Hope for the Soul:

"Do not rejoice over me, my enemy, for because I fell, I will rise! Because I sit in the darkness, the Compassionate One is a light unto me!" (Micah 7:8) - "Through falling, there is rising, through darkness, there is light." (Midrash Yalkut Shimoni)

When I was 14 years old, my rebbe, Rabbi Zevulun Leib, taught the above verse to our class. And he also conveyed to us its deeper meaning: "Through falling, there is rising, through darkness, there is light." It is through the falling and the resulting darkness that we gain new insights and strengths which enable us to rise to new heights and to experience new light. After teaching us the deeper meaning of this verse, Rabbi Leib led us in the singing of the following words: "If I had not fallen, I would not have risen. If I had not sat in the darkness, there would not have been light for me."

The rebbe of my rebbe, Rav Yitzchak Hutner - a leading sage who headed the Chaim Berlin Yeshiva - applied the above teaching to another, related verse about the challenges facing the "tzadik" - righteous person:

"For though the tzadik may fall seven times, he will arise, but the wicked will stumble through evil." (Proverbs 24:16)

According to Rav Hutner, the real meaning of this verse is not that the tzadik manages to rise again after falling seven times, but that the essence of the tzadik's rising is through his seven falls. Through these falls, he gains new insights and strengths which enable him to rise higher.

It is the struggles of our personal and collective exiles which lead to the light and redemption of the messianic era - "the day which will be entirely Shabbos and contentment for life everlasting" (Mishna Tamid 7:4). This was the message which the tzadik, Rabbi Aryeh Levin of Jerusalem, would bring to Jewish activists in the Land of Israel who were imprisoned by the British during the 1930's and 40's. His weekly Shabbos visits to the prison brought hope to their souls, and one of the prisoners wrote in his memoirs:

"A week of prison life would end with a Shabbos filled with light...Through him I understood the reason for our ordeal, for the plight we had to bear in the fearful weekday-despair. It was all the burden of preparation for our Shabbos."

Have a Good and Sweet Shabbos,

Yosef Ben Shlomo Hakohen

P.S. The quote from the prisoner is from the biography "A tzaddik in our time - the life of Rabbi Aryeh Levin," by Simcha Raz, Feldheim Publications: www.feldheim.com .