 We all know that our great forefather Jacob lived a very difficult life. He had what we can call a very stormy relationship with his twin brother, Asav, and then, of course, issues with his miserable father-in-law, LaVon. But then, finally, he's able to get away from LaVon. He's able to seemingly reconcile with his twin brother. But then, his daughter, Dina, is kidnapped and raped. And his beloved wife, Rachel, dies. And we get to finally, Chapter 37 in Bray Sheet. We're told that Jacob finally tries now to settle down to resume his life after all these storms. And Rashi, at the very beginning of Chapter 37, citing the Midrash, states that Jacob was seeking to settle into a life of tranquility. But God brought upon him the entire chapter of Joseph, the terrible relationship Joseph had with his brothers, his nearer murder, finally them selling him to slavery in Egypt. And, of course, Jacob spending so many years with endless heartache, assuming that his beloved son was dead. I grew up in New York at a time when the future of the existence of the world was not to be taken for granted. In school, we had air raid drills. We would duck under our desks or hide against the wall in case there was a nuclear attack. I didn't realize back then that sitting under a desk was not going to help in a nuclear attack. But after school, we'd play in the areas of our apartment buildings that were designated as fallout shelters, nuclear fallout shelters. And, of course, back in 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis took us to the Prink, to the precipice. But then as I approached what we call middle age, it looked like that the end of this 20th century might be bringing about a new kind of world, a brighter reality. We had the fall of the Iron Curtain. We had a thriving economy. We had great advances in science. And I personally was very optimistic. And then, of course, the beginning of the 21st century revealed to us that we may have been or I may have been overly optimistic. We've had global terrorism, Islamic extremism, economic collapse, natural disasters, rising anti-Semitism, existential threat to the state of Israel. And I can go on and on. What I'd like to discuss tonight are two kinds of darkness that we all experience. One is what we normally associate with the pains and suffering of life, both nationally and personally. And the second is what I'll refer to as personal spiritual darkness. Our rabbis speak about the fact that we can each have our own personal Mitsrayim, our own personal experience of Egypt. An experience where we're spiritually dry. The Kabbalists refer to us Katnus as smallness. It's a spiritual funk. It's a feeling of emptiness. It's not seeing any progress, not feeling satisfied spiritually. Having setbacks and failures to our Yetzahara. Our davening uninspired. We're disappointed with our avodas Hashem. We really sink into a state of apathy and despair. Rami Nachman of Breslov wrote in Lakutimaharan that it's a mistake to think about these experiences as falls. He says no. He writes it's precisely because you are making progress and going from one level to the next that all the old obstacles and desires and confusions and fantasies and doubts and impediments reawaken and attack again. The truth is it's not a fall. They always say that you know you're over the target when you begin to feel the flak. And so Rami Nachman writes that these are all opportunities for growth. Rami Nachman writes that these falls, these hiccups in our spiritual progress, are preparations for ascent. First two is something as Yerid al-Atsar al-Haliyah. It's a descent in order to rise up. He writes about the idea of like digging the foundation for a large building. He says first you have to dig down very deep into the ground and then the structure can emerge and rise up. And when we have our descent, when we fall, Rami Nachman says that each of these are opportunities for us to ultimately get much closer to God. There's a contemporary Breslov teacher today in Jerusalem, Rev. Yaakov Meir Shachtar. And he writes about a Gomorrah in the Secha Shabbos where Rabbi El Azar Ben Azariah is criticized for allowing his cow to walk in the public domain on Shabbat with straps tied between its horns, something which is rabbinically forbidden. And then the Gomorrah asks which cow are we referring to? Rabbi El Azar Ben Azariah happened to have thousands of cows. As a matter of fact, we're told each year he would separate 12,000 calves as his tithe. So when it says that he was criticized for allowing his cow to walk in the public domain with this ribbon tied between its horns, which cow is it referring to? And Talmud says it's referring to actually not one of his cows, but it's referring to a cow that belonged to his neighbor. But because he didn't admonish his neighbor for transgressing the law, he takes the responsibility for the cow. The responsibility was assigned to him. Yet Revyakov Mayer still wants to know, even though maybe he's responsible, but why does the Talmud call it his cow? It's not his cow, ultimately. Why is he called the owner? So Shachtar says that according to the version of this story that's in the Rishalmi, the Jerusalem Talmud, he felt so bitter and so lost over the fact that he failed in this situation. He failed to give someone tochacha. He failed to admonish his neighbor. And it ate him up, this failure. And the Rishalmi says he did such intense chuva, such incredibly intense repentance over this