B”H
CHAZON YOSHIYAHU
Holy letters to guide souls and hearts to the path of the tree of life
From our master, the light of the world, the Admor Rabbi Yeshayahu Kinto shlit”a
Thursday, 11 Shevat 5786
“And the people thirsted”
…what man has done.
The people thirsted for water and complained against Moses, saying, “Why did you bring us up from Egypt to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?” And Moses cried out to the Lord, saying, “What shall I do to this people? A little longer and they will stone me.”
And behold, our master, the holy “Or HaChaim” zt”l, asks: Why would Hashem bring them to this great test, to die of thirst? And according to human intellect, such a thing will lead to heresy. And the question grows stronger regarding Moses, that instead of strengthening himself in prayer and supplication, he came with a complaint before Hashem: “a little longer and they will stone me,” as if he did not care about their thirst and the death of the children of Israel from thirst.
Therefore, there are many difficult things in life that a person goes through. And a person thinks that this is punishment and complains to Heaven: Why did this suffering, punishment, and these torments come upon me? But he does not understand that this is not punishment, it is a test.
Abraham our father went through ten tests. These tests were not punishments; they were tests to ascend from level to level. And so too, the righteous and the pious went through difficult and bitter tests. And every test was an opening to a new world.
And behold, we find that the Holy One, Blessed be He, places the children of Israel in a situation that seems difficult and terrifying: there is no water. And water is the essential foundation of human life, water to drink. And here a whole nation stands, not knowing what will happen to them, what their path will be, where they are going. A nation that has gone through very difficult hardships, two hundred and ten years enslaved in Egypt, severe servitude, difficult tremors.
And behold, we see here that our master zt”l seeks to understand: The Holy One, Blessed be He, does not test a person with tests without reason and without showing it. And a person needs to differentiate between a test and a punishment. There are things that are tests and challenges that are tests. And a person must pass them, and when he passes them and overcomes them, the person rises in his spiritual and physical level.
And there are punishments when a person sins and transgresses, and the Holy One, Blessed be He, purifies him from his sins through punishments. And these are two different things that the world does not know how to distinguish between, and everything becomes one thing.
A test is one thing, a punishment is another thing.
A test is a refinement to ascend a level; a punishment is a rectification for a bad thing that man has done.
And therefore, the Holy One, Blessed be He, makes us stand in this difficult test, as it is written: “And the people thirsted for water and complained against Moses, saying, “Why did you bring us up from Egypt to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?” And Moses cried out to the Lord, saying, “What shall I do to this people? A little longer and they will stone me.”
It appears that we need to understand the words of our master zt”l: The Holy One, Blessed be He, does not test a person with tests without reason and without showing it. And a person needs to differentiate between a test and a punishment. There are things that are tests and challenges that are tests. And a person must pass them, and when he passes them and overcomes them, the person rises in his spiritual and physical level.
And there are punishments when a person sins and transgresses, and the Holy One, Blessed be He, purifies him from his sins through punishments. And these are two different things that the world does not know how to distinguish between, and everything becomes one thing.
A test is one thing, a punishment is another thing.
A test is a refinement to ascend a level; a punishment is a rectification for a bad thing that man has done.
Therefore, there are many difficult things in life that a person goes through. And a person thinks that this is punishment and complains to Heaven: Why did this suffering, punishment, and these torments come upon me? But he does not understand that this is not punishment, it is a test.
Abraham our father went through ten tests. These tests were not punishments; they were tests to ascend from level to level. And so too, the righteous and the pious went through difficult and bitter tests. And every test was an opening to a new world.
And behold, we find that the Holy One, Blessed be He, places the children of Israel in a situation that seems difficult and terrifying: there is no water. And water is the essential foundation of human life, water to drink. And here a whole nation stands, not knowing what will happen to them, what their path will be, where they are going. A nation that has gone through very difficult hardships, two hundred and ten years enslaved in Egypt, severe servitude, difficult tremors.
And behold, they believed with a mighty faith in the Holy One, Blessed be He, and why does the Creator place them in such a difficult test, a reality of no water.
And a second thing that our master questions: Moses our master, the Rabbanan of all Israel, Moses rightly said, in a place where he should stand in prayer and ask for mercy for the people of Israel, who are in a situation that could lead to heresy, no water, he stands and says to the Holy One, Blessed be He, “a little longer and they will stone me.” Pray, ask for mercy for the people of Israel, and even if prayer
One is not answered, ask again, turn to Hashem, strengthen your heart, and turn to Hashem. Ask the Holy One, Blessed be He, and do not stand and complain, “a little longer and they will stone me.”
And behold, it is possible to explain a fundamental principle based on the words of our master. For behold, the children of Israel reached a state where they felt that the Holy One, Blessed be He, must give them water, and this is by right. And this is not something that appears complicated or difficult to them. Rather, they thought and saw it as a right, that they should receive water from the Holy One, Blessed be He. And therefore, the people of Israel did not think or consider in their minds that everything depends on their prayer, but rather demanded water from the Holy One, Blessed be He.
And behold, the Holy One, Blessed be He, desires the prayers of the righteous. And the power of prayer is the greatest power, and a thing that comes without prayer has no true and strong roots. And the stronger and greater the prayer, the deeper are the roots of salvation and of the thing received from the Holy One, Blessed be He. And here the children of Israel are in a new situation, they do not know the boundaries between them and their Creator.
