Tefillah - 030 Surviving The Scariest Time In History

Hashem – Our Protector

מלך עוזר ומושיע ומגן – Hashem is our מגן, our “Shield.” Hashem promised Avraham that He would be a shield to him and protect him from harm in war; “And I will be a shield for you.”

Let us reflect into this concept and then see how it applies to us practically.

Hashem protects us, and He has different ways of how He protects us. He can send angels to protect us if He wants,, like when He sent angels to protect Yaakov Avinu; or He will use people as His messengers to protect us. But it is Hashem Himself who is really protecting us. When a person merits to be protected by angels, it’s really because he has merited to be protected by Hashem Himself.

Meriting Hashem’s Protection – Through Connecting To The Torah

When a person lives a body-oriented kind of life, and his neshamah (Divine soul) isn’t so accessed in his life, then he seeks security in the physical sense. But when a person lives a spiritual kind of life, and he lives a life of Torah and mitzvos, he is protected by spirituality. When Yaakov Avinu was leaving Eretz Yisrael, he needed protection, because he was leaving spirituality. This hints to us that when a person lives spiritually, he merits protection from Hashem Himself, and when he lives materialistically, he doesn’t merit this protection.

Similarly, Chazal say that Torah learning protects a person from sin^[1], but this is only on condition that he considers Torah learning to be his main job on this world. If he only learns Torah ‘every here and there’, the Torah can only protect him ‘every here and there’, and not on a permanent basis. His Torah learning will only on the level of “mitzvos”, not on the level of “Torah.” But when a person is always accustomed to learning Torah and he is deeply connected to it, he is connected to the Torah and to its protection that it gives a person.

Who is behind this protection? Hashem, Who is our shield. Hashem told Avraham, “I will be a shield for you.” If a person recognizes that Hashem Himself is the essence of his life – to be close with Hashem – he merits protection from Hashem Himself.

Where Do We Run To When We Are Scared?

There are levels of protection, and the more we penetrate into the layers of our soul, the deeper kind of protection we can merit. A person has to know which soul layer he is at, so he can know what kind of protection he is deserving of.

The way a person can know this as follows – when a person feels danger, where does he run to when he’s afraid? And when he runs, what are his first thoughts as he’s escaping from the danger? From where he is drawing his feeling of security from? What is going on in the depth of his soul as he is scared?

This is the self-introspection every person needs to make in himself. There are all kinds of fears a person can have – we have small fears, like being scared of a cat when it jumps out of a garbage, and bigger fears, such as fears of getting into a car accident, chas v’shalom. As a person is having these fears, where does draw his feeling of security from?

A person who lives a deeper and spiritual kind of life, when he becomes afraid, immediately feels secure from spirituality. A superficial kind of person, though, when he is afraid, might turn to segulos or to giving tzedakah or to going to tzaddikim for a beracha. It is not a bad thing to give tzedakah or to go to tzaddikim; these are matters written about in our sefarim hakedoshim, but, it is still a superficial response to fears. If a person is drawing his feeling of security from such segulos, this is not a spiritual response, but a superficial one.

Running To The Torah For Protection

The real way to respond to fears is to run away to the Torah for protection.

What does it mean to run away to the Torah? Compare this to a scared child, who will run to his mother or to his father for protection. Why does he run to his parents? It is because when we are afraid, we run to the place where we feel secure. The place where we feel secure is what we recognize as the source of our life, and that is why we run to it. The child runs to his parents when he’s scared, because he recognizes them as his source of life, and that is why he gets his security from them.

That is what happens when a person is afraid – he runs to where he gets his source of life from. A person needs to have a true source of life run to when he’s afraid. Without a real source of life, a person gets his entire sense of vitality in life from eating and from schmoozing, and he never develops a real source of vitality. When he encounters a great fear, he has no real source of life to run to; so he will become desperate and panic, looking for anyone else who can save him.

But if someone has revealed spirituality in his life as the source of vitality in his life, when Torah is his true source of vitality in his life - he will truly have where to run to when he’s afraid. This is when the Torah in a person’s life is a Toras Chaim to him, a “Torah of life”. When he feels sad or afraid, he runs back to his source, where he draws forth vitality – the Torah that he learns, which he identifies as the main source of vitality in his life.

The Deeper Source of Vitality: Hashem

If a person enters even deeper into his spirituality, the fact that he just knows about Hashem’s existence is what gives him life. When he feels afraid, he can run to Hashem to feel secure.

What does it mean to run to Hashem? Does it mean to run to Him for help only when we are afraid? That is not what it means to run to Hashem. If our emunah in Hashem is already our source of vitality in our life, then we will run to Hashem automatically when we are afraid - and not just because we are running to Him so He can save us.

When a person is in danger, he cries out to Hashem to save him. But if a person lives a truly spiritual life, he already recognizes before the trouble, that Hashem is our source of life where we draw our security from, and when he goes through a fearful time, he runs back to his Source of life. He’s not just running to Hashem so he can be saved – he runs to Hashem because he clearly recognized that Hashem is the source of all life.

Our soul can derive tremendous enjoyment from just from the knowledge of Hashem.

The Footsteps of Moshiach: Living In Scary Times

Hashem is our Shield. We conclude the blessing with ברוך אתה ה', מגן אברהם – because it was Avraham Avinu who merited that Hashem was his Shield. He merited this because of his great emunah; Avraham Avinu was the one who shined emunah onto the world. The real protection we need is to draw our security directly from Hashem Himself.

This applied to all generations in the past, but in our generation especially, in the generation preceding Moshiach (“ikvesa d’meshicha”), it is especially true - when the enemies of the Jewish people cast fear upon us.

There are many troubles in the world, and they continue to increase with time. Chazal say that “each day is more cursed than the day before it.” Our task in all of this is to get by all these troubles - in an inner way. We need to know how to run away from all of the troubles - but in the right way.

What does mean it to run away to Hashem? It doesn’t just mean for a person to rely on Hashem for everything; this is a misguided approach. There are people who want to “run away to Hashem” and let Him do everything. But this is an erroneous approach. Rather, the way to run away to Hashem is to already enjoy a relationship with Him, before the troubles and difficulties of life come. This way, when the troubles do come, we will naturally run to Him, having developed a bond with Him from before [as opposed to suddenly running to Him for safety when we get afraid (in which there is no bond].

Of course, we need some physical security too; we have a body and a soul, and our body needs physical security in order to be calmed. But our main sense of security in life should be coming from our relationship with Hashem - to have a relationship with Him, on a daily basis.

In Conclusion

May Hashem protect us from troubles and from the “birth pangs of Moshiach”. But even more so, that we should realize that Hashem is our Shield whom we can be protected by when the troubles come our way.