not admonishing his neighbor that his teeth got discolored from all the fasting that he did. So we see that this small transgression of failing to admonish someone ultimately brought him to an extremely high level of closeness through his repentance. He was able to get much, much closer to God than he had been before. They say that each one of us is connected to God by a rope. But if that rope ever breaks or it's cut and you retie it, the rope gets shorter and therefore you get closer to God. So it turned out that his neighbor's cow was worth more to him than all the thousands of cows that he actually owned. Because ultimately, in spiritual terms, he was able to achieve through this cow of his neighbor an incredibly high level of spiritual growth. We see here that ultimately, Rabbi Elisabeth Asaya felt, this was his only cow. The other cows didn't matter to him. This cow was really his cow. And we see here how it's possible that through a fall, through a failure, through a period of darkness, a person can rise to very high places. I'm named after the Garyb, the first Garyb Yitzchakamir of Ghur, the Chidushi HaRim. And he writes about the Akhira Yitzchak, when Avraham, our forefather, had to take his son, Isaac, and slaughter him as a sacrifice. In recounting this story, the Torah says, Vayisa Avraham Esaynov, that Abraham lifted up his eyes, Vayar Eshamakamirachok, he saw the place from far away. And we know that the word makom, the place is also a term we use for God. So when telling the story, the Torah says that Avraham saw Hashem, the Makom, Mirachok as being very distant. And the Garyb says that in this story, Avraham unfortunately saw himself as distance from God, which is very strange. When you think about it, the Akhira was an incredible test. It's considered to be the greatest test of Abraham. He was someone who grew up very spiritually disadvantaged. We know that his father manufactured and sold idols. He didn't have all of the great spiritual benefits you would have growing up in a home which was spiritually rich. Yet he rose to great levels through his own exertions. But he was childless. And we know that Hashem finally promised him in his old age, he would have a son. Finally he has a son, Yitzchak. And God says, this Yitzchak, this Isaac, he will succeed you. And then God tells him to kill Isaac. But Abraham goes to the Akhira with great misirous nefesh, with great self-sacrifice, even wakes up early in the morning not to delay. He never questions God. God, what about all the promises? It should have been a moment of incredible closeness to God. This experience should have been the apex of someone's spiritual growth. And yet he felt nothing. He felt even distant from God. And notwithstanding his feeling nothing, no inspiration, feeling distant from God, he persevered and he carried out the assignment with tremendous self-sacrifice. This is a great spiritual potential that Abraham bequeathed to each of us, his children. We inherit this potential from Abraham that even when we're feeling distant from God, we're feeling we're in a very spiritually dark place. We don't feel any inspiration. We have this power, this ability to persevere, to carry out our responsibilities, to serve God even when we're feeling distant. This service of God, even when we're feeling distant, is actually very precious to God himself. It's an amazing story that's told about Roshmul from Kareev, who was a student of the Chosen Blin. And he had a practice, even though he was very poor, he would never ask anyone for help. He would always rely that God would somehow inspire people to provide what he needed. One Passover was coming. He had literally nothing for the Passover holiday. No matzah, no wine, no food, but he didn't wanna depart from his normal practice of not asking for help. So he sat very sadly, very despondent, looking forward to a Passover that would really be a very disappointing Passover, but trusting that God would provide for him. His teacher, the Josef from Lublin, heard about his situation and told a very rich student to go and provide all the necessities for the holiday. And when Roshmul saw the wagons coming with all the food and all the wine, his spirits were lifted immediately. And he sat at the Seder table with so much joy that he didn't even feel he was in this world anymore. He was so thrilled that God provided for him and he didn't have to violate his practice of not asking for help, that he felt as if he was flying in heaven and that there was never a Seder that was run like this Seder. He felt this was the greatest Seder in the history of the world. The next day, as he got ready for the second Seder, he was a little tired in the afternoon and he went to lie down and take a nap so he can get some rest before the second Seder, but unfortunately he fell asleep for a long time and he didn't get up until just about a half hour or so before the second Seder. And he's very upset because his practice was he would eat the aficomal before midnight, even for the second Seder. Here he is a half hour before midnight and he hadn't started the Seder yet. He had no choice, but he had to rush through the entire Seder in order to be able to eat the aficomal before Hatzot and he was extremely upset. He felt very depressed about having to rush through the Seder to do it with a no frills fashion and he was sure that this was the worst Seder in the history of the world. After Passover, Shmuel traveled to Lublin to visit