Even in our dark hours, we have the capacity for Emunah, a quality that is indelibly embedded in the fabric of every Jewish soul.
Dignity - in Life and in Death
Browsing through some old books, I opened a holocaust work to a photograph of a row of Jews facing a trench soon to be their grave. The trench was half-filled with bodies. Behind each Jew was a smirking Nazi officer holding a gun to the back of his helpless victim's head.
There was an inspiring beauty in this disturbing picture that contrasted with the sickening agony and cruelty of the scene: The uprightness and dignity with which these heroic people bore themselves. The central figure, perhaps a rabbi, stood tall and erect in what appeared to be his Shabbas clothes. He looked as if he was standing in Shul at Neilah on Yom Kippur.
The Jews in the photograph appeared certain that in their imminent death they would fulfill Hashem's will in the same way they had done with each mitzvah during their lives. Their faces expressed the indivisible Oneness of Hashem, an unshakable belief that the Divine will is the only source for every occurrence, good or bad. It was a striking metaphor for last week's essay, The Shema - its Origin and Meaning. Unable to pull my eyes away from the photograph, I couldn't help wondering from where these people drew their strength? What was the source of their Emunah (belief in G-d)? I wondered not only about those in the picture but also about the hundreds of thousands who sang Anni Ma'ammin (I Believe with perfect faith…) on their wretched marches to the gas chambers.
This led me to a second question - on my essay of last week: How could Yaacov's sons have been so sure that the level of their ownEmunah matched that of their saintly father, Yaacov? Even harder to comprehend is how we can declare in the Shema every day that our levels of Emunah match that of Ya'acov's? And from where can we draw Emunah during the darker hours of our own lives?
My questions led me to two astonishing discoveries, the one about the source of Emunah, the other about its nature.
The Source of Emunah
When Hashem commands Moshe to tell the people of Israel in Egypt of his prophetic conversation with G-d, Moshe audaciously challenges G-d with: Ve'hein lo ya'aminu li ("And they will not believe me," - Shemos 4:1). G-d answers (see Talmud, Shabbas 97a): "They are believers the children of believers." In this response Hashem provides us with a surprising revelation regarding the source of Jewish Emunah: Emunah is a deep property of the Jewish soul, it is a part of Jewish DNA inherited from our parents; we are born with it.
Moshe's unlikely story about G-d's revelation to him told to a downtrodden nation drifting far from its Jewish roots, resonated with the intrinsic, innate Emunah they inherited from their forefathers. Had the Jews in Egypt critically analyzed the likelihood of Moshe's message being true, they would have rejected him. Moshe realized this and refers to it in his response to G-d's command: "They will know that I don't even have the qualities to be eligible for prophecy," he said (See Ramban 4:1). But Emunah is not derived from an analytical process of reasoning, nor can it be established by scientific proof. Emunah is a fine feeling as the Chazon Ish[1] writes in the opening of his poetic work, Emunah uVitachon (Faith and Trust), it "is a fine property of the nobility of soul" - that we inherit from our parents and forefathers.
The idea of Emunah being an inherited property innate to the Jewish soul is used by R. Avrohom Grodzinski[2] to answer my second question: How Yaacov's sons were so sure that the level of their ownEmunah matched that of their saintly father's. The very fact that the sons link their own belief in G-d's Oneness to the belief of their father Yaacov, demonstrates that Emunah is not an acquired quality but an inherent one. This is also part of our daily affirmation to our forefather Yisrael, in the Shema. We recognize that even in our dark hours, we have the capacity for Emunah, a quality that is indelibly embedded in the fabric of every Jewish soul.
The Nature of Emunah
My second discovery was that Emunah is not just a belief in G-d. Emunah is an innate capacity to recognize Truth.
Refer back to the dialogue between Moshe and Hashem in the Parsha. Moshe says the people won't believe him (Moshe), "…for they will say Hashem did not appear to you." Moshe is not suggesting the people do not believe in G-d, on the contrary they absolutely do, but he fears they will question his authenticity as G-d's messenger. Yet when Hashem chastises Moshe for casting aspersions on the nation, He says they are "Ma'aminim benei ma'aminim" (Believers, the children of believers). It's as if G-d misunderstands Moshe assuming he is suggesting that the people will not believe in Hashem. In truth however, all Moshe is saying is that the people will not believe in him, Moshe.
However, with our expanded understanding of the term Emunah, we unravel the dialogue perfectly. Emunah comes from the word amen(the affirmation of truth). Emunah means the power to recognize truth and see through illusion and fakery. It is the capacity to intuitively perceive Emmes, the Truth. Since G-d is the essence of Truth, our innate capacity to intuit truth is responsible for our unquestioning belief in Hashem. We have inherited the capacity to discern truth from falsehood from our forefathers and we transmit it to our children.
Maternal Transmission of Emunah
Since Emunah is a function of Jewishness, even though it originated with our forefathers it is transmitted, like our Jewishness, through our mothers. The common two-letter root of the words Amein andEmmes (truth) is Eim (mother) further affirming the emotional and intuitive nature of Emunah as a maternal instinct rather than a paternal skill. As such, Emunah generates a deeper level of certainty than does knowledge. When you believe something you don't ask for proofs. You need proofs when your heart doubts. The innate maternal instincts that we possess don't require proof and are accessible always irrespective of what we happen to be going through at a given time.
This does not mean that Emunah comes to us automatically and without effort. Like a muscle we are born with but which can atrophy from disuse, so Emunah can also atrophy. We need to work ourEmunah, exercise it, access it and nurture it.
- We build Emunah when we learn Torah with such depth that we surpass the knowledge that our intellects could gather and connect with the Torah on a much deeper level than that.
- We build Emunah when we daven (pray) with our hearts and not with our minds. When we deeply reflect on the words of the Siddur, their sounds and their appearances, even when we do not comprehend their meaning.
- We build Emunah when we interact with people from a loving heart rather than a manipulative head.
Emunah, a term embedded in the first letters of each word in the phrase we say before the Shema (when we recite it in private), Eil Melech Ne'amman, (G-d is the trustworthy King) is our intuitive recognition of truth. This recognition culminates in the truth that all the forces in the universe have One source, G-d. Even facing ones grave with a gun at ones head about to die for no reason other than ones Jewishness is another, albeit darker, manifestation of G-d's Oneness. Dying at His command is as holy an action as living by His commandments. The devastating photograph makes a certain sense… at least to a Jew.
