Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz - Caring For Klal Yisrael in Times of War

hi good morning everyone and uh I do want to uh thank you RAB sh for your kind words and I do want to thank the OU generally and we're honored with r Hower being here uh for organizing this all day conference uh it deals with a vital vital issue um all of us are kind of in a state of trauma uh since October 7 and we need to know how the Torah directs us to deal with this how spiritual leaders or ranim uh can help uh this situation know just a little vignette when I became a a synagogue Rabbi in 1988 where I was interviewing for the for the for a job so you know I was uh recently out of Yeshiva so I figured my main job would be to give shim to give Torah you know and I wanted to say Torah and a woman got up in the interviewing process and said you know we don't need more shim we have enough people in the city that give Shor we need someone that can help us deal with personal crisis now I have to admit I was a offended at the time uh because what do you mean you know this and that I mean I went to Yeshiva I mean basically I want to give Shor that's what I want to do and of course Shor Torah are extremely important God forbid I'm not going to disparage the importance of of Shor Tor but the truth of the matter is in her perhaps hyperbolic statement there is a lot of truth that people are hurting on all sorts of levels uh and it's amazing one of the things you discover in the ravinet is how much pain there is in the world whether it's sholom bias issues whether it's raising children issues whether it's illness whether it's financial problems and people want comfort and people need and one of the most important jobs of a is to try to give that try to give that now particularly we're dealing now with not the runof-the-mill problems which are of course hard enough we're dealing with the unique challenges of War this imperative becomes uh becomes even even greater um and indeed what's interesting is uh that This Woman's Instinct of what we need was actually echoed by a great great great ghor UH 60 70 years earlier none other than the great Rim salic when we think about salek we of course think of intellectual Brilliance and depth of the you know unbelievable caliber the whole originator of the advanced talmudic learning in the lashi yeshivas is basically a legacy of R Sal and for some reason I don't I don't remember all the details um because it just occurred to me now EP in Europe uh there was an interview they were interviewing prominent ranim what they thought the most important role of arav was they actually had interviews they interviewed the and he said as you might guess the most important role of AR is to Pas which of course is what the did par exence when they came to of Sal the great brilliant unbelievably deep of Sal he said the most important role of the rav is to stand up for those who are oppressed to help those who are suffering pain to show compassion for those who need this is what said and it's no accident that K in V which is right next to the N it describes him as with all of his go the one description that's there is the man of kindness the man of so there are really two things here which in some ways are a little contradictory the R's goal uh is to offer to offer strength to offer a sense of comfort and helping people holding their hands in difficult times even if there's nothing you can do you can always cry with a person I sit with you I'm here on the other hand I have to make an opposite point and brashem I do see that this is actually the Symposium subject uh 3M and that is aav also has to know his limits I mean there are issues of mental health that do require the treatment of professionals and all of us perhaps uh we have um a Superman comp uh complex or whatever is we think we can solve all problems in fact it is the great wisdom of aav to know when to refer people to outside Specialists I mean aab cannot do everything sometimes it might even be counterproductive so along with the spiritual and the Insight that one can get from Torah knowledge and the like one also has to be able to know who to turn to to refer to every R should always have a whole list of different people in different professions whether it's in branches of medicine branches of of psychology Psychiatry social work R should have a little book maybe a big book in which uh he works with a team even in that's necessary right how can arav pasin on medical technology issues unless he knows the technology unless he knows the process right garbage in garbage out you can know the whole if you don't know the your answer is going to be wrong unless you subscribe to a mystical rues theory of Pak which may work at best maybe for the gim but suffice it to say I'm not on that much regga and basically I would have to pass again based on factual accurate information and I hope I'm not insulting anybody by saying that you know we have to more or less work with that same process so the same way that's true for physical msas it's equally true for mental health issues so on one hands it is our primary task to offer comfort in and at the same time we need to be aware of our limitations in a very very significant way so you got to balance those two things now I do know that of course there are rabana who are also professionally trained therapists and they always have a little bit of a conflict issue about whether they should