b’toch hester – that we can’t even discuss some of these ideas reasonably, especially when so many people today are literally drowning in suffering and heavy tikkunim, despite the fact that in this lifetime they are doing their best to serve God sincerely.

BH, I want to try to open these ideas up more, for discussion, as they are also at the heart of understanding the fundamental difference between Breslov, and other chassiduts.

Amongst many other things.

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Point is: nothing happens for nothing, down here in this this lowly world.

Everything is a message for change and growth, a life lesson that God is trying to teach us.

It’s when we forget that, and mouth platitudes about ‘no one can understand God’s ways’, blah-di-blah, that we run a very serious spiritual risk of becoming totally disconnected from God on a day-to-day level, just relating to Him as some ‘abstract’ idea, God forbid.

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God cares about every little detail.

Every little thought, every little action, for the side of good or the opposite, we will be rewarded for the former and ‘punished’ for the latter, if we don’t make sincere teshuva on it.

And there are no ‘bulk discounts’.

A person can’t say I gave a million bucks to charity, God will let me off all the traif and immoral behaviour!!!

That’s not how it works.

A person will get rewarded for their million bucks to charity (assuming it’s real tzedaka, and not just running cover for another massive real estate venture…) – and punished for every detail of every sin they didn’t make real teshuva for.

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Let’s add another nuance in here.

Xtians, and others, teach that just ‘believing in ‘their tzaddik’ is all it takes to be awarded the ‘get out of gehinnom free’ card.

That’s not authentic Judaism, and it’s certainly not Breslov.

The nuance is this:

We draw to the True Tzaddik not because that guy is going to wave a magic wand, and fix all our issues for us, while we go and watch netflix.

This is not the case at all.

We draw close to the True Tzaddik because then we get the koach we need to keep going to fix our sins, to not give up when it becomes overwhelmingly dark, to keep trying again, to keep standing up when we fall down.

The power of the True Tzaddik is to give his followers the koach to keep going, until they really fix the stuff they need to.

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So many times the last few years, I’ve been on, or even over, the cusp of despair, about a whole bunch of stuff.

I cannot tell you, how many times a trip to Uman, to Rabbenu, or a visit to the Rav’s prayers on Ido HaNavi, has set me back on my feet, when left to myself, I probably would have given up.

That is a Jewish ‘True Tzaddik’. That is a Breslov ‘True Tzaddik’.

A spiritual coach that encourages you to keep going!!! There is no despair in the world, keep going!!! Keep trying to fix your bad middot, keep talking to God every day, keeping hoping for the world to become a better place!!!

Don’t give up!!!

Not on yourself.

And not on the world either.

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FOOTNOTES:

[1] Rav Natan wrote Likutey Etzot as an easy-to-grasp digest of many of the main practical points Rabbenu taught in Likutei Moharan.