The Good Life is a Life of Emunah | Parshat Vayechi by Rabbi Menachem Azulai – "Or HaEmunah".

"And Jacob lived in the land of Egypt seventeen years" (Genesis 47:28).

"Did he only live for seventeen years? Rather, these were the years in which he truly experienced life, but before these years, what does it say? "The days of the years of my sojourns are a hundred and thirty years; few and bad" (Genesis 47:9). And it is said, "And though your beginning was small, your end will greatly increase" (Job 8:7). And so you find everywhere, that the wicked start with joy and end with endless sorrow, but the tzaddikim start with sorrow and end with eternal joy, as it is written: "And everlasting joy shall be upon their heads". (Midrash HaGadol).

Good Life, Joyful Life

Our Sages say, the seventeen years that Jacob lived in Egypt were the main years of his life that he lived there in joy and tranquility. And it is puzzling. In Egypt? A place of impurity, the nakedness of the land, there Jacob our forefather tasted joy? Tranquility? But there is a great lesson here! A Jew can find life and joy in any place he may ever end up. This is your test. To bring joy and life even to these difficult places where you are forced to arrive. "Joy and gladness shall overtake them, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away". When you strengthen yourself in joy, you drive away sorrow and sighing (Our Holy Rebbe).

Even if you received a difficult decree in life, even if your life is full of suffering, you must not despair. Turn to Hashem. Tell Him everything. Ask Him for help. Ask Him for advice. Remember that Hashem loves you, He lives your pain, He accompanies you, He feels the trial you are in, He knows what you are going through, He does not forget you!

Strengthen yourself in emunah. Everything that happens to you is to heal you, to correct, to purify, to cleanse, to bring you closer to Hashem. This is the sole purpose of the sufferings you are experiencing. Remember that everything here is under precise divine providence, remember that there is a Creator of the world and He leads everything here, and He knows exactly what you need to go through to bring you closer to Him. You need to believe with complete emunah that your salvation will sprout from here, precisely in this way, precisely through these difficulties, this is the path your neshamah (soul) needs to go through to reach its clarification. Believe that Hashem knows what He is doing with each and every one, He does the best for them. Strive to believe that Hashem does nothing bad to you in life.

Strengthen yourself in emunah that Hashem is all-powerful. Even if you see that naturally you have no chance, do not despair God forbid. Do not give up. Believe that the Creator of the world will do something you never even thought of. When a person throws away his intellect, there is no limit to the solutions and salvations he suddenly believes that Hashem can save him.

Believe in Hashem's mercy. Our Rebbe says that Hashem, in His mercy, created the world. Because He wanted to reveal His mercy (Likutei Moharan 64). Everything that happens to you is all Hashem's mercy! This is how to look at life!
Believe that Hashem is only good and does good. That everything is from His mercy. That Hashem's mercy is endless and without limit. Why does a person stop praying? Because he does not believe in Hashem's mercy! Maybe Hashem does not want to give me? Maybe I do not deserve it? If you believed in Hashem's mercy, you would stand and pray until you received.

Believe that all the sufferings you are going through in the meantime will turn into a great light. That all the darkness and all the hell you go through in life will eventually turn into a wonderful light and from that darkness, the light of prayer, the light of the Torah, the light of the tzaddik, the pleasantness of Hashem will shine for you. All the bitterness you suffered will turn into such sweetness, all the hell you went through will turn into such a paradise, and all this in this world. Not to mention what you will merit in the World to Come because of these sufferings.

Just as a baby wants his mother, always runs to his mother, so the whole world wants Hashem. Every Jew has within him a point of longing and love for Hashem which is the true joy and with its power, one can overcome all troubles.

What is the love of Hashem? It is when a person enjoys the mitzvah, the prayer, the act of kindness, more than his desires, those that are, of course, permitted according to halacha. When a person loves Hashem, this will naturally lead him to all other matters of serving Hashem and fulfilling the mitzvot.

And it is impossible to speak of the love of Hashem and attachment to Hashem if a person does not guard his eyes. Because when the eye sees, the heart immediately covets, this our Sages said and it applies to every person. The people of Israel are looking for only one thing, how to work on kedushah (holiness) and purity, how to be saved from the "do not stray after your hearts and after your eyes". Even though it is very difficult and a person sees almost no possibility of being saved from it, he knows he must fight it, that for this he came to the world.

