Have you ever wondered why we Jews are such a restless and skeptical people? Whatever is being offered just doesn't seem to be good enough. It's just not "it". There must be something more!! A well-known Rosh HaYeshiva of Baalei Teshuva, new returnees to Judaism, once offered the following identification mark of such a searcher: "If he's a bit skeptical of all your great spiritual ideas, he's one of us!!" What's the source of this unique Jewish phenomenon?

Avraham, our Forefather, is on a quest. He is driven to find out the meaning of it all. Although he knows there is a grand design and per force, a Designer; still he feels he needs to know more, as he is deeply perplexed: "True, I see a building, an overall plan. Yet I also see that the building is on fire and full of smoke. Why the fire and all the smoke? Why are people faced with so much inner and outer turmoil? Why is life filled with trials and suffering, with people being trapped in either fallen fears of what others will say, or fallen selfish desires and fallen ideals, putting all their trust into everything else but the Source? How does one overcome this seeming incongruency?!"

At this point, Avraham Avinu asked: "Who is the grand Designer of this burning building? What does it all mean?" H-shem, responding to such a sincere quest, answered him, saying: "I am the Designer. And as for, 'what does it all mean?'- Lech Lecha, 'go to yourself '; leave for your own good, away from your homeland, your birthplace, your father's house, to a land I will show you." What H-shem was conveying to Avraham Avinu was that in order to have an intimate connection to Him, and to thereby fathom the fire and smoke of this world, one has to remove himself from it. In this way, a person will transcend it. A great Chassidic master once said that the key to acquiring a life filled with exquisite Divine-like pleasure is to not be in need of, or attached to, any of life's lesser pleasures. In other words: Live in the world and reveal the G-dliness of the world. But don't see the world like everyone else does back in your hometown and in your father's house. Don't see the world as an end in of itself. Instead, see it as an incredible minute-by-minute opportunity to prepare and perfect yourself for something far beyond. For the greater the difficulty one has to overcome, the greater the priceless gem one acquires forever!

The Kabbalists explain the deeper meaning of this idea: H-shem held Himself back, so to speak, and the world came into being. Likewise, Avraham, our spiritual father, held himself back from the "fire and smoke" of his day. He gave us the power of skepticism to look at all the traps and the lies, and the rest of the smokescreen of our world, and to emphatically declare, "that's just not 'it'." He gave us the ability to hold ourselves back a bit in order to acquire a huge incomparable influx of spirituality, the day to day expression of the original holding back (Tzimtzum)- creation process. Holding ourselves back will thus empower us to maximize the means to its fullest potentiality, ultimately gaining the greatest Divine pleasure reward possible - both in this and the next world too.

Chassidic Insights on Bereishis. Questions and subscriptions can be mailed to: the Yeshiva