with his Rebbe, the Chosa greeted him and the Chosa said, come, let's review your two Saders. The Chosa said, you know what? The first Seder, there was no great shakes. He said, you imagine yourself floating up in heaven, hovering in the upper spiritual realms, but really the Seder was below par for someone on your level. But the second Seder, that was a Seder. He says, very few people ever reached the heights that you reached during your second Seder. You were broken-spirited, you were upset, you were depressed, you were humble, but all you wanted to do was carry out the mitzvah of running a Passover Seder and doing it properly according to your custom of not eating the aficomal after midnight. He says, that Seder was unbelievable. You know, it says in the book of Tehilim in Psalms, chapter 51, that the sacrifice that God desires are a broken spirit, a heart broken and humbled, and that's what you led your Seder with. The highest level of serving God is not when we're feeling inspired and not when we're feeling close to Hashem. But when we don't feel anything, and we might even feel distant from God in spiritual darkness, and yet we serve God nonetheless, God cherishes that service incredibly. Now it's natural for all of us to have highs and lows in our spiritual lives, and we need to appreciate that the most significant growth can actually take place during periods of darkness with our failures. Shlomo HaMelach writes in the book of Michelin Proverbs, Sheva Yipol Tzadik Vakam, seven times a righteous person will fall down, but they will rise. And Rev Hutner, the fresher shiva from Chaim Berlin, said, don't understand this verse as saying that the nature of a righteous person is that even after they fall down, they'll get up seven times. He says, no, what the verse is teaching us is that the way this person became righteous was through the process of falling down and getting up through the failures and learning from failures and correcting themselves, that's how they became a great righteous person. A few years ago on Tisha Bahav here, I shared with you the following story which is also relevant in our context tonight. I'd like to share it again. It's written by Rachel Naomi Rehman. She says that as a physician, I had a man come into my practice with bone cancer. His leg was removed at the hip to save his life. He was 24 years old when I started working with him and he was a very angry man with a lot of bitterness. He felt a deep sense of injustice and a very deep hatred for all people who were well because it seemed so unfair to him that he had suffered this terrible loss so early in his life. I work with this man through his grief and rage and pain using painting, imagery and deep psychotherapy. After working with him for more than two years, there came a profound shift. He began coming out of himself. Later he started to visit other people who had suffered severe physical losses and he would tell me the most wonderful stories about these visits. Once he visited a young woman who was almost his own age. It was a hot day in Palo Alto and he was in his running shorts so his artificial leg showed when he came into her hospital room. The woman was so depressed about the loss of both of her breasts that she wouldn't even look at him. She wouldn't pay attention to him. The nurses had left her radio playing probably in order to cheer her up. So desperate to get her attention, he unstrapped his leg and began dancing around the room on one leg, snapping his fingers to the music. She looked at him in amazement and then she burst out laughing and said, man, if you can dance, then I can sing. It was a year following this that we sat down to review our work together. He talked about what was significant to him and then I shared what was significant in our process. As we were reviewing our two years of work together, I opened his file and there discovered several drawings he had made early on. I handed them to him. He looked at them and he said, oh, look at this. He showed me one of his earliest drawings. I had suggested to him that he draw a picture of his body. He had drawn a picture of a vase and running through the vase was a deep black crack. This was the image of his body and he had taken a black crayon and had drawn the crack over and over and over again. He was grinding his teeth with rage at the time. It was a very, very painful time because it seemed to him that this vase could never function as a vase again. It could never hold water. Now, several years later, he came to this picture and looked at it and said, oh, this one isn't finished yet. And I said, extending the box of crayons, why don't you finish it now? He picked up a yellow crayon and putting his finger on the crack. He said, you see here where it's broken? This is where the light comes through. And with the yellow crayon, he drew light streaming through the crack in his body. We do grow strong at the broken places. And yet we all know there isn't just spiritual darkness that comes into our lives, our own personal spiritual Egypt, but we know about tremendous personal and national suffering, illness, loss of a loved one, loss of a job, personal betrayal, experiencing the eclipsing of God's face in our world. Taurus speaks about times when God will sometimes hide himself, hide his face from the Jewish people, which can lead to incredible persecution and terrible experiences for our nation. And with God's presence obscured, doubt can very easily set