Three Rabbis and One Grandpa: The Jewish Secret To Prosperity In Uncertain Times

As the colorful beauty of fall in the West begins to rot in the face of another winter, the political climate has followed this trend and become increasingly more uncomfortable. Many are claiming that they are disillusioned after the past decade where the faults of the legacy media, political actors, and the philosophy of the “tolerant left” were all gruesomely revealed. Yet, our society remains blinded by the moment, understandably failing to see what only hindsight can reveal. Our present is not yet history, where lessons lay bare like open pages. Instead, a commonly comfortable misanthropic rhetoric has enticed the Western world into a collective anxiety in which we fear and scrutinize each and every letter, instead of collectively writing the book. It seems we are focused on the urgency of what is unfolding, rather than the confidence that the wisdom of retrospection provides. I know this, since as a Jewish person living in exile, my life is intrinsically challenging. Just as my father and his world, and my grandfather and his world faced the difficulties of Jewish expulsion from Eretz Yisroel, a chain of generations that goes back two thousand years, I too now walk through an uncomfortable and confusing existence. However, the Jewish people have not succumbed to the tribulations of exile, but rather prospered by any Western societal metric. As the nations of the world have seemingly become more in touch with similar difficulties that my ancestry has passed down through the diaspora, I hope this article can provide a light of agency and hope in a time of our society’s confusion, animosity, and anger. While the lessons of Jewish resilience are obviously divinely given through the Torah and have been proven to be effective in times of extreme suffering, these basic concepts that I have learned from three Rabbis and one grandpa provide a strong foundation for all people in which a society can be effectively built and happiness can be facilitated.

 Growing up in Canada, when I would complain about the weather my grandfather would say to me “It is never too cold, you just didn’t dress warm enough”. The truth of this statement became clear to me in practice as a child, since, if I prepared accordingly I was able to play in the snow instead of hiding from the uncomfortable cold. However, the intellectual truth of this sentiment connected with me when I first began exercising before shacharit, the Jewish morning praying, in my first year of university. If I had a desire, whether it be physical fitness through exercise or spiritual fitness through tefillah (prayer), I realized how little it truly meant without the proper dedications and necessary sacrifices that would lead me to go to sleep on time. For example, if I went to sleep too late, woke up too early, and then absent-mindedly and groggily made my way through the gym and prayer service, this practice would actually be spiritually and physically detrimental long term, contrary to what I desired. While many of my classmates struggled with the many unknowns of living on their own for the first time, based on my grandfather’s words I found great success and stability in both school and personal development by using the clarity of the past to confidently create informed applications in the present. Even when my university’s campus climate became as frigid and assaulting to Jewish students as any Canadian winter could be, the principles of this lesson allowed me to play in the snow of opportunity that chaos provides, rather than hiding indoors. 

The post-October 7th world of tie-dye terrorism (as I have come to recognize it as) on college and university campuses is the perfect test of the Jewish people. It begs us to reflect on our history, apply the lessons and wisdom of the Torah, and come together as a community to reflect on the true meaning of success for the Jewish people. While being attacked physically, academically, and spiritually, many Jews of all ages and abilities have found their footing on one or more of the frontlines of the Swords of Iron War. At my University’s Chabad chapter, for example, I had been helping my Rabbi with his “Tefillin On Campus” initiative in which busy Jewish students could complete the mitzvah of wrapping tefillin, a daily mindfulness and prayer activity that we have been doing for over three thousand years. We would initiate times to wrap tefillin outdoors on campus multiple times a week, a public display of Judaism that although intended for the completion of the mitzvah, I also received feedback that this gave students hope after seeing so many public displays of anti-Jewish hatred. On the one-year anniversary of October 7th, as the weather began to cool and summer turned to fall, there was an anti-Israel protest planned in the same general area as Tefillin On Campus. While some were speculating on the reasons as to why there would be such a protest planned for the anniversary of the October 7th massacre, many controversial weeks before the actual Israeli ground invasion into Gaza, the obvious answer had been confirmed in the last year. Using an interesting modern war tactic known as “DEI”, their ideology had decided that it was offensive for the Jewish people to object to being murdered, and thus our discontent at being murdered and taken hostage was a major societal barrier, ironically to “equality”, that required protest. Regardless of the anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion “DEI” ideology, the weather report was in: it was going to be a cold fall day with a high chance of anti-semitism. Some students had minor concerns, but the echo chamber of youthful attempts to analyze the present quickly began to spiral. I decided to ask my Rabbi about the best course of action. Here was a man who had studied the word of G-d, lived by what he studied, and remained disciplined in his studies so much to the point that he is now able to guide people in theirs. The first topic of my discussion with my Rabbi was in regard to the physical weather. I told him the anecdote of my grandfather and he acknowledged the wisdom in that sentiment, noting the importance of consistency in action regardless of external stimuli or distraction. I then expressed to him the brewing anxiety in the student community and if we should move the location that had been used for almost a year at that point. To this, he seemed confused. He asked me if I planned to drink water that day, of course, I did. He then asked me why I didn’t fear drinking the water and I told him I had done it many times before. As I began to piece together the lessons of his cross-examination, he asked me why I planned to drink water if there were risks involved, to which I responded in order to sustain myself. Realizing that I was understanding the lessons he was describing, he then explained that the decisions a person makes in order to sustain their happiness are not by luck or chance, they are a direct result of their dedication to their desire. He told me that “no matter what the weather is, one must choose to be happy”. We did not know what the weather was going to be on that day, both physically and socially, but we were confident in our commitments because of the wisdom of our fathers and teachers. We knew that the Jewish people exist to bring peace on earth for all people through the completion of the mitzvot that G-d commanded us. Our society has been shown the importance of this mission in the last year, if not already proven by the last century. We had already dedicated time in our schedules and space on our campus to take time for G-d, the success of the Jewish people, and thus our world as a whole. The decision was as clear as could be. On that day we focused on what we could control, didn’t let the opinions of others dilute us, and remained dedicated to our mission of helping the world. 

