A Life-Saving Resolution for 2025

Are you looking for a spectacular New Year Resolution that will be certain to make 2025 better than 2024? The Zohar on this week’s parsha provides us the perfect suggestion.

Once, the Zohar records, Rabbi Aba observed a man sleeping on a hill. A snake approached the man, and a tree branch fell and killed it before it had a chance to bite him. When the man awoke, he saw the dead snake and descended from the hill. Just after he had relocated, a landslide occurred on the hill where he had been reclining. Had he still been there, he would have been crushed.

Rabbi Aba approached the man and asked him what he had done in his life that he merited two life-saving miracles. The man replied, “In all my days, I forgave and made peace with any man who did evil to me. If I could not make peace with him, I did not sleep on my bed before forgiving him and all those who grieved me. Thus, I did not harbor hatred anymore for that harm he did me. Moreover, from that day on, I tried to do kindness for them” (Zohar Breishit 201b).

Rabbi Aba wept and compared the man to Joseph, who, at the open of this week’s parsha, Vayigash, forgives his brothers for selling him into slavery. The man was even greater than Joseph, Rabbi Aba declared, for it was his brothers who Joseph forgave, while this man forgave even strangers to whom he had no relationship or bond. Therefore, he was worthy of God performing miracles on his behalf.

Joseph’s forgiveness, the Chassidic Masters teach, was a function of his absolute belief in hashgacha protis/Divine Providence, which means that nothing happens in the world without God’s direction and intention. Because God is One and there is nothing that exists that is “other” than Him, therefore anything and everything that occurs, even if it seems to be negative and/or harmful, is an indispensable part of the divine plan. Joseph recognized the beneficence in his seeming misfortune, as he states to his brothers when he reveals himself to them, “do not be distressed or reproach yourselves for having sold me here, since it was in order to provide for your needs that God sent me ahead of you” (Genesis 45:5).

Often in life, we are granted vision only in hindsight, and we are able to recognize only after much time has passed that our afflictions were in fact our greatest blessings. With patience, intention, and diligent practice, we can develop the ability to perceive God’s presence in the present, and not just in the future looking backward.

As we ring in 2025, we all undoubtedly carry gripes and grudges from the year behind us. It has been a time of quarrel and conflict, both with those beyond our borders and those within them. While we must certainly be pragmatic about the very real threats to our security and well-being, it is an opportune moment to consider the interpersonal feuds that we are perpetuating and the possibility of reconciliation that can result if we are able to recognize God’s hand in everything and if we are therefore willing to take the courageous initiative of acceptance and forgiveness.

If we do so, then like Joseph and like the man who Rabbi Aba praised, we will be able to release ourselves from anger and spite. When we are forgiving of others, we are forgiven by Hashem, and miracles will be performed on our behalf to save us from all danger and misfortune in the year ahead.

—

Pnei Hashem is an introduction to the deepest depths of the human experience based on the esoteric teachings of Torah.  www.pneihashem.com