#frumteens

"Yes," said Hashem, "but the Egyptians worshiped idols willingly and the Jews were forced to do so."

Now, if you realize it, it says absolutely NOWHERE that the Egyptians forced the Jews to worship idols. They made them work, but religion was never the issue. So why does the Medrash say that the Jews were "forced" to worship idols?

The answer is that the Jews were tortured and persecuted and killed and beaten. And when someone is in that much pain, we can't judge them. We don't know what we would do if we were in that position. And Hashem judged them then to be not responsible for their idol worship because their lives were just too excruciating to be able to resist temptation.

So listen, Hashem does punish. But maybe you don't deserve such a punishment like you might worry. Or at least, maybe not before you get a chance to show Hashem how you can really serve Him when the mess that you're going through is over. And it can end.

Or maybe - no, not maybe, this is for sure - Hashem only expects you to do the best that you can right now. He knows you and your abilities, but He also knows what you are going through, and he wants only that you be whatever you can be now.

And believe me, when you do one little Mitzvah, when you make one little Brachah, and despite everything you are going through you muster the Ruchniyus, and the strength and the Simcha within you to thank Hashem for a little candy bar by saying shehakol, that it means more to Him than everything in the world.

Hashem is there, in Shamayim, surrounded by His heavenly hosts, His angels, His serafim, millions and millions of them, singing praises to Him. It's the most awesome sight in all of existence. Too awesome for us to comprehend. And it never ends. It continues forever.

But suddenly, Hashem hold His hand up (kavyochel, of course), and shouts "Shaaa! Quiet! My Yid'leh is making a brachah!"

No matter what, you should always know that every little Mitzvah you do mean so so much to Hashem. Much more than the biggest Mitzvos of the biggest people.

Lets say for example a tree...its suppose to grow!! Where is Hashem in that picture? I'm really scaring myself since I'm pretty frum and I completely believe in Hashem. Its so hard to live like this!

Thanks

A tree takes soil, sunlight, and water, combines them all and produces an apple, made out of those ingredients.

How does it know how to do this? Not a single scientist in the world can do it. Give him dirt, water and sunlight and ask him to make an apple. Wont happen.

So how does the tree know how to do it? Who "programmed" the tree with this wisdom?

Every leaf on a tree has one shiny side and one dull side. the shiny side "catches" the sunlight and uses it for the tree's purpose. The dull side does not have sun-catching apparatus.

In every tree in the world, every leaf grows with the shiny side up, cuz that’s where the sun is.

How did the tree "know" that the sun is up? And that it should put the sun-catching apparatus on the top of the leaf? And never on the bottom?

I could go on literally forever. Every single cell in a tree - and every thing else in the world - contains so much wisdom and shows awareness of everything else in the world. Who "programmed" these mega-computers?

That’s Hashem. There is no other alternative.

I don’t know whets wrong w/ me but I'm still iffy on that... The leaves sense the sunlight so they are attracted to it and therefore the shiny side grows upwards...now what?

Even a plant growing totally in the dark will have the shiny side up. But that’s not the point. The point is, how does the leaf "sense" that the sun is "up"? And that it needs the sun? And that its response, in order to survive, is to put the shiny stuff in a position to catch the sun? Maybe it needs shade not sun? Maybe it should "sense" the shade and reverse its leaves?

Obviously, the tree has been "programmed" to "know" all this stuff. Question: Who taught the tree all this knowledge?

Just as G-d has no hand, so too He has no strength, no wisdom and no goodness. He has no components. If he would have components, the combination of those components would be the cause of Him (since without some or all of those components He would be different or non-existent), and He has no cause. But now the question arises: If Hashem has none of these attributes, doesn’t that mean that Hashem is imperfect? How can a perfect G-d have no strength, no wisdom, and no goodness?

The answer is that G-d has no strength because He doesn’t need strength; no wisdom because He has no need for wisdom; no goodness because He has no need for it. Strength is only necessary when there is something for you to pit your strength against. If someone can lift 400 pounds it means he can overcome 400 pounds of resistance. Strength is a compensating force that allows you to overcome opposition.

If there is nothing capable of presenting resistance to Hashem, saying that He is “strong” is absurd.

Wisdom is a tool used to figure things out; knowledge is the thing you use to overcome ignorance.

G-d doesn’t need any of these things. Indeed, He cannot have them; they make no sense in the context of Hashem.

G-d is not ignorant even though He has none of what we call "knowledge" – so He doesn’t need knowledge. He is not weak even though He has none of what we call "strength". G-d doesn’t need the assistance of these compensating abilities because He has nothing to compensate for.

“All-powerful”, when we apply it to Hashem, does not mean quantitatively more powerful than you and I. It's not that Hashem has more power than anyone else. Hashem's power is completely different than what we understand power to be in this world.