Having been slaves for two hundred and ten years, they saw miracles beyond nature: the Exodus from Egypt, the splitting of the Red Sea. They did not know what was understood by nature, and what was not understood by nature. And they reached a state where there was no water and it did not occur to them to pray, to ask. They were sure that they deserved water. And therefore, they stood with complaints against Moses our master and against the Holy One, Blessed be He. “You, Moses, and also the Holy One, Blessed be He, owe us water.” And the Holy One, Blessed be He, expects prayer. And Moses our master sees how time is pressing and the deterioration of the children of Israel is growing, and the proximity to heresy is literally at the entrance. And here the prayer of Moses our master will not help, but rather the prayer and requests of Israel are needed.
Just as the Holy One, Blessed be He, did not give them manna once a month or once a year, but every day, so that their hearts would be subdued. And at all times they would be ready for prayer and supplication to the Holy One, Blessed be He. And therefore, Moses’ prayer will not help.
This is a test, a level. A level that the children of Israel need to ascend; this is not punishment, this is thirst which is a level. If it were punishment, Moses would stand and pray and ask for mercy from the Holy One, Blessed be He. But this is a test, and in a test, one must stand, and certainly pray.
For to stand in a test, but for Moses to pray, that will not help. Therefore, Moses our master stands and says to the Holy One, Blessed be He, “a little longer and they will stone me.”
The people of Israel do not understand and do not delve into the depth of understanding that everything is from the Holy One, Blessed be He, in kindness. And Heaven is not obligated to give man peace, not water, not health, not livelihood. Everything is from Heaven, and goodness and kindness from the treasury of free gifts.
And therefore, Moses says to the Holy One, Blessed be He, “wait until they understand, this will lead them to stone me with stones.”
And this is a great principle in our lives. There are times when it is a test, and in a test, one needs to know the tools of how to behave in the test, and there are times when it is punishment. Here the test was that nothing comes to us as if by itself, and we need to pray and ask. And here it is not punishment that there is no water, and we need to pray for water. And if they do not pray, they will not receive and they will not stand in the test. And Moses our master, in his way, by which he merited to be the Rabbanan of all Israel, stops the test with a complaint that the test is great and difficult, and more than their afflictions, for the people of Israel.
And so, we must know that there are situations where we are in a test, in a test from Heaven, and every step we take must be wise with the wisdom of Torah and with the wisdom of the fear of Heaven, to see the Holy One, Blessed be He, before our eyes, and to bring out the intellect that has been built and developed over time, from what we have learned and what we have heard.
This intellect mixes with faith and Torah, and causes confusion and a shell of “nogah” (luster), and then we make decisions based on intellect and not on
Fear of Heaven. A person must stop and consider whether he is in a test, and what kind of test. An existential test from the ten existential tests that every Jew must pass, a daily test, a test of further ascent, a test of rectification for an existential test I failed in before, and the Holy One, Blessed be He, gives me another opportunity to rectify and not lose the ascent to a great and new level.
And if it is a punishment and requires repentance, and what exactly is the transgression and what exactly is the rectification, and how do I rectify what I have spoiled, and cause atonement for these sins to bring man to repentance.
And behold, this is a complete world that a person needs to be new and clear in it, and to build new and strong knowledge in understanding his life. A person in these generations fights to know everything, to understand everything, to hear everything and to clarify everything. But from the important things in life is understanding what is a test, what is a punishment. A person flees and does not delve into the important understanding that can change all vision and perception and confrontation in life.
A person lives in an emotional, social, momentary reality. It hurts me, who hurt me, why does it hurt me, how do I react, it didn’t work out for me, why didn’t it work out, who disturbed me, who caused me to stumble, but this is the counsel of the evil inclination. To obscure and lead man to a world of confusion and a world of abysses, and to be captive in the hands of the other side.
And when a person differentiates things, and knows one thing at a time, what the test is, he passes and overcomes all the brokenness, all the pains, all the things that happen in life, this is a test, I manage it correctly, I see the Holy One, Blessed be He, before my eyes and how I behave and prepare myself for a great salvation.
For a test that comes, God forbid, is a punishment. And a person thinks and manages himself, how to behave for a sin he has sinned, what I have done, how do I repent, what have I transgressed. And then the world of man is a new world. The vision, the pain, the sorrow, the joy, the sadness, receive another dimension.
Behold, the world has been educated by misleading rules, most of which came from the world’s vanities. We inherited them from the exiles, and the world became very intellectual. And this intellect sharpens from day to day, but it is the intellect of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. For in this intellect there is good and evil, and good is many good things that exist in the world from the intellect, and evil is much lack of understanding and destruction, which the intellect brought with it and sharpens from generation to generation.
And the more intellect prevails and grows, everything becomes so and not so, and the blurring of test and punishment, lack of water for the children of Israel, the confrontation was a test, not punishment. Many things in our lives are like the water test in the desert. We must be intelligent and wise, how to behave in this lack of water. The Holy One, Blessed be He, wants prayer, a new order and understanding for the new world, that the children of Israel enter it after the Exodus from Egypt. The snakes are punishment, not a test. Therefore, Moses prayed to stop the snakes, but the water is a test, and this is the prayer that we pray, “do not bring us to a test and not to shame.” A test that a person thinks is not a test and acts according to another way, brings man to shame.
The Holy One, Blessed be He, should merit all the children of the community to sharpen the holy paths of the community, and to live the service of Hashem of the community, and to guard the purity of the mind, and to thank Hashem that He separated us from others, and we will ascend and rise to know Hashem and to live truly with Hashem.
With much love,