charge because ranim typically don't charge for their time therapists do so kind of I'm not a therapist I don't have that particular issue but sometimes I know rabam say well G at what point do I take off my rubs hat and put on my therapist hat and uh start the meter running okay that's a separate issue that one would have to talk about now when we think about dealing with trauma in times of of War I think there are two very distinct issues that a RAV will be called upon to deal with one is actual grief meaning people who suffer bereavement people who have lost lost children have lost spouses they are in actual suffering actual sorrow what can you say to a parent that has lost a child or a wife that's lost a husband or anyone any and of the families of the victims uh of the 1200 people and the hostages and the like that's one situation I'm I'm not sure what to call that you might call that acute trauma in which there's an actual traumatizing event that happened within their family but then there's a second issue that really all of us even though even those of us who did not directly suffer and that is a sense of anxiety a sense of fear a sense of a lack of control a loss of control in our lives uh it's not even connected to something that directly impacted on me although of course we should feel the Sor of every Jew but it's we're in a situation I mean for example we're in jush should continue has been relatively peaceful relatively stable but honestly you we just don't know every day God forbid something could happen now that that creates a a secondary trauma that's not the trauma of actual grief and bereavement but that's the trauma of the anxiety of just not knowing what the next thank you so much what the next what the next day is going to bring now those are two different types of traumas and in some ways they're dealt with differently I'm going to start with the second one first because the second one in a sense is a little easier to deal with because someone is not in an acute State and I'll start with another Misa of Rim's son uh the brisar where the brisar for a while was trapped in the waro ghetto and then miraculously he was smuggled out and he eventually came to AR is this is Son brisker and the brisar as it was known had what you might call a bit of a nervous temperament because of his he was always worried did he do this Mitzvah right did he do that Mitzvah right he was always that maybe he wasn't yot properly but in the warto people noticed he seemed unnaturally calm he would go around his daily schedule he would give Shor now in the wara as as you know I mean people people were dying right and left whether it was from direct German murder whether it was from disease whether it was from starvation and the brisar seemed to be okay with everything and someone had theah I don't know if it was a son or someone to ask him you know Reby you're always so nervous about everything uh how could you be calm in this environment and the brisar answered I'm nervous on things that are within my responsibility doing Mitzvah is up to me so when when I have a job I worry did I do the job right or not what happens if you're in a situation where you have absolutely have no control over it at all there's nothing you can do some people might go crazy some people might have suicide there are famous animal experiments not that we should do those types of experiments in which rats were put into a a a water that they couldn't escape from and and they literally kind of like killed themselves or whatever rat suicide would would would be uh that's the sense of helplessness but the risk rev says for me it's the opposite when I know there's nothing I can do then I know Hashem is taking over if Hashem is taking over I can have trust I can have B now I want to point out the Brisa was not referring to the panish idea that life will always have a happy ending he himself had lost his repon and lost some children in the Holocaust and he saw every day what was happening in the world again but as the points out is a much more mature and sober reflection on life than the notion that everything is going to be happy people die people get sick things happen we can't make that go away unfortunately Hashem is full of RA and indeed we do and we pray but at the end of the day things do happen but Gamul Lova says even if it's something I don't want there is a purpose there is a Tas there is some long-term plan that aesh has things are not random things are not chaotic things are not meaningless and as Victor Frankle said Victor Frankle was not an observant Jew but I would dare say he was a highly spiritual person said when you have a why you can bear almost any what if you know there's a purpose you know there's something here going on even if you can't quite figure it out one is able to bear with the uncertainty one is able to Bear even with the suffering and again I R's point would be to stress in these general concepts the notion of gam the way the is ma it the idea of the brisar that precisely in our helplessness we can find security and we can find a a a comfort uh you know that's why it's the morale points out there are two famous metaphors that kazal used for the process of gula the process of mashia one is mashia the birth Pains of mashia and the idea is that just as birth is preceded by severe labor pains the process of gula is going to be preceded by a lot of dislocations with go whatever it would be the rambam warns