When a person sanctifies himself, when he merits more and more moments of attachment to Hashem, he has great joy. Because when a person goes with open eyes, his thoughts roll from one thing he sees to another, but when he guards his eyes and at least lowers his head, he can talk to Hashem, be in contact with Hashem, and there is no greater pleasure than this. And this is true for everyone, even for women and children.

After Jacob our forefather blesses each tribe, he blesses them all together, "and he blessed them on that day". That they should merit to have that day, that specific day they live in, to live the present and not the past and future. That all their vitality and all their joy should come from the connection to Hashem moment by moment, in everything they do, so they do not need memories from the past and plans for the future to get a little joy.

When a person is connected, his joy will pass on to others, to his wife, to his children, to friends, because when a person is connected to Hashem he wants all the time to bring joy, to do good for everyone, he becomes similar to the Creator who constantly gives and influences.

We do not know how to give thanks. Everything seems simple, natural, taken for granted. Only when they take away from us God forbid these wonderful gifts do we understand what a loss it is to live here all these years and not know how to give thanks.
With a little humility and modesty, a person can see how everything he has and everything he succeeds in, it is all Hashem sends him, thank you very much Hashem for giving me and how wonderful that you gave me, now that a good prayer came out of my mouth, that I did not have distracting thoughts during the prayer, but I could really focus in the prayer, thank you very much Hashem. Thank you very much that I had a good heart to open the door to the neighbor, or to the one who came to ask for charity, and that I did not close the door on him, and that I did not make a face, and thank you very much that I forgave and did not hold a grudge, and thank you very much that after I got angry at the neighbor who poured water into the sukkah I quickly understood that it was not the neighbor, that everything is from heaven, and I asked for forgiveness and did teshuvah, and thank you very much for this and thank you very much for that because everything is from you.

The Holy One, blessed be He, is the giver and the person is the receiver. We must constantly remind ourselves of this. That any praise a person suddenly receives, any compliment, or he himself gives himself a compliment, says how nice, Baruch Hashem I succeeded, he must remember immediately where he got it from. Thank you very much Hashem, thank you very much, it is from you, because where did I have this knowledge, the talent to understand, to speak, to do, to act, it is all from the image of God you gave me.. After a minute he forgets again, he thought it was himself, and he is constantly in these zigzags, it is me, it is not me. I am so nice, I do not make the mistakes that so-and-so makes because I am more refined, and I understand, and I do not hurt, and Baruch Hashem I have peace in the home, and I succeed in this and I succeed in that but actually it is not me, it is the Holy One, blessed be He, thank you very much Hashem, you brought me the peace in the home, you brought me the success with the children, everything I have is you and a minute later again, work for a lifetime.

We must declare war on sadness and this is mainly done with gratitude. A person who is used to mainly asking, always sees what he does not have but one who is used to mainly giving thanks, sees what he receives. A person must think and talk a lot with his wife, with his children, with his friends, how good we have it, how fortunate we are, how much we need to thank Hashem, Baruch Hashem, we have what to eat, we have what to wear, even though many things are still missing. Do not think all day about what you lack, thank Hashem for what He gives, and it will continue more and more kindnesses. And the same in spirituality. Baruch Hashem, I keep Torah and mitzvot, I pray in the synagogue, I learn Torah, to give thanks and praise to Hashem. Just as Jacob our forefather lived there in Egypt in joy and tranquility, so can every Jew bring joy and life into the more difficult situations. Our joy rises above all pain, sorrow, and grief. It is not connected to anything we have or lack, it is joy in Hashem.

A person with a good eye will see all the kindnesses and say thank you. If a person looks to the sides, then he will always have an evil eye. Because if he has this, then he does not have that, he always lacks something that others have, there is always someone to envy, someone who succeeds more, who progresses more than him. But if a person looks to Hashem, not to the sides, then he lacks nothing and all the abundance he receives he can shower on others. When a person looks all the time to Hashem, then he will look with a good eye on all people, because they are all children of Hashem. Each one with his uniqueness, every Jew has something that his friend does not have and with this special thing, he completes the people of Israel, no one can take care of his personal spot

of his. This uniqueness of each person is hard to see with a superficial look, sometimes it is not noticed even if you know the person for quite a long time. But there are special opportunities where you can grasp the special point of the person, be impressed by it, thank Hashem for this great mosaic that all of Israel are partners in.

