The Emotional Toll of Staying Well-informed and the Bravery Needed to Confront the Hardships Faced by Our Fellow Jews

0:00 It takes such extreme bravery to read the news these days. I wouldn't suggest it unless you really have a stomach of steel for the suffering that you will be exposed to by your fellow Jews just by reading the news headlines. It's hard to tolerate it and keep living a productive life. We are required to feel compassionate, a yarbis of loathsome, to have empathy about those suffering. But it takes such extreme bravery just to look at the news headlines.

0:42 Just to look at the news headlines. It has us reading about children that have been drowned by parents, hundreds of hostages still held captive, along with who knows how many of their loved ones that are in total agony over the hostage situation. We have bullets flying all over the place at rallies, Jew or Gentile. It seems like the world has gone rogue and it takes bravery to follow the news. It takes a stomach of steel to digest it. But with us being required to keep tabs on our at least Jewish brethren and feel empathetic for them to take that meet of fromosha Rabbeinu, seeing the pain of the Hebrews, how are we to do it?

1:36 Is it even the right thing to do with this much pain and suffering? What's the approach? And while maybe this Rashi as explained by the great Mashkech, Rebbe Leichter, I believe could give us a bit of insight as how to do what is required of us. The Jews were wandering in the Midbar and eventually they became discouraged because of the constant wandering. It's in Perichov, Aleph Pasek Dalet of Sefer Bamidbar, and it says the nation became discouraged from all the wandering, burnt out, unable to tolerate any more of the constant wandering in the wilderness, and trying to define the word that the nation became shortness of soul.

2:29 Rashi