Emuna: A Double-Edged Sword

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We have a saying in Judaism that goes something like “Hashem Gives Us What We Need” and the idea behind it is that every moment is a growing opportunity that, if we pay attention, we can use to develop spiritually. Hand-in-hand with this is the idea that we never are given a test that is beyond our ability to cope with.

We see this in everyday life in things like strained finances and relationships, physical limitations and illness, or confused thoughts that we can’t make sense of. Thoughtless individuals can see these occurrences as something out of their control, which leads to thoughts of worry, frustration and a feeling of being a victim of a cruel world.

The person of Emuna, a deep and sure knowledge that Hashem is calling the shots, accepts the challenge and works through it to reach a higher level on the other side; a place where conscious action brings about desired changes that resolve the issue once and for all.

Thus, we see the double-edged sword. Let’s use strained finances as an example. It is tempting to assume that poverty is a gift from Hashem to foster a sense of compassion and humility, and it is. Such a person should learn to pray that they be given the proper means of support and trust that it will come to them.

So, do they lay around in bed and wait for it to come? Of course not! Instead, they should hustle to make a living and follow up on their ideas that can bring them the income they need. Additionally, it will help to reduce their needs and bring them in line with reality. A person of Emuna believes that their current struggles will be resolved when the lesson has been learned and just keeps on trying until they do.

The opposite of this is worry and fear. These attitudes amount to second-guessing Hashem and doubt in the divine providence that fills the world. These people become depressed victims of life who say things like “why bother” and “I’m not worthy of receiving blessing.” They are defeated before they even begin.

A more extreme example can be found in strained relationships. If a person is plagued with a nagging spouse, it is easy to think that they are wrong and ignore the growth opportunity in that they just may be right. Rabbi Shalom Arush, in his book “The Garden of Peace,” brings us an important counter-concept that your spouse works as a mirror of yourself and that whatever comes from their mouth points to a deficiency in yourself.

This radical perspective allows a person to pick up the challenge and resolve it. If accused of being lazy, then do something. When called a jerk, then try being nice. Then, the nagging ends and true personal growth will be achieved. Seems simple enough.

One must move past a blind acceptance of their hardships into a path of action. This is where Emuna comes into play. If one does what they feel is necessary and still do not gain the desired result, then they must not have performed the correct action. If so, then they need to pray for a new idea and follow up on it. In this way, they will eventually reach the proper soul correction and achieve a place of true happiness and contentment.

Parshas Toldos: How Did They Get Away With It?

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Our tradition is full of incidents where our ancestors strayed from the truth. Wives were called sisters. Questionable practices and tactical omissions were justified with holy motives. Angels, and even G-d himself, changed their words to fit the circumstances. This week, in Parshas Toldos, we see one of the most famous of these tricky scenarios in the first-born birthright and the blessing of the firstborn son Eisav being transferred to Yaakov, the second son.

It is a real challenge for us not to judge others based on what we see because of all the factors we do not know. It is our way to give the benefit of the doubt, even when circumstances seem perfectly clear. A modern-day example of this is popular media culture. I’ll be the first to admit that it is a bunch of junk. TV and radio bombard us with an overwhelming amount of useless information that skews our thinking and makes distortions appear true. So, because of this, should we ban all media? Blanket choices like this can throw out the good with the bad simply because it is easier.

Similarly, it is easy to consider Rifcah’s scheme to have Yaakov blessed rather than Eisav as a sneaky trick because she had a proper reason that wasn’t truly disclosed in the moment. While pregnant, she noticed that when she walked past a place of idol worship, part of her womb pulled in that direction. A different part of her womb pulled in the direction of holy places when they were encountered. She found out that each of her twins had a different inclination and that one would serve the other.

The difficulty arose because she chose not to tell her husband about it and he believed that Eisav was something that he was not. Issac assumed that he was within the realm of teshuvah and wanted to bless him with the strength to overcome his inclination.  Rifcah, on the other hand, knew it would be a wasted blessing and that it had to rest instead on Yaakov. Her actions were for the sake of heaven, and to save a life we can do almost anything.

In Yaakov’s righteousness, he objected to the plan and feared that he would be cursed, to which his mother said “any curse will fall on me” because it is the way of women (Ibn Ezra) to be compassionate and ready to suffer for their children. (Yohel Or) Besides, she was confident in the prophesy that the “older will serve the younger” that came to her directly from Hashem.

Thus, the younger took the blessing and the birthright from the older and, in the end, it turned out that it was clearly a case of “mama knows best.”

Site Optimization After Google Panda Update

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Sometimes, just figuring out what you want to accomplish is the real task

Since the Panda update to the Google search algorithm, most websites are scrambling to get back to where they were with placement, popularity, relevance and pageviews. Cancer Answers, a site that runs on my server, was hit particularly hard and I have been looking into how to fix it.

One key incident that I didn’t even know about until my research discovered it occurred within my host environment. They made some big changes to their PHP and cgi-bin practices that caused parts of the site to simply quit working. It was easy enough to change the permissions to my get.cgi script and get the homepage pulldown menu to work again.

So fine, pageviews could have been down because the site was broken. But, since the repair, traffic has not bounced back and still hovers at around 30% of where we were this time last year. My strategy to clear this up is pretty radical. I am going to give away all my content.

When the site was built, the idea was to sell cancer treatment information to end users. In 1997, that idea was viable since content was slim and the need was great. Since then, information is much more available and reputable while ours has become stale. Thus, transcript pricing was reduced again and again. Now, a full transcript is only $3. If I put all that content onto the public site, that will probably go a long ways toward freshening the site and increasing traffic.

Since the site is static html, that is going to be a huge GAK. I’ll keep you posted on that.