The main thing is to be happy. You are now here alive, healthy, breathing, so be happy, be joyful, stop thinking all the time about what was and what will be. Live the moment. Connect to Hashem every moment and moment, in everything you do. Rejoice in the good that Hashem gives you! This is your work, to be happy! Every mitzvah you do is a gift. Kiss it. Hug it. It brings you closer to Hashem, it connects you to Him, and you are not happy? Say "how fortunate we are" several times a day, you merited to be part of Israel, in this itself make yourself happy.

The past was and is no more, the future will be and it is also no more. What there is, is only this moment before you, so connect to Hashem and be happy. A Jew gets up in the morning, the Creator has given him back his neshamah anew, he must first of all thank for this. This is how Jews have always rejoiced, this is how they had enthusiasm all their days, until even before their death they rejoiced in every additional moment that they could do the will of heaven.

Gratitude opens all the gates as we see that when a person truly thanks you, you immediately have the desire to do more and more good for him and when a person does not know how to give thanks, then the heart closes and there is no desire to help him and give him.

["The Holy One, blessed be He, created man in the image of God, and this is what should bring the redemption, but it also brings destruction. Because this image of God gave man the feeling that he understands, that he knows, that he has intellect. All the technology and all the wisdoms in the world, where does it come from? From the image of God. Now, if a person has the image of God then he understands, he believes in his abilities and talents, and in his plans, and he gives advice, and he understands that he understands more than the other, etc., etc. Then he receives a blow, so for a moment he lowers his head, and says oh, really I do not know, and after a moment again, it starts anew] (B'Or Pnei Melech)

When we are proud, we turn the bowl upside down. And what happens to a bowl that is turned upside down? It is no longer a vessel, everything spills out, only when it is as it should be, then it is a vessel, only then does it receive the light and the abundance.

We must flee from pride, fight it. And what is the height of pride? Anger. I think this way and you think otherwise? I say this and you act against my will? When you overcome anger, like any other bad trait, there is great joy. Life really changes. Like in the following story:

The Fallen Sukkah of David

I am an electrician. About ten years ago I did electrical work in an existing building, for a tenant who added two floors to the roof. I started working in the month of Elul, alongside the construction work, and when the month of Tishrei arrived, things became more pressing. The homeowner intended to finish before Rosh Hashanah and was disappointed. Sukkot was his final deadline. He explained to me that he planned a huge, magnificent sukkah on the entire roof to host all his family and relatives, and therefore everything had to be ready by the Sukkot holiday. We worked around the clock, alongside me worked various craftsmen: plasterers, tilers, aluminum workers, and a stair builder. The stair builder built the stairs between the floors and was supposed to tile them along with the roof with marble as precious as it gets, which was purchased in advance by the homeowner and already lifted to the roof by a crane in two heavy piles.

Meanwhile, on the residential floor, David's family, the homeowner, lived their lives as usual. Occasionally one of the children would come up to follow the work, we would send them back because of the danger, and they would come up and back again.

Between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur we worked like crazy, I had already inserted all the wires and started organizing the main panel, the stair builder finished tiling the roof with marble as precious as it is only used in living rooms.
When the carpenters arrived, they built an amazing sukkah with strong, expensive, and beautifully painted beams. One of them told me that their price exceeds the most expensive bricks on the market. In fact, it was real construction, with windows, doors, and even a small kitchen. I understood what he planned here and quite admired him. I myself prepared a whole structure for the sukkah, made sure the electrical cables reached everywhere, with suitable sockets for lighting, electrical appliances, and even an air conditioner.

After Yom Kippur we worked on the finishes. It was frenzied work. A lot of nerves and a lot of tension. It was clear we only had two days to complete the whole thing.

The day before the Sukkot holiday, it was in the morning, I hear screams from below: "Liar! L..i..a..r!" At first, I thought it was just another one of the usual quarrels that characterize the tension, but the screams did not stop: "Let him come now, he is a l…i…a…r", these were screams that echoed throughout the street. Then the tone rose and became really threatening. It was clear that someone below had gone crazy. I decided to go down a floor and see what was happening. And what I see is the stair builder standing in front of David, the homeowner, his face red as a beet, foam on his lips, and he is screaming like a madman: "He is a l…i…a…r, he is a t…h…i…e…f… he promised me…" David and his family stood helplessly in front of him. David tried to calm him down: "It's okay, he will come in five minutes, calm down, have a drink, he is on the way." He offered him a glass of water, but the stair builder simply threw it hard on the floor and it shattered into thousands of pieces. Usually, I am considered a resourceful person, but here I was in shock. I had seen in my life craftsmen getting angry, raising their voices, and even abandoning the work site, but I had never seen a person so angry. His face was distorted with anger, and he looked like a bomb about to explode at any moment. David's children stood stunned and pale. Their mother drove them into the house and locked the door, but a sixteen-year-old boy, the homeowner's eldest son, remained. If I thought I had reached the peak, it turned out I was wrong.