us not to be too specific to tie the events of current events to the processes but in a general way there Mas but the morale points out there's another metaphor that is used and that is the coming of GAA is called a a growth we talk about mashia as the the shoot the offshoot of D Fact one of the names of mashia is and the morale says what is the analogy to plant life because when a seed is planted it first more or less disintegrates it disappears into the soil and then gets reconstituted the moral says GAA comes when we obliterate our ego you know we've we I mean the Jewish people specifically the state of Israel and the human race as a whole we have accomplished remarkable things science technology uh what has been done in the state of Israel since 1948 and even before is nothing short of miraculous we've done many many things and that's a wonderful accomplishment absolutely but there's always the danger in all human accomplishments of what the Torah calls it's my power I'm in charge and the morale says when we're filled with egotism the Gula cannot come there's no room so to speak for God to to make his presence manifest so as a result the moral says that the period before mashiach will be like a seed in which our ego has to disintegrate we have to be aware of how little control we have over our lives and then as the mishna says we can only rely on God and that itself is a source of comfort not a source of source of Despair and over the past three four five years I think we've learned again and again and again and again how little control we actually have over things going back to co like say the later servus make us forget the earlier servus so no one no one no one's thinking about Co anymore but look how Co shut down the world uh for two two and a half years a little virus and everything stops with all of our advances in science and technology and then we thought we had a Jewish State and yes of course Israel has Wars all the time but you know these are Wars that didn't really affect uh the direct civilian population and then October 7 Israel has the greatest Security in the world and people are still pondering how could there be such a massive failure of security and intelligence in October 7th it is actually a mystery and yet aish allows these things to happen in part to show that we need the Army and we're eternally grateful to theim of course we need intelligence military intelligence and that's absolutely a of hisas but at the end of the day without aish there is no system that we create that will be able to endure so these are kind of the general ideas in which uh again I'm not dealing right now with specific bement I I'll address that in in a in a few moments I'm just dealing with the general anxiety that a person has to have trust in to understand to understand but again again again not in what is frankly the immature idea that every story will have a happy ending I think that's giving false hope sometimes and that's going to be an actual disservice when things don't come out that way but there's a more deeper and mature way of the Kish in which things have a purpose things are not at random and in fact um the mforum say actually it's maybe may even be a gamor depending how you interpret it that that's the meaning of the shma or one of the meanings of shma Hashem Hashem is the elu is elim the so from our perspective we see two modalities within God we see the r and we see punishment or suffering but ultimately it's the din itself is an expression of a higher that may not be revealed to us until the end of days but that is the ultimate in fact I heard from a a visiting R who actually is a very very beautiful V if you remember mosenu asked hasem why do the righteous suffer that's show me your ways M was asking God what's going on you're just you're compassionate you're good you're merciful why is there so much suffering of e of of righteous people in the world and Hashem didn't want didn't really answer him Hashem said I'm merciful to whom I choose to be merciful Etc Hashem didn't give him an answer and in fact many say when the gamar in the darm says mosha raenu reached 49 levels of understanding a God but getting hit Level 50 this was the 50th level that even mosha couldn't understand butes told him in a very mystical passage in the Torah I will put you in the Clift of the rock I will pass by you uh I will cover you my cover your eyes with my hands and you will then I'll take off my hands very anthropomorphic and you will see me from the back but you will not see me from the front so I'll give you two just on that P but both of them make the same point the first is from theam Cipher where God is telling Moshe you will understand things in hindsight when everything happens the whole passage of History then you'll understand but as it's coming to you it's not going to make sense that's what the S says another again I heard from a visiting R he didn't tell me to m is kazal say when Moshe saw God from the back he saw the Fillin that God was wearing and he saw the knot of this villain obviously what that means would would mean a lot of explanation but simply focusing on the knot of thein we know thein sh Ro has a knot and there are two straps that come out of the knot one is to your right one is to your left in cabala the right side represents the left side represents powers of judgment so when I look at you from the front I see and gur but from the back I see that the gur and the