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Motti Wilhelm

Assassination, Consideration and Internet Outages

At a time when we feel such chaos, Judaism reminds us that beneath it all is incredible order.
At a time when we feel such chaos, Judaism reminds us that beneath it all is incredible order.

A week in the US during which one party’s presidential candidate survived an attempted assassination and the other party gives their candidate serious reconsideration is one which makes this great nation feel volatile and chaotic.

At times like these, we remind ourselves that the Torah is a story of Divine creation, management, and intervention. In the beginning, the world is created by Hashem, who brings about global events like the flood, national events such as the Exodus from Egypt, and even orchestrates highly personal events like a donkey talking to Balaam on a roadside.

The Baal Shem Tov famously explained that Divine providence is so specific that “it is decided On High how many times the leaf or the wisp of straw will roll over, and to what place it will come to rest.” Moreover, this movement “fulfills the Divine intention in the creation of the world.”  Click here for more on this subject

Such involvement and interconnectedness of every blade of grass with the entirety of the universe seemed hard to fathom until last Friday. As I write, banks in New Zealand, billboards in Times Square, and flights in Asia are experiencing serious disruption. Why? Because a coding error in an update to personal computers affected the global system.

Our understanding of the interconnectedness of the universe, its underlying code, and the disruption any “randomness” in the system creates helps us appreciate this same truth in our world at large. There is an underlying code to our universe, one which operates each and every detail, and in which even slight movements serve a purpose.

Leaning into this outlook and understanding is transformative. In a rather personal and moving statement, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok Schneerson, the sixth Rebbe of Chabad, spoke of his imprisonment by the Soviet regime in 1927 and shared that “were it not for his earlier focus on the Baal Shem Tov’s doctrine, he doubted whether he could have withstood the torment and survived the imprisonment.”

It’s a challenging time in the US, Israel, Ukraine, and beyond. We are using the word “unprecedented” at an unprecedented rate. We are in the hands of a coder whose program does not have errors or glitches; we need to simply embrace every step as one integral to the Divine plan for creation. For reasons unknown to us, it is through this specific chain of events that the world will be uplifted.

We simply need to do our part in uplifting it.

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In honor of the Rebbe’s Thirtieth Yartziet, I was hosted by Rockne Roll on the Jewish Review podcast of Jewish Federation of Greater Portland. We spoke about the Jewish journey, the role of family, the state of Chabad and the power of now. https://rss.com/podcasts/jewishreviewpdx/1571388/

About the Author
Rabbi Motti Wilhelm received his diploma of Talmudic Studies from the Rabbinical College of Australia & New Zealand in 2003 and was ordained as a rabbi by the Rabbinical College of America and Israel’s former chief Rabbi Mordecha Eliyahu in 2004. He was the editor of Kovetz Ohelei Torah, a respected Journal of Talmudic essays. He lectures on Talmudic Law, Medical Ethics and a wide array of Jewish subjects and has led services in the United States, Canada, Africa and Australia. His video blog Rabbi Motti's Minute is highly popular as are his weekly emails. Rabbi Wilhelm and his wife Mimi lead Chabad SW Portland as Shluchim of the Lubavitcher Rebbe.
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