Power, to us, means the ability to overcome something. Perhaps to lift weight (overcoming resistance), to jump high (overcoming gravity), or to figure out a mystery (overcoming lack of knowledge).

Limits come into the picture when the power that we want to overcome is greater than the power we possess. A limit means that there is some other power greater than yours.

Power and limits are expressions of the same thing. It's just a matter of how much power there is.

None of this makes sense when it comes to Hashem. When we say, “Hashem is all-powerful” it doesn't mean that He has power like we have except that He has an infinite amount of it. That would mean that the difference between Him and us is that we can only overcome a limited amount of things, but He can overcome everything.

Nope. That's not the idea. It's not that He is stronger than any power, but rather that He is the only power. There is no opposing external force for him to vanquish, since He is the creator, maintainer, and controller of all power in the world.

If you want to say that Hashem does have limits, I would ask you what the source is of the power that you say is stronger than Hashem. Since we can prove that the world - the entire world - has a creator, then the power that you claim is stronger than Hashem also must have a creator. Which means, ultimately, that the creator of the world can have no limits, since He would be the creator of power as well. And if you create and control all power in the world, you cannot have any limits, because limits means there is a power stronger than you.

When you understand how Hashem created the universe, you realize that He must be all-powerful. Not because he has more power than anything, but because there is no power except Him.

Hashem is called “Makom"” (place). The reason, Chazal say, is because “The world is not a place for Hashem, but rather Hashem is a place for the world”. This means that the entire world, the entire universe - reality itself as we know it - is only an expression of Hashem's will.

A good way to understand Hashem's existence versus ours (only as a moshol, a parable, of course) is to imagine a little world that exists only in your mind. Little people, little cities, little rivers and forests - all in your imagination.

This is a moshol to explain how Hashem created the world. Those people in your mind have real existence - they are little electrical impulses in your brain, which are involved in your thought process -but compared to you, they don't really exist at all.

So too we exist in some way, but only as expressions of the Will of Hashem. “Ain Ode Milvado” - there is nothing except Hashem. “This means nothing has true existence like Hashem” (Rambam Yesodei HaTorah 1:4).

In your imaginary world, there would be no such thing as you having limits on the power you possess. Since the entire thing is only an expression of your will, no power there can exist without your desire. It would make no sense to question whether you are “strong” enough to lift a big rock in your world or to revive someone from the dead, since the rock is only heavy by your will and the person is only dead because you imagined it so.

Your will controls everything and so no force exists except you.

When we say Hashem is all-powerful, we do not mean that He is stronger than anything, but rather there is no strength at all in the entire world except Him.

Second: Besides that, proactively trying to get rid of these thoughts just makes them stronger. You can't get rid of thoughts by thinking about them. Try this:

For the next 30 seconds, try very hard not to think of a pink elephant.

See what I mean?

The same thing applies to these kind of thoughts. The more you try not to think of them, the more they entrench themselves in your mind.

But the good news is: Don't worry so much about this. Yes, we need to stay away from things that trigger bad thoughts and images, and people profoundly underestimate the damage such exposure does (listen to this shiur about it), but the Torah was given to human beings, not angels, and nobody is perfect. Unless we were brought up in an enclave like Monroe or New Square or perhaps in certain extremely rare families, we’ve been exposed to tons of stuff that has a negative effect on us. When I was in 11th grade, which was before any of you – and perhaps even some of your parents - were born, my rebbi related to us the following fact of life that he heard back then from his son’s Rosh Yeshiva:

Your children will be exposed to more Tumah going to the corner grocery to buy a drink than your grandparents were all their lives in Europe. It is not possible anymore to rely only on sheltering our children. We must also teach them to resist the Tumah.

And this was back then. There is a certain Adam Gadol who told someone I know that when he was a boy he was a fan of the Yankees, and even when he grew up and became a big Rosh yeshiva, he found it very hard to eradicate the feeling of happiness he had when he heard that the Yankees won the world series. (But eventually he succeeded.)

Lishmah, "For Hashem's sake" does not mean to benefit Hashem - chas vsholom - He does not benefit from our Mitzvos. It means, rather, to do Mitzvos in order to fulfill Hashem's will. And Hashem's will is that we should get Olam Habah. Therefore, doing Mitzvos for Hashem's sake means that we have in mind that the reason we want to go to Olam Habah is because Hashem desires that.

Thus, the ultimate goal of Hashem - for us to go to Olam Habah - and the ultimate goal of ours - to do Mitzvos for Hashem's sake, go hand in hand.

Just like everyone was created by G-d, everyone is connected to the Torah, which is a reflection of G-d, the Creator.

The difference between your taste in food and Judaism is that regarding Judaism, even if someone does not like its taste, it still benefits him since it will give him life in this world and the next, regardless of whether he is on a level to realize that.