At the height of the anger, the contractor arrives. He was updated by phone that the man was angry and ran to calm him, but what happened was exactly the opposite. "You are a liar… you promised to pay me at the end of the work… I finished half an hour ago… you did not pay me…" "It's okay, I just wanted to go over the work, here is the payment with me," said the contractor and pulled out a thick bundle full of cash. "Y…o…u are a l…i…a…r, scoundrel…. I do not want to work with you… you promised…. I have been waiting here for half an hour for the money you promised me…" "Just ten minutes ago I was informed that you finished, understand…" "That I should understand?? You are a liar… I do not want to work with you…" Here the contractor got angry and said four words, and surely did not know where they would lead: "Do what you want!"

The craftsman's distorted face became even more distorted. "That I should do what I want? Fine.." he took a huge hammer, ran to the roof, and we all started hearing loud thumps.

You will not believe what I am telling you. The man began to break all the beams of the sukkah, I do not know what gave him the strength – his muscles or his anger, but both combined into a human wrecking machine, within sixty seconds there was not one whole beam, everything collapsed, but he was not finished. In the next sixty seconds, he smashed all the expensive marble tiles that he had painstakingly tiled in recent days, then began to descend the stairs, giving a mighty blow to each step and the marble shattered. He did this on both floors, and all in front of our eyes.

We watched him from above, just followed how he shattered step after step, the most expensive marble we had ever seen. We stood there stunned, David, the contractor, his assistant, and two Arab workers, and I the electrician.

At some point, I wanted to stop him, but the contractor prevented me: "He is out of control. Your life is more important," and stopped me with his body. The man finished his destruction spree, got into his car, and with screeching tires drove away.

I remember the silence. Silence. Shock. About ten souls. Six craftsmen, the homeowners, and a sixteen-year-old boy. We were all stunned. The silence was broken by the cry of the mother of the family. "The father said: "We need to go up and see what he did." The sight of the destruction was terrible. Not one tile remained whole, the beams were shattered. It was clear that the homeowner's dream of the sukkah had vanished and was no more. We all trembled. We knew that what we saw here had never been seen before. An unimaginable spectacle of a human beast, of uncontrolled anger. "You must call the police," I said. David, the homeowner, said: ,No. I will do that later, I must.. I must build the sukkah… for tomorrow. I invited many people." "What sukkah? What sukkah?" I said to him, "This is a week's work at least." "Bring the carpenters here," said David, they will set it up in a makeshift way, the main thing is four walls and connections above." "And what about the flooring?" "Bring workers to clear the mess, there will be a PVC floor, and after Sukkot, we will take care of new flooring. Well, what are you waiting for? Tomorrow is the Sukkot holiday…"

I left there, not before I told the homeowner to talk to his teenage son who saw the spectacle. "It might affect him," I said, "Take a moment's rest from the sukkah and calm him down, it might affect his soul." I left there, and this sight did not leave me for the entire Sukkot holiday. The truth is, this sight has not left me to this day. Such an outburst of anger I had not seen until that moment, and not since. Thus passed ten years, and during them, I did not meet David or the stair builder, but it was always recorded in my mind, that the moment I meet one of them I will ask what was the continuation of the amazing event I witnessed.

A few months ago it happened. I was sitting at some celebration, and suddenly I notice a familiar figure a few tables away. I approached her, the figure was talking to another person, and as I got closer I realized that I knew him too, but I could not believe my eyes. It was David, the homeowner whose sukkah had fallen. But what stunned me was the man sitting opposite him and talking to him with unparalleled friendship. It was… the stair builder. After moments of hesitation, I approached them, sat down in front of them, and said: "Hello", "Hello", they answered politely. "Do you know me?" I asked. They looked once and twice. "No," said the stair builder, "I do not know." "No," said David, maybe you can help us, from where?" "Ten years," I said, "someone broke your sukkah, the tiles, and the stairs. And this is someone you should not be sitting opposite and talking to with such friendship." They looked at me, stunned. They said nothing. "I am the electrician who worked in the house then, if you did not recognize." Both of them got the hint in a second. "Listen, both of you," I said, "I have been stunned for ten years by what I saw, but I think my biggest shock is seeing you talking here as if you have been friends for years." "We really have been friends for years," said David, "Moti, do you remember how long?, "Thirty years," replies the stair builder. "What thirty years?" I said, "Ten years ago you caused him damage of tens of thousands of shekels! What kind of good friends are you?!"