emanate from a common source so both more or less make the make the same point and these are inim that we need to very much be aware of and particularly the story of porm itself which God willing we coming to it's interesting how what's the French saying I won't say it in French because I'll probably mispronounce it but the old saying the more things change the more they remain the same uh you know 2,000 years ago there was a bad guy in Persia that was trying to destroy the Jewish people and we were very vulnerable we were very very vulnerable but God turned things around and there was a Yeshua well uh Flash Forward uh you know both Kamas and Hezbollah are essentially being financed from the auma of Iran which is Persia and once again therefore this is a very auspicious time in which Hashem brings Yeshua in the world fact people ask me uh should we tone down our porm celebrations because we're in a time of for well again I mean one one should make their own decisions and talk to their own postum but I I tell people personally that I think specifically porm is the one holiday of anything that you specifically celebrate because porm is the of GAA that we need this very uh this very moment so porm represents V that out of the darkness comes a very very great light and this is what again a RV has to convey of course the problem that all Rabon face I face is the old story of the salesman's motto and that is you can't sell what you wouldn't buy meaning to say we have to be on that level ourselves and then it becomes contagious if we're simply lecturing daring telling other people what they're supposed to feel and it's not where we're holding by definition we're going to be a little less effective in that mission now let me just say a few few words though about a more acute situation I think the thoughts I outlined would help in general for the anxieties that we're feeling to know that it's part of a greater process and to know that ultimately in the long run you know God is good God is merciful there'll be a way out of this and it'll be a precursor to something great and wonderful and good but what about the people who have actually suffered the traumatic loss what do you tell somebody and of course this could occur outside of War as well this is laava a a war situation who lost a child who lost a parent who lost a spouse in tragic situations there you know it's not so easy although philosophically the same answers are true Gamul all of that is true so here I would take a hint from the book of IV the book of IV is of course a book of theodicy dealing with the fundamental philosophical question why do bad things happen to good people e was a righteous sadic he may not have been Jewish the has opinion he may have been a hundred different people in fact according to one opinion in the gamor I is a fictional character Lo and the author of the book of e is none other than mosha Reno himself fascinating he asked takes question didn't get an answer he tried to explore it through fiction and anyway whether it's a fictional philosophical novel or whether it's an actual story whether I is Jewish whether I of is not Jewish these are interesting questions they're not that important for what we're talking about but if you remember I is a righteous man and all sorts of things happen to him he loses his children he loses his possessions he himself is Afflicted with diseases he loses his friends he loses his self-respect people don't even want to talk to him he stinks they don't want to sit next to him he suffers bereavements and he suffers humiliations and he suffers poverty and he suffers illness and his three friends come to comfort him and essentially they're they're trying to live within what we might call the standard Paradigm the standard Paradigm which the tor itself seems to say is you do good God will be good to you you do bad you're going to be punished so hey I you must have done something wrong here so look into your Deeds do chuva Etc which is you know certainly a response but and he says well I didn't do anything I'm not guilty of anything I want God to tell me what the problem is well be careful of what you ask for because you might get it God finally comes to e at the end of the book book and says I'm here is there anything you want to ask me of course yep doesn't ask anything but Hashem then basically describes the beauties of the world of the universe he talks about snow and rain and sun and moon and constellations and rare and unusual animals and he almost kind of there's almost a boastful tone he says to him could you do this could you do this could you do that what do you think of that strangely enough at the end of AES speeches I says now can have a double translation in Hebrew both of which fit very well one is I am comforted the other is I regret what I said okay but both fit very very nicely eeve was plated by the almighty's remarks now essentially the question is what on Earth is God responding and in a sense ieve is getting good news and bad news the good news is hey ieve you're right you're not a sinner and you're not deserving of any of you're not guilty of any of this well that's good news but that makes his problem worse if God would have said you know e if you have a number of aish you're not aware of that at least would have been an answer but God is saying we're fine you're great no problem so e of would automatically think so why is this happening so God says did you ever