Confessions of a Holy Teen

“Daddy, how am I supposed to be a good Jew when my own body is attacking me from all sides?”  

For the first time in life, my child is encountering the yetzer hara (evil inclination) – by way of a body expressing needs that run counter to a holy life. The need for acceptance. The need for approval. The need to be the center of attention. The need to follow those who are the center of attention quite often at the expense of those who are not.   

My child is not happy about being bombarded by thoughts of things that fly in the face of everything a Jew aspires to in life.   

My child doesn’t want to turn in a foreign direction.  

“Daddy, why does God do this? Why does He make it impossible to serve His will?” 

It’s a good question.  

An Answer 

We are the nation of Israel, which means Yashar Kail, or the straight journey to Hashem. Handcuffed to our physical bodies, we default to thinking that the straight path to God is, well, straight.  

What is the symbol of Israel? It’s the Magen David, the six-pointed star.  Why does it have six points? It symbolizes Hear, O Israel, Hashem our God, Hashem is One.  

God is above, below, to the left, to the right, forward, and backward. God is multidimensional. God is everywhere. The path to Him is straight, but from His infinite perspective, and not ours. Going forward could be moving backward, and moving backward could be lurching forward.  

Don’t believe me?  

All his life, Korach advanced professionally, physically, and spiritually. Was he moving forward? All of it led him to reach a level of arrogance where the earth swallowed him up.  

The Chofetz Chaim was a man of humble means. He never “advanced” professionally because he did everything in the name of heaven. He never accepted the title of “Rabbi” until he needed it for a visa to join the great Rabbis of Europe for an important meeting of minds.  

His “moving backwards” led him to a level of humility where he prophetically educated the Jewish People to use words wisely — right at the dawn of mass communication. Ninety years later, there isn’t a single Jew on earth who doesn’t rely on his teachings to navigate the minefields of human relationships, internet, smartphones, television, and social media.  

The straight path to Hashem is as much down as it’s up, and it’s just as backward as it’s forward.  

Praiseworthy to Dwell in Your Home 

Hashem put us in these bodies. He straight-jacketed our souls into machines with needs for money, food, praise, and other things that suffocate our spirit. In doing so, He force feeds us disappointment, failure, and sin.  

Why? King Solomon, the wisest of all men, tells us:  

The righteous fall seven times. (Mishlei 24:16). 

The greatest Jews who ever lived failed at least seven times in their lives.  

If the greatest Jews experienced disappointment, failure, and sin, seven times in their lives, how many times have our bodies brought us down? How many times will we continue to be jolted backward like a rancher lassoing a horse by the neck? 

What does Hashem think about this? 

It’s in the great gift of the Ashrei prayer (Psalm 145).  In this Psalm, God communicates to us through His prophet King David:

חַנּוּן וָרַחוּם ה’, אֶרֶךְ אַפַּיִם וּגְדָל חָסֶד

The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in loving-kindness. (Psalm 145:8) 

Hashem commands us to remember three times a day that He is patient with us. He knows the world we live in, He created it. He knows our bodies overpower our sensibilities, He created them. 

He did not create His world for us to be perfect, but for us to work towards perfection. That can only happen by enduring and healing all the wounds that inevitably come when the weight of the body crushes our soul.  

He rewards the efforts more than the results.  

This is our struggle. This is our fight.  

Hashem is slow to anger and abundant in kindness because these failures make up the essential ingredient to the great redemptions that spring forth from them.   

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David Ben Horin lives in Afula with his family, millions of sunflowers, and Matilda, our local camel. David‘s Israeli startup, 300 Marketing Solutions, is a lean marketing agency for startups and small businesses that creates and promotes SEO-optimized ROI-driven to the right audience on LinkedIn to make your business the star of the show.