PERSPECTIVES

let it Come

Yoseph Janowski

Sometimes we have to work hard to make things happen. And sometimes we just need to sit back, watch, and appreciate that they are, in fact, happening.

I once stubbed my toe pretty badly. I could barely walk, and was concerned it was broken or seriously damaged. My doctor diagnosed it as badly bruised, and advised me to soak it in warm salt water twice a day and try to keep it elevated to help expedite the healing. And then he said something interesting. He said the truth is that even if I do nothing at all, the toe will eventually heal itself anyways. I did my best to soak it and rest it and elevate it, which probably alleviated some of the pain and sped up the healing, but my body pretty much just healed itself. Over the course of a few days I watched in fascination as the bruising and swelling dissipated, and my foot slowly returned to normal on its own.

Amazing. The body G-d gave us is fascinating – it functions intricately and beautifully, and it even has the ability to regenerate and heal itself.

Our Sages teach us that the human being is “a small world’ – a metaphor for and a reflection of the world at large. By observing ourselves, we can better understand the world around us. An illuminated world will aid in clarifying our universal mission so that we can see what we are doing and not stumble. But when we do mess up, the world has the ability to heal – to heal itself. We can mitigate the pain and speed things up, but, just like our body's self-healing ability, the world has within it latent G-dliness which needs only to be allowed to shine.

Despite all the adversity faced within humanity and the Jewish people in particular, Judaism has an optimistic worldview. The world is inherently good. Indeed, the Rebbe once explained that our world is a beautiful garden to which G-d returns and establishes His dwelling place, where people can become more aware of His presence, unite with Him, and delight with Him. By following His guidelines we can speed up the process, revealing His light and holiness. But the world is intrinsically good. And when we open our eyes to it, we internalize G-d's light and warmth within ourselves and the world – we make that intrinsic goodness manifest and bring us closer to a time when the entire world will be at peace with itself, and with its Creator.

These days, with Russia threatening to invade Ukraine, China threatening to invade Taiwan, and Iran trying to acquire the bomb and do who knows what, people wonder if the peaceful era of Moshiach is just a distant fantasy. Indeed, we recite in Psalm 126, "when G-d returns us to Zion, we were like dreamers."

But when we open our eyes to current events, we see something remarkable. In spite of the war-mongering and saber-rattling, the world is actually a relatively peaceful place. Nations are for the most part united against any kind of violence or aggression, and working together to resolve tensions diplomatically. We may have become accustomed to these types of processes, but that doesn’t make them any less fantastical; compared to how things worked less than a century ago, each instance of a war averted or minimized is an open miracle.

Among the prophecies regarding the era of Redemption, Isaiah proclaims that nations, “will beat their swords into plowshares ... and they will not raise their swords against each other, and won't learn war anymore,” ushering in an era of universal peace and prosperity for all humanity. Maybe we’re closer than we think. EM