in. Our national existential enemy is a Malek and the numerical value of the word Malek is suffake, is doubt. Our challenge is to seek God, is to try to find God even when he seems to be so remote. Reborch of Mezhebaz, who was a son of the Baal Shem Tov, tells a story that he once saw a young boy sitting on the street in the corner crying. And he came over to the young boy and said, what's the problem, what's the matter? And the boy said, wiping his tears. He said, I'm playing with my friends. We're playing hide and go seek. And my friends told me that I should go hide and they're gonna come and try to find me. So I went and I hid, but no one came to find me. So the old man said to the young boy, you know what, that's exactly how God must feel in this world. That even though he's hiding, so often people don't try to seek him. The Torah, we're gonna read it. This Shabbat says in the fourth chapter of Dwarim that God predicts that when we come into the land of Israel, we will ultimately turn to idolatry. And God will destroy us and scatter us among the nations. And in verse 29, God says, but if from there you seek the Lord your God, you shall find him. If you seek him with all your heart and all your soul. Rabbi Nachman of Brestlove wrote that you may in sometimes in life find yourself in a place where God is so hidden that there's virtually no awareness of him at all. But, Rabbi Nachman says, as soon as you begin to search by calling out, ayay makom kevodo, where is the place of his glory? That question itself indicates that you at least know that God exists. It's a sign of life. The Kutsker would famously say that you know where God is, God is wherever we let him into our lives. We know that Purim was a story of incredible darkness, incredible darkness for our people because we were on the brink of genocide. Haman, if he had his way, would have wiped out every last Jew. It was a story where God's presence was certainly hidden. So much so that the name of God does not even appear in the Megillah. And yet it's called Nagilat Esther, not just because those words mean a scroll of Esther, but the words, Nagilat Esther, also mean the revealing of that which is hidden because the entire job we have in a story like Purim where it seems that God is so distant and so remote and so hidden, we're about to be destroyed and annihilated, our job is to reveal that which is hidden, which is ultimately God behind the scenes. Ashokhan Aruch tells us, based upon the Gomorrah and Brachos, that we should always accustom ourselves to saying that whatever God does is for the good. The Gomorrah also teaches that we're supposed to bless God for the negative experiences in life as well as the positive experiences. Chayyav Adam Levarech al-Hara'a, Kisham Shem Levarech al-Hatoba. And the Talmud adds to these words that we should actually receive bad news besimcha with joy, that we should bless God with a full heart, just as we're thankful for hearing good news. And the Chazanish points out, he was a great leader of Israeli Jewry who died in the middle of the 20th century. He says, it's very easy to be a person of faith when you're not really severely tested. And the true indication of whether someone is a person of faith is how they react in the face of tragedy. There was a great rabbi, Berish Myzels, who was also very wealthy. He was a Torah scholar who lived in Krakow and he made his fortune by selling lumber that he would ship down the river on barges. Once the river was swollen because of all of the melting snow and because of the swollen river, the barges overturned, his entire cargo was destroyed, it was a devastating financial blow. People close to him were wondering, how are we gonna break the news? You know, there was no insurance back then. He was not just losing this cargo, it was gonna be a devastating financial loss. They enlisted the help of his closest student in the Yeshiva. The student said to Berish, he said, you know, rabbi, I've been learning the Gomorrah Brakhos, Talmud Tracted Brakhos, and it teaches that you're supposed to thank God for the bad things in life, just like you thank God for the good things in life. It's crazy, how do you do that? And the Talmud even says, you've gotta do it, besimcha with joy. I don't understand it, rabbi. Please explain it to me. So Rabberish began to explain to his student very excitedly how important it is to thank God for everything in life, whether it's bad, whether it's good. And he said that when bad things happen, you should even dance. So the student turned to him and said, rabbi, it's time for you to start dancing. And then he told Rabberish exactly what had happened. And Ramizel's fainted on the spot. When they revived him, he said, you know, it seems that this passage in the Talmud is more difficult than I had thought. He says, it's possible that we can understand it intellectually, but when we're in the middle of it, when we're in the thick of it, it's not so simple. And even though it may be a huge challenge, some people are actually able to rise to incredible spiritual heights in the crucible of suffering. From Shlomo Salman undorfer was a maggot in Pressburg during the Second World War. And in one of his drushes to Parshis Lechler, he wrote the following. He wrote, we who believe in God are compared to the stars because it's precisely in the night's deepest darkness that the stars shine most brightly. So it is with us in times of trouble. During these times, our trust