look at the mountain goat and the hippopotamus and the Leviathan and everything else I mean it seems to me that God seems to be evading the question so why is he of comforted you can spend a lifetime pondering exactly what the end of the book of e of is the friends are making the conventional argument and God is saying at least in some cases in some cases the conventional argument is incorrect but God doesn't State what the alternative argument is so one of the MIM is that is telling there is no answer I can give you right now but I just want you to be aware of my presence in the world I'm here I'm here you're going through Darkness you're going through suffering be aware that I'm with you and if you know that I'm with you you will be able to go on this is what says even if I walk in the Valley of Death L I will not be afraid because you are with me so what Hashem is telling I is I'm not going to give you specific answers to your question which is so interesting MOSI rabenu is basically admitting that he's failing a second time he tried to get the answer through prophecy and then he tries to get the anwers through philosophical speculation he comes out the same place so God is basically saying my comfort to you is to make you aware that I'm with you in your struggle now here's the thing if you're a caregiver you're a r you're a spiritual leader or what whatever it would be sometimes you know we immediately sometimes like to jump to meanings oh this happened because particular I have to say in AR cell in particular people love to ascribe very very specific meanings oh this happened because uh in the play that was the night before some of the girls were dress SAS or this happened because they pull down theer and or sometimes there'll be an attack on the religious it's because the religious people did this and we love and maybe it's part of human nature that we love to give reasons for things particularly when the reasons involve somebody else's imperfections so it's because of you right no it's because of you but the truth of the matter is none of us know kazal say that anyone who claims to be AI like NAA only exists among shim among fools kitanim someone claims to be a Nai I know why God did things you know who knows maybe maybe not for every reason somebody gives you can give a counter reason almost the opposite way you know you say lack of SAS I say oh la of you know whatever you can play the game I mean it's not a game each person should look into themselves for sure but the notion of accusation and cross accusation can go on indefinitely and what are you supposed to tell a parent your child died because of their Aus or your child died because of my Aus what what what Comfort is that but I think if you look at the book of IV you actually see the comfort is to emulate the ways of God a person in pain to tell that person to communicate to that person and maybe it's even in silence communication hold a hand sit next to them I am with you you're not alone hashem's promise to us is well bin in microcosm it is the mission of a spiritual leader IMO I am with you in your suffering I'm not going to be the proverbial Oracle or Prophet that gives reasons and says why there may be a time for that later there may be a time for introspection and Chua and of of course there is a person looks into things but in the immediate aftermath of Grievous loss the role is not to explain the role is not even to justify the role is not to give reasons or even higher meaning the role is to be there and share in a person's and indeed um I I I've I've heard it said from Bergman Riva he should be well that he points out you know when you make when you when you bench you were saved from something so the is you have to bench go with a minion has to be public when you make the is that we do it privately we don't make he says what's the difference so he says when I'm thanking God and I'm proclaiming God's I should do that in a way where other people will also have the same feeling I should share the feeling but when I'm accepting God's judgment that's not emotion other people should feel other people should not just say oh whatever hasm did to you they shouldn't they should be outraged they should be hurt they should be paid therefore the emotion that the avod that calls upon the one who is bed is not necessarily the same emotion that others should feel so as I said in the beginning of my remarks there are a lot of problems in life that we're not going to be able to solve but but even if we can't solve them we can cry with the person and that can itself be a great comfort the empathy The Compassion the caring that we show can make a very very very big difference in a person's lives it can give them the strength to go on it can give them the courage to confront a difficult life it can give them the ability to Envision the possibility of a future and you know you didn't have an answer there's no answer we necessarily know but just being there can perform an immensely important function and as I say sometimes the most important thing they R Ritson can do is just to be there so BM again I I want to commend to the OU for the uh for everything they do all the wonderful things they do but particularly having this conference and may uh this be a source that will eventually translate into and encouragement of all of those who are suffering may we be however to the yes and may this upcoming holiday of por and once again be [Music] of