This story of persevering through an adversarial climate reminded me of two very similar conversations I had with a Rabbi on the mighty mountains of Tzfat in Northern Israel, one of the most spiritually elevated places on Earth, and with a Rabbi in the busy boroughs of Midtown Toronto, a seemingly spiritually desolate enclave. In Tzfat, the Rabbi explained to me how there are times and places that are holy, such as on Shabbat or in Tzfat, but one does not become holy simply because they are in a spiritually intense space. There are many examples of this in the Torah, such as the death of Aharon’s sons, where the animalistic desires, negative tendencies, and inherent issues of our animal soul that a person encounters when trying to strengthen their character do not disappear simply based on the location of the body. Further, if one is constantly seeking perfect conditions in order to improve, they will never begin their journey. He explained to me that the issues you are facing today on the path of completing the purpose of your life, are what needs to be faced, making it impossible to escape them no matter where you run. Spiritual growth, and all growth, requires a commitment. The life you are living, once rationalized in a way that one can be certain about its purpose, will attract the necessary challenges that need to be overcome in order to actualize one’s goals. A few years later in Toronto, I was sitting with my local Rabbi on a rainy Shabbat afternoon after services while looking out the window. The normally busy streets had become void of activity, and I told him a joke about how everyone loves the rain (i.e. the sounds, the smell, and the sustenance it creates) but nobody likes to get wet. He disagreed with me, and as a good Chabad Rabbi does, he then went into a story about a Chabad Rebbe, one of the past leaders of the influential Chabad Chassidic movement, to teach me this lesson. The Rebbe was walking to shul with his students when it began to rain heavily. As his students scrambled to deploy their umbrellas, the Rebbe continued walking as the rain poured down. His students noticed he was seemingly unphased by the climate and after politely refusing their offers to give him their umbrellas, they asked him why he didn’t seem to mind the weather. To this, he asked another question, one that has helped guide me through the confusing existence I find myself in as a Jew in the diaspora, “have you ever seen a soldier carrying an umbrella on his way to war?” The Rebbe not only was able to brave conditions that may have seemed adversarial to his desires but rather also loved them because he loved his mission.  Anything that stood in his way wasn’t bad, it was a test that would allow him the strength to carry on. In other words, he had disciplined himself to prepare according to his mission and thus found the ability to pursue it no matter what. 

The concerns many people have in Western society about our modern political and social climate can be summarized as fear. Whilst we are still free by any metric in our day-to-day lives in the West, the rhetoric on both sides of the political spectrum in the upcoming American election, for example, is to spread fear that their opponent lacks ethical values, is going to destroy American democracy, and wants to cause harm to the values of America, whatever they define those values as. The basic principles of these strategies have found major success and have manifested in a number of ways to get people to become more involved in American politics than ever before. We can clearly see that these subjects are of major importance to those who make up Western society, yet it seems that nobody who makes up our society is actually content with the state of our society. As the election comes closer, and everyone’s pointer fingers continue to come out, many are seeking the solution to how the West will continue to thrive in these turbulent times. This secret to prosperity in a tense and uncertain climate is one that I have become literate in after speaking to three Rabbis and one grandpa. If we are committed to the values of Western democracy so much that we fear the destruction of it, we must not allow fear to get in our way and turn us against our mission. Whilst yesterday the obstacle may have been a bad sleep of historical persecution, today it may be the depressing rain of watching presidential candidates argue and spread rumors like middle school students, and tomorrow it may be the burdening snowfall of taxes we feel are too high, the mission we collectively seek is one that can and should surpass all socially imagined and academically enforced dividing narratives of class, race, and gender. We must not be distracted by political fear-mongering or aggressive propaganda that turns us against one another, as the Jews have learned time and again. If our society is to succeed and prosper through these times of division, the collective intent of our human will must be the guiding light that extinguishes the darkness that is animalistically comfortable to assume of our fellow person. The discomfort of a diverse community in which questions cannot be asked, answers are no longer scrutinized in order to achieve truth and therefore unity, and discussions are assessed on comfortability rather than accuracy, the problems we are facing manifest externally but the remedy is found internally. Each of us must commit to learning from our collective history in order to metaphorically put on our big winter coat of community, leave the umbrella of comfortable misanthropy behind, and decide to commit to our collective mission of peace and unity no matter what new fears our climate may bring.