in God shines and the great power of Israel's sanctity is revealed in their faith and in their righteousness. My wife and I got back last week after an incredible Torah in motion tour of Central Europe that was led by Dr. Mark Shapiro. I highly recommend the program. One of the stops we made was to the concentration labor camp at Theresienstadt. One of the most profound moments that I had during the trip was being taken to a small hidden room at Theresienstadt that was used as a secret place where the prisoners would meet to pray. We davened Mindchah in this little room. And I imagined while I was davening these tortured Jewish prisoners during the Shoah praying in that very spot. There were several inscriptions that the prisoners wrote on the walls of this room. And one of the inscriptions was a quote from Tachanon which reads, We b'chol zos shimcha lo shachachnu na ateshkachaynu. Yet they wrote, yet despite all of this, despite all of this, we have not forgotten your name. Please do not forget us. Early one Friday morning in the spring of 1943, the Nazis herded together two dozen Jews in the town of Dombroa and escorted them at gunpoint to the Jewish cemetery. Once they had arrived there, the Nazis handed the Jews spades and ordered them to dig a deep wide ditch. They then commanded the Jews to line up in front of the ditch they had dug. All day long, the Jews were forced to stand motionless before their own open mass grave under the muzzles of the Nazi guns. But the Nazis seemed in no hurry to pull their triggers. Among the Jews lined up before the open ditch was Rev Chaim Yechiel Rubin, the Rebbe of Dombroa. At noontime, the Rebbe noticed standing aside, half hidden behind a tree, a little old man. This was the grave digger whom the Nazis had apparently overlooked. The Rebbe motioned to the man and asked him to go into town and bring back with him two small loaves of bread. For all that the Rebbe knew, they might still be standing before the Nazi guns when the Sabbath would arrive. And he, the Rebbe, was determined to welcome the Shabbat properly. As the day wore on, the Rebbe became increasingly agitated. He had his Shabbat's loaves now, but there was something else that troubled him deeply. This was the first Friday in his life as an adult Jew that he had not gone to the mikvah but to purify his body in honor of the day of rest. And this had to happen now of all days on this special Sabbath of Sabbaths when he and his flock were about to meet their father in heaven face to face. How could he come before his maker on the Sabbath in a state of impurity? The sun had set, but the order to fire had not yet gone forth. The Sabbath is about to begin, the Rebbe said softly. This is the last time we will greet the Sabbath on earth. My children, let us welcome this Sabbath with the same love that the Lord lavished upon us, his people, when he gave us the Sabbath to keep. Having said this to his flock, he began to chant ever so softly the psalms with which Jews have ushered in the Sabbath from time immemorial. He did this while the Nazis kept their guns pointed at those Jews who insisted on singing the praises of their God even at the edge of their own open grave. After completing his prayers, the Rebbe bade, good shabbos to the others and sang shalom aleichem, the hymn welcoming the angels of Sabbath peace into the Jewish home. The grave digger who survived to tell this story had placed the loaves of bread upon the wet grass near the Rebbe's feet. The Rebbe now turned and recited the kiddish over the bread. Then he launched into a learned discourse on the function of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet in the Torah. But in the midst of his discourse, the Rebbe carried away by ecstasy, burst into joyous song. Those who stood on either side of him picked up the melody and they all began to dance there before the mass grave that was waiting for them. At that moment, the leader of the Nazi firing squad screamed, fire! And so it was in the midst of a dance in praise of God and of his loving kindness that the Jews from Dobroa and the Rebbe returned their souls to their creator in complete purity. I hope you'll indulge me in two more selections. In the ghettos of Nazi occupied Europe, there was an underground group of Yeshiva youth whose founder was a young man called Matisyahu. Born into an assimilated Viennese family, Matisyahu became a deeply committed Torah Jew, a Balchuva by age 15, despite the fervent opposition of his father. He eventually left home and came to Poland where he entered Yeshiva and quickly developed into a budding scholar. But by the time the Germans occupied Poland, he had become the leader of a group of young men fervently devoted to Torah ideals. The Germans decreed that all Jewish men had to shave their beards and payas. Jews had to work on Shabbos if they were to get rationed cars to buy bread. Matisyahu told his group that it was a gezeras hashmad an attempt to get rid of Jews, to get the Jews to deny their religion. You can be sure, he said, that they intend to kill all the Jews eventually. This is an attempt to take our souls before they take our bodies. We are not going to give in to their demands. We will go underground. We are going to keep our beards and our payas and to observe Shabbos and learn Torah until we die. We will dedicate ourselves to serving Hashem fully with the last days of our lives. They went into hiding. The community secretly supported them with little