Uncovering Hidden Faith - Rabbi Akiva Fox

[Music] welcome to a another segment of our class on amuna on faith and to those that are watching from the camera I've always wanted to do this welcome to another segment of Fox News breaking news we are with you um a few years ago I found myself in the emergency room in Israel barem everything worked out it was just I was expecting and uh it was a very cute little boy um but I found myself in the emergency room in Israel and I had to get a IV an infusion so the nurse asked me which arm would I like to have the infusion would I like to have it in my left arm or my right arm very nice very um caring to be able to have the option of choosing which one I wanted so being the righteous sadic um saint that I am um I decided that I wanted it on my right arm and the reason I wanted it on my right arm is because I wear thin I put my filteries on my left arm so if I would have an IV and a needle and a tube in my left arm I would have a problem difficulty putting on to fill in so I decided um you know obviously this is all part of the uh makeup of somebody on my spiritual High elevated level I decided that I wanted it on my right arm so I told her I want it on my right arm and I explained to her my reasoning because of the Fillin and only in Israel this could happen she turned to me and said you have no faith now again coming from the high pedestal that I was coming on as the the sadic of the generation I was a little bit shocked I said what do you mean she said don't you have amuna don't you believe that you could be out of here by tomorrow morning that you won't have to stay in the in the hospital and you could put your filling on either arm and she was right I suddenly realized that maybe I'm not not as great as I thought I was this is actually something my wife has been trying to teach me for many years but um I suddenly realized she had an important message don't you havea sometimes we have this idea like yeah it's in the back of our head or it's something that if I need I'll say it but when it comes to crunch time do you believe do you have faith that in the day to day that in the humdrum of regular daily life that Hashem is with you that God is with you that God will help you so this is along the lines of what we were discussing we need to ask ourselves do we havea and not only do we have it but where do we get it where does amuna come from this is the question that we're going to focus on where do we get amuna where do we get our faith and in truth there are many different um parts and we will go in the in the following segments we're going to discuss it and it's a very very eye-opening um discussion about where a person gets his belief where a person gets his am so before we continue we're going to pause for station identification and I'm going to tell you a story now the difference there's a word in Yiddish for story called aa aa and a story sound like almost the same thing but there's a slight difference allow me to explain in a story it's the author or the narrator of the story's job or the hope is that the characters in The story will end up living happily ever after that's an historian in the Misa the hope is that the people hearing the story will end up living happily ever after meaning that when there's a Misa there's a message that we're supposed to learn that will change us that we will live happily ever after so there's an old yish M and the M goes as follows in the olden days in Europe there was a man man who was a Rabbid anti-semite and his job was that he helped people forget things he was a hypnotist and he would help people forget traumatic experiences or different things that they wanted to forget so he would put them in a trance and he would help them forget things so a Jew came to him seeking help he had a you know a traumatic a traumatic experience that he wanted to forget to erase from his memory maybe his wife burnt The Gila fish maybe the chant didn't come out good something really really serious that he wanted to remove from his memory so he comes to this hypnotist and he says please help me forget it so the hypn hypnotist you know takes out his little glass ball and he hypnotizes him and he helps him forget it and while he's in this trance this conniving scheming hypnotist again the Rabbid anti-semite says and now forget you're a Jew so the Jew responds I can't so the hypnoti says but why he says I cannot forget I'm a Jew because there's a God so the hypnotist said well then forget there's a God and he says I can't Hy says why he says because I'm a Jew now the moral of the story is that for a Jew God is a reality God is part of belief in God is part of our makeup our DNA there was a poem written years ago probably when I when I was a teenager called my fellow Jew and one of the stanzas one of the lines was very beautiful if I would look into your heart I would see the face of God a Jew in his heart has belief in God it's there it's inherent it's internal and it's also Eternal it always was there and it will always be there it's something that has been given to him or he has inherited just as much as his blood type just as much as he looks like his parents who looked like their grandparents so too there is belief in God actually in Hebrew the word for an agnostic or an atheist or somebody who doesn't believe in God the word is a kofer somebody who denies God existence is called a kofer but in truth the word kofer actually means cover up for example Noah Noah when he built the ark to hold all the animals he covered the T the Torah says he he was he covered it with a certain amount of Torah so the truth is that somebody who doesn't believe in God we don't call him an agnostic or an atheist we call him somebody who's covering it up there are many reasons why he may cover it up or maybe it was covered up for him by his by his lacking in education Etc But ultimately somebody who doesn't believe is just a show it's just a cover up because deep down there's no atheists in a foxhole and Jews are always in a foxhole in the Holocaust and throughout history those people who were so far removed from Jewish belief from Judaism in general and from faith in God when it came to crunch time when it came to difficult times tragedy Etc persecution ultimately the faith shined so belief and faith is an inherent quality in the Jewish people there are some who explain that this is one of the reasons why when God gave the Ten Commandments and ultimately the entire Torah he never said specifically that there was a Mitzvah a commandment to believe in God and the reason is because you don't need to command what already exists the belief is there the faith is there it needs to be uncovered it needs to be revealed but it's inside so if you're looking for faith if you're looking to believe if you're looking to trust in Hashem just like that Jew told the hypnotist I cannot forget God because I'm a Jew and I cannot forget a Jew that I'm a Jew cuz there's a God it's there you need to try to feel it you need to try to reveal it you need to pull off some layers to uncover it but ultimately it's there it's inside it's as we said inherent Faith it's internal faith and it's Eternal so we will learn some techniques how to reveal it how to uncover it how to ReDiscover what is truly there the inspirational faith that we have just by being Jews [Music]