It is analogous to a world of poisoned apples and one healthy one. The poisoned ones may taste better, but they’re still not best for you.

If someone would realize the benefits the Torah has for him, and the detriment of not following it, they surely would choose Torah.

The reason they do not realize this is either they do not know, or because there is a Yetzer Horah that was created specifically to distract people from thinking about this. 

So in other words, those who do not like this "apple" only do so because they are blinded by the Yetzer Horah. 

If someone were going to jump off a roof, would you say that for him, life is just an apple that he feels is better rejected?

Or would you say that he is not thinking straight for whatever reason. (And please don’t respond with cases where a person has such a messed up life that it makes sense for him to want to die. I'm not talking about that now.)

Yes, the Torah is definitely for everyone. G-d said so, and He knows best.

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It definitely would be much better for them if they would indeed just change their lifestyle overnight. The problem is, humans are humans, and being used to a totally different lifestyle, it will be very very hard for them to do just change suddenly. It takes an almost impossible amount of self-discipline and willpower. They are more likely not to give up if they take it slowly and get used to it little by little.

He then says that following any such false redemption would be a violation of the Oaths, which were designed specifically to make sure that Klall Yisroel would not try to end the Golus before the proper time.

He says that this man cannot be Moshiach because, among other things, Moshiach will be suddenly and by surprise in Eretz Yisroel. Nobody will have expected this man to be Moshiach.

"At the time he is revealed, the nations will be petrified from what they hear about him; they will assemble to try to plot a defense in response to him, for they will be in awe and terrified at his open and indisputable signs and wonders".

The Rambam mentions the Kibutz Golius that Moshiach will perform, and also says that the fulfillment of world peace and the "conclusion" of the "fearful acts that will take place from east to west", "they will not happen at the beginning of his revelation in the world, but rather after the war of Gog and Magog."

Moshiach will be a prophet greater than all prophets except Moshe Rabbeinu. He will be a unique Tzadik as well, with qualities that were until then present only in Moshe Rabbeinu. He will be known as such. "Therefore, if someone who is not publicly known for his wisdom gets up and declares he is Moshiach, we may not believe him."

In other words, first Moshiach will be revealed suddenly in Eretz Yisroel, with signs that he is Moshiach, then, after Moshiach's revelation according to those signs, there will be Kibutz Golius, the war of Gog and Magog (it is clear that the war of Gog and Magog will be after the revelation of Moshiach), then other Messianic prophecies will be fulfilled.

This is supported by the Gemora at the beginning of Avodah Zorah which states that even before the war of Gog and Magog, Moshiach will be revealed, known to the nations of the world, and the nations will be so scared of him that they all want to become Jewish.

So even though we will not know for sure that this person is Moshiach, we will have a measure of evidence, such that we will be entitled to assume that he is indeed the real Moshiach. And that assumption would allow us to follow him from Kibutz Golius.

The problem is, the Rambam in Mishneh Torah says (11:3) that "Moshiach will not need to do any signs or wonders and change things in the world or nature or resurrect the dead ... rather, if someone of Dovidic lineage, and performs mitzvos like his father Dovid ... and will make all of Klall Yisroel follow the Torah, and repent, he is assumed to be Moshiach. If he succeeds..."

SO first, even here, the Rambam tells us that a prerequisite even for a person to be assumed to be Moshiach is that he will cause all of Klall Yisroel to do Teshuva. 

But besides Teshuva, the Rambam also says (11:12) that all Jews will gather around moshiach, who will determine their lineage with Ruach HaKodesh, and (see Kesef Mishna) that he will also possess the Urim V'Tumim.

In Hilchos Teshuva the Rambam writes that Moshiach will be wiser even than Shlomo HaMelech, and all the Goyim will come and listen to him.

And more: The Rambam writes that one of the requirements of a Navi in general is that he performs supernatural acts to prove his stature.

And the Rambam in Pirush HaMishnayos in Sanhedrin (ch. 11) explains that all the world, including the Goyim, will make peace with Moshiach and serve him, "because of his great righteousness and the wonders that he will do, yet reality will not be changed from what it will currently be, except for the fact that the Jews will not be under subjugation."

So clearly, there will be many wondrous acts and even miracles that the Moshiach will perform, even before the world changes, and what the Rambam says that Moshiach will not do any wonders or miracles is referring to wonders and miracles such as he lists, like the resurrection of the dead and similar things that are changes in the reality of the world, things that will indeed happen later on in the Messianic age. So all the Rambam means, as he says more clearly in Peiruch HaMishnayos, is that the Moshiach will not perform any Messianic changes in the world until later on, but even at the beginning of his revelation, he will perform several wondrous acts.

When all that happens, we can follow that man into Kibutz Golius.