food they had and came to view these young men as a source of pride. Other groups of young men in other ghettos modeled themselves after them. And these groups, wherever they cropped up, were invariably the last Jews to survive going to their death with their holy books in their hands and with Shma Yisrael on their lips. A diary of one of the last survivors of Matisyahu's group was discovered. He describes how he is the last one left in his bunker. Dying of starvation, experiencing torturous suffering, he writes how he knows that within a couple of hours the fires raging about him will end his life. He knows, according to Jewish law, he's allowed to jump into the fire. Nevertheless, he debates with himself whether to jump into the fire and shorten his hours of pain or to stay alive until the fires burn him up. As he writes, he is reminded of a story about the plight of a Jew during the Spanish Inquisition. The Moranos were Spanish Jews who converted to Christianity under the threat of death, but secretly maintained Jewish law and custom despite the risk of getting burnt at the stake if they were discovered. As the story goes, one aristocratic Morano family was discovered. Forewarned by a friend that the authorities were coming to get them, this family managed to flee, albeit empty-handed and barefooted. They wandered for weeks and weeks until they finally found their way to a refugee camp in Morocco. Conditions there were dire and impoverished, certainly a far cry from the aristocratic lifestyle they were used to, but at least they were others like themselves. Then plague struck the camp. Death hung everywhere. One morning, a child of this Morano family did not wake up. Shortly thereafter, another child died. Soon, all the children had died. The parents remained as strong as they could and accepted their fate. Then finally, the wife died as well. When that happened, the husband lifted his eyes to heaven and said, Hashem, I know that everything has been a challenge to see if I would stop believing in you and loving you, to see if I would break. What is left for you to break with me with? When they forced us to feign Christianity, we remained dedicated to your Torah in private. We lived under constant fear of being caught and that did not deter us. Then we had the choice to accept death or flee in order to continue living. We fled and then you took away one child. We did not complain. Then you took our next child and we still accepted your decree. Eventually you took all the children and now you have taken away my wife. What else is there for you to break me with? As I see it, God, there are only two things left. One is my life and the other is my belief in you. If you want to take away my life, go ahead and take it. It is not mine to begin with, it is yours. However, if you want to take away my belief in you and my love for you, that even you, Almighty, cannot take away. They belong to me and to me alone. Now, in the bunker in one of the burning Jewish ghettos of Nazi-occupied Europe, this starved, tortured young Jew recalled the story of this morano and he wrote in his diary, when I reminded myself of this story, I reminded myself that these moments of confrontation, of darkness with God are the most precious moments a person can possess because they allow one to prove absolute love and devotion to Hashem. It was then that he decided not to jump into the flames prematurely. He turned to God and he wrote, in these moments when there is no hope and no apparent reason or purpose to live, I know that everything you have done is a test to see if we still love you, to see if we still want your Torah and mitzvahs, if we still believe in you. You fought us, you fought me, but you did not break me. Soon I'm going to be consumed by fire but I will not rush to my death. These last few painful hours you have given me to indeed contain a purpose to prove to you that even if the life you have given me becomes a living hell, it is still the most precious possession because we can use it to tell you that you cannot stop us from loving you. You can take our lives but you cannot take our desire for you. You can test us with anything you like. I promise that I will fight you to the last moment. Among the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto was found a document, many of you might have heard this before, hidden in a small bottle and written by one Yusl Rakhover, shortly before his death as the ghetto was burning. It is dated April 28th, 1943. I, Yusl, the son of Yusl Rakhover from Tarnopol, a Geruch Hussed, descended from saints and great righteous people, write these lines at a time when the Warsaw Ghetto was in flames. The house in which I am now is among the last ones which the fire has not yet reached. It will not be long before this house too will become the grave of its defenders and tenants by the rays of an exceptionally red sun which penetrate through the small and half covered window from where we have been shooting at the enemy for days and nights. I can see that it is evening now, twilight of sunset. To be sure, the sun knows not how little sorry I am for never seeing it again. My time has now come. Of myself, I can say as once Job said, naked did I leave my mother's womb and naked do I return. I am 40 years old. As I contemplate my life, I can say with assurance, as far as any human being may be sure about himself that I have lived and led an honest life. I was not unsuccessful, but I was never