And here David began to tell the story of his fallen sukkah, a story I had never heard: "Since my childhood, I was an angry child and teenager. Without elaborating, it can be said that I destroyed a lot for myself in my childhood years, I was expelled from several institutions all because of the trait of anger that controlled me. At some point, when I was a seventeen-year-old boy, my father took me to Maran the Steipler and presented him with my problem. Maran the Steipler instructed my father to leave, and then he said to me: 'Tell me, have you ever seen what someone who is angry looks like?' I did not answer. Then, Maran the Steipler began to make terrible faces at me for a long time and looked like the scariest person in the world. When he finished, he said: 'This is exactly what an angry person looks like. The next time you get angry, remember how it looks. Someone who does not control his anger cannot get married, and if he gets married he gets divorced and does not succeed in anything he does,' he said and sent me away. This meeting changed me. Every time I started to get angry I remembered the faces Maran the Steipler made for me and I simply stopped. Before I even got into anger, it caused me to control. I got married, built a home, and succeeded quite well in life, something that would not have happened if I had not controlled the trait of anger. If I thought I had gotten rid of this trait, it suddenly turned out that it appeared… in my eldest son. At first, I did not know how to act in front of him, but my father was the one who reminded me: it is simply you in a second edition. It turns out that the genes do their thing. When he was twelve years old I tried to make him those faces, but I did not have the ability that Maran the Steipler zy"a had, or I did not have the influence that the great one in Israel had on me. My eldest son got into trouble, went through Talmud Torahs and then yeshivas, he could not cope with the trait of anger. Then the idea came to my mind, to take the sublime idea of Maran the Steipler one step forward. I thought of something big, mighty, something that would leave a mark for life. And it happened exactly during the construction.

Moti has been a friend of mine for years. I shared with him my problem and then my idea. At first, he was shocked and refused, he did not think it would work and also did not exactly know how to get angry, but I insisted, "There is no one else who will do this for me." I asked. "How much damage do you want?" he finally asked. "We agreed on the sukkah, the flooring, and the stairs. Maybe it seemed to you something expensive, but these were leftovers, third-grade, that he got for me from the end of the world. This whole uncontrolled event was one big show. I wanted something that would never be erased, and I think that is exactly what I got: a horror show of an angry person." Silence fell. I could not believe what I was hearing. "Did it help?" "You cannot even imagine how much it helped, now I remember you said to me that it might affect the boy, and I thought to myself: from his mouth to heaven, may it affect my son. And it affected so much. He himself approached me the next day and said: 'Dad, I know you also had this problem, help me, I want to get out of it.' "We sent him to self-control treatment, which managed to change him from end to end. He grew up, got married, and is a father of two children, and simply corrected his traits just as I did. His desire to change, which stemmed from the horror show of an angry person – did most of the work." With his wisdom, the homeowner managed to turn "The Fallen Sukkah of David" into "The Sukkah of Peace", for generations.

Prayer

Master of the Universe

It is such a pleasure to live with You, to talk to You all day, not to divert attention from You, to be attached to You. Only this is called for me a good life.

To see all the gifts received from You moment by moment and to say thank you. To understand that even the things "taken for granted", it is all from You. That even the things that happen seemingly by themselves, without us asking, without us praying, like for example when we merit to treat the family members especially nicely, or when we merit to hold back and not make a comment that is already on the tip of the tongue, when we accept with emunah what the neighbor did to us and do not get angry at him, even manage to bless him in the heart and wish him only good, when suddenly we understand something that recently occupied us and we did not find an answer to it, when we manage to shine a face to everyone and get a little out of our own shell, or when things work out so nicely and the day goes by so smoothly, to understand that You, Father, do everything and not to stop saying thank you.

To reach the field every night because there the heart opens, because there we merit to feel You like nowhere else, because there such warm words come out, because there we merit such sweet moments that when we remember them during the day we receive such vitality and such longing and are so happy that also tonight with Hashem's help we will merit this meeting.

Master of the Universe, I want to live with You, to share with You everything that happens to me, to tell You everything, to consult with You, to ask You to be with me every moment and moment, to ask for more moments where the divine light descends to us and we feel such love for You, such longing, that we understand that for these moments the world was created.

Shabbat Shalom,
Menachem Azulai