Teachings

A Collection of Rabbi Vigler’s Past Teachings

Drops In The Well

Bite-Sized Wisdom For Daily Living

AN ANCHOR OF BITACHON

It has been quite a year! Who could have predicted last Rosh Hashanah what we really needed to daven for... A year that turned everything topsy turvy and ushers in now a new year of chaos and uncertainty...

What does a world in turmoil say to us as a community, as a Nation and as individuals? Are we too feeling the uncertainty and the fear? Where do we draw the strength from?

As I reflect back on the last year I want to share with you the big moment that just hit me. It wasn't Corona, it was way before. It took place on the 14th of Kislev. That was 3 months before the Corona shutdown. It was the last day of a very sad Shiva with a family who is near and dear to my heart, and the closest of friends. The entire community was in shock from that Shiva. The levaya and shiva had been packed, children of all ages, adults, friends, young and old were all there. Everyone needed to just be there.

But Shiva can sometimes be surreal - with throngs of people coming in and out of the house. When Shiva ends and the door closes on the last of the visitors, oh then, the loneliness begins and the void in the heart....

As the young children and father were getting up from Shiva, a large crowd filled the dining room, the kitchen the lounge...Up the steps, outside, in the driveway, in the tent. Nobody wanted to leave. Everyone just wanted to stop the world, to press pause. Or better yet rewind.... Because who could come to terms with the depth of the tragedy.

It felt almost as if staying there would delay the unavoidable. The traditional nails were knocked into the ground where the avelim had sat, as if to say - okay guys, you are done. get up. enough mourning! Let the living live!

A bad joke it seemed.... because how do you stop mourning when the pain is so raw. And what do you tell the children? and where do you find place for all the love in your heart that now has to be directed at a neshama in abstract Heaven.....

I was working the Rabbinic side of things, making sure that all the halachic rituals were being carried out. The last Kaddish of Shiva was recited, it was time to shake off that Shiva and walk around with the block. The pain was unbearable.

And just then, spontaneously, a bereaved husband - who only moments earlier was not embarrassed to shed tears like a baby, and to grieve for the love - he began humming: ay ti di duy duy duy, thank you Hashem. Ay ti di duy duy duy thank you Hashem....

He nodded to his children - guys, it's ok. I know it's out of place. But sing along... It seemed inappropriate. This was not a wedding nor a simcha.

But the niggun caught on. THANK YOU HASHEM...

I wasn't sure what I was feeling inside. A family with tears in their eyes and pain in their hearts, but with a resilience the likes of which I have never witnessed ...uy ti di duy duy duy, Thank You Hashem.

Thank you Hashem that we are alive, and together. Thank you Hashem that you know the best for us and nothing bad can come from Above. If G-d made it, it has to be good! Thank you Hashem for the challenges that make us better people.

Thank you Hashem for the ability to Thank you Hashem.

I mulled over those moments many times this past year. I told it over to many people. As their eyes seems at times despondent, worried. quarantined, alone, in despair. What will be, the world is so uncertain. You don't know where the country is going to be, the state, and who knows about the city.

But at the end of Yom Kippur last year we proclaimed. And this year again we will all, G-d willing, proclaim: SHEMA YISROEL HASHEM ELOKEINU HASHEM ECHAD. There never was stability to this fragile world. This country, state and city never did provide the stability we thought they did. Because TOLEH ERETZ AL BLI MA - the entire earth is suspended on nothingness. We are indeed thankful and grateful to our great city, state and country. G-d bless America! Yet our happiness and simcha is never determined by the goings on around us....

Because VE'ATA HU MELECH E-L CHAI VEKAYAM. There is, there was, and there will always be, only the anchor of ONE, And this is our quest that HASHEM HU HA'ELOKIM, HASHEM HU HA'ELOKIM.

I told it to them, I told it to myself and I share it with you. I learned that day that the world can fall apart around me but if I have G-d in my life I can be a beacon of strength, resilience and happiness. And the world around me rejoices BECAUSE I do. I saw a man lead his family, friends and community with ferocious simcha. Indeed, with a weeping heart but with an unparalleled resolve.

Thank you Hashem. Through the pain and the suffering, the struggles and the tears.

Thank you Hashem for affording us all the opportunity to experience the Power of You in these Awesome Yamim Noraim.

Please join me this Motzei Shabbos in joyous song and fabrengen as we usher in the Slichos and the Yamim Noraim. Thank you, thank you Hashem!

With loving wishes for a Kesiva vachassima Torah G-d give us the strength! G-d give us a revealed year of goodness and redemption!

Rabbi Yoseph Vigler