Tefillah - 024 Emulating Our Forefathers

Emulating The Avos

וזוכר חסדי אבות – “And He remembers the kindnesses of our forefathers.”

Hashem remembers everything. If so, why is it necessary for us to point out that He remembers specifically the kindnesses of our forefathers?

Chazal say that “A person is obligated to say, “When will my actions reach those of my forefathers?” The simple meaning of this is that just as Avraham Avinu did chessed, so must I go in Avraham Avinu’s ways and do chessed, etc.

But the inner meaning is as follows. The Avos implanted their middos into the Jewish people. This does not just mean that the Avos had exemplary behavior and that we are supposed to emulate them; it is more than that. It is rather that in the depths of our soul, we are children of our Avos, and therefore, we have their great middos implanted in us.

Therefore, when I use the middah of ahavah\love – the middah of Avraham Avinu – I am not just touching upon the level of our Avos. I am touching upon the depths of my own soul, because the middos of the Avos are deep down in me.

From a superficial perspective, we consider someone with good middos to be simply that, “a person who has good middos”. But the inner perspective is that our good middos do not come from ourselves! They come from the Avos, and they were implanted in us. When a person has good middos, his good middos are the very same good middos which the Avos had, and they are being manifest in that person’s particular soul.

Thus, we make special mention that Hashem remembers the kindnesses of our forefathers. We are really saying that that the good middos of the Avos are found inside ourselves.

Your Personal Mission, Together With Your Collective Mission

In the next line of Shemoneh Esrei, we mention that Hashem will bring the redemption – ומביא גואל לבני בניהם. What is the connection between remembering the Avos and the redemption? The simple understanding is that the redemption will come to us in the merit of our Avos. But the deeper answer is that we will merit the redemption due to the middos which the Avos implanted in us.

We need to make the following differentiation. Each of us has various good middos; how do these differ from the general middos which the Avos implanted in us?

When we use the good middos of our Avos [ahavah\chessed, or gevurah\yirah, or emes\rachamim], we leave our “private” kind of self. Normally, when we use our various good middos that each of us is blessed with, we are serving Hashem through our unique and individual aspect, but we need to realize that our individual role in Avodas Hashem is not all there is to our existence. There is a deeper part to our existence, which is to leave our private, individual self and instead enter into the ‘collective’ aspect of the Jewish people. This is when we serve Hashem through the middos of the Avos. When we use the middos implanted in us through the Avos, it is then that we really serve Hashem from the depths of our being.

When we use the middos of our Avos, we enter into a whole a new kind of existence. We will be able to live the very kind of life which our Avos lived!

Living A Life That Resembles The Avos: A Life of Solitude

Now we will add on a sharper point to this discussion.

The Rambam says that a person is pulled after his surroundings, thus, a person has to make sure that he is found in a place where people are pursuing good. If he can’t find such a place, he should go to the desert, a place free from any bad influences. It is well-known that the Chazon Ish said that these days, the Yeshivos are like the “desert” which we need to go to. However, in this current generation, I am not sure if the Chazon Ish would say this is true anymore about every Yeshivah of today’s generation.

So what should we do? Where are we to go??

The truth is that there is no place on this physical world which you can run to where you will be safe from spiritual danger. The only solution is to live in our internal world of our soul. We need to live in two places at once – on the physical world, and in our internal world of the soul.

We are in exile, and our spiritual situation is in grave danger. Our physical body needs to be here on this earth, but this world is not a place where our soul should be connected to. In our soul, we need to retreat to an inner place and live there.

If a person wants to live a truthful kind of life, he needs to sever his connection he feels with this physical world, and instead identify his soul as the place where he lives. Of course, we need to live on this physical world and do what we have to do, but only in the physical sense. Our body can be on this earth, but our soul needs to find somewhere else to live in. We need to dwell in our inner world of our soul, our neshamah. Therefore, we need to adapt a life of solitude from this world. In addition, a person needs to seek friends who are also willing to separate themselves from this world, because they are truly seeking Hashem.

Nowadays, we cannot just bond with any person we meet - those who are very involved with the outside world. We can have contact with such people if it’s only for a moment, but immediately after we have to deal with people, we must quickly retreat to the inner place in our soul. In this generation, we need a life of solitude from people.

In earlier generations, only rare individuals were able to live on the physical world and reach Torah and mitzvos, each according to his own way. There were only individuals who adapted a life of solitude and lived entirely in their soul. But in today’s generation, we are living in a very dangerous situation to our spirituality. In today’s times, if someone wants to live a truthful kind of life, he must live only in his inner world. To be connected to the physical world these days makes it impossible for one to progress spiritually.

If anyone lives life from the perspective of the soul, he can see clearly how today’s generation is literally going through a spiritual kind of genocide.

Hashem has placed us in this generation, and He does not ask of us more than what we can do. Therefore, it is certainly possible for us to enter into an inner kind of life and live a life of neshamah, a world of “They are a nation that dwells in solitude, and with the nations they do not consider”. Even in Eretz Yisrael, Jews are a minority; most of the country isn’t Jewish. It is up to us to fulfill this possuk – to enter into solitude and separate ourselves from secular society.

“And Yaakov fought alone.” We must fight all the evil influences, by being “alone” in our soul. Of course, we must love other Jews, and pray for them. But we must live a life of inner solitude, and identify our inner world of the soul as the main place to live in.[1]