proud about that. My house was open to the needy. I was happy when I could help another human being. I've served God with fervor and my only request to him was that he let me serve him with all of my heart and with all of my soul and with all of my might. I cannot say that after what has passed over me my reaction to God has not changed. What however I am able to say with certainty is that my faith has not changed a bit. Formerly in the good times, my relationship to him was like one who has continually pouring out his loving kindness on me and I remained forever indebted to him for that. Now my relationship to him is like one who owes me something. I trust in God. The God of Israel even though he does everything to destroy my trust. I have trust in his laws although I cannot justify his deeds. I bow my head before his greatness but his staff with which he castigates me I shall not kiss. I wish to tell you my God clearly and openly that now more than any other time of our endless martyrology we the oppressed, the downtrodden, the suffocating buried alive and burned alive have the right to know where are the limits of your patience. Furthermore, I have to tell you do not pull the rope too tight left it snap. The testing that you have placed upon us is so hard and so bitter that you have to forgive those children of your people who have misfortune and their anger turned them back on you. Forgive those who despise your name and went after other gods who became indifferent towards you you have castigated them so hard that they lost their faith that you were their father that indeed that they all had one father but if you are not my God, who's God are you? The God of the murderers? If those who hate me, who murder me are so dark and so wicked what am I if I am not someone who in the depth carries something of your light and your goodness? I cannot praise you for the deeds that you tolerate but I bless you and I praise you for your very existence for your awesome greatness that seems to be so mighty that whatever is happening now is the world in the world is like nothing in your eyes. However, just because you are so great and I am so small, I ask you I warn you for your namesake stop emphasizing your greatness by countenancing the torment of the unfortunate. I do not ask you to punish the guilty. It is of the fearful nature of these events that in the end the guilty will suffer of themselves. For in our death dies the conscience of the world. A whole world was murdered when it murdered the Jewish people this world will consume itself in its own wickedness it will drown in its own blood. Death cannot await any longer. I have to finish. From the floors above me the shooting becomes weaker and weaker. The last of the defenders of our fortress are falling now. With them falls and perishes the great beautiful God fearing Warsaw Jewish Warsaw. The sun is setting and I thank God that I shall not see it rise again. Soon I shall be with my wife and children with millions of others of my people who perished in a better world without doubts where God alone rules. I die peacefully but not satisfied beaten but not despairing trusting but not pleading in love with God but not a blind a mainsayer of his. I followed him through though he pushed me back I fulfilled his commandments even though he made me suffer for it I loved him and I remain in love with him though he has pressed me into the dust afflicted me to death reduced me to mockery and derision and these are my last words to you my God of anger nothing will avail you you have done everything that I deny you that I shall not trust you yet I die as I lived with rock like faith in you may he be praised forever the God of the dead the God of vengeance the God of truth and justice who will yet let his countenance shine upon the world and shake its foundations by the power of his voice Shema Yisrael here O Israel the eternal is our God the eternal is one into your hand I now entrust my spirit in conclusion I just want to say that paradoxically it may be easier for us to find God in times of darkness because those are times when he's trying to get our attention Hashem is seeking us he's seeking our prayers artihilim archuva and he's often trying to wake us up and we should reevaluate our priorities in life Rinoach Weinberg tells a story that he once was speaking to a young man in the early days of Ashutora with long hair and he was trying to get this young boy to study in the Ashiva and the young boy says you know I don't need to come to the Ashiva me and God are very tight and Rinoach wanted to know really how do you know that you're tight with God and the young man said well I'm an avid motorcyclist and I was once driving up a mountain road on my motorcycle and I look up and there's a big truck coming right at me he said I had nothing else to do but I jumped off the motorcycle and I went over the side of the mountain and miraculously there was a tree there that saved me and I know that God put that tree there to save me I know that God and me are tight Rinoach said to him so you think God put that tree there to save you and that's how you know that you're close with God he says of course he says then who is it that sent the truck at you he said the truck coming at you was a message and Rav Shum Shum Furlhurst points out that the word majbear means both crisis and it means a birthing stool and sometimes our personal crises in life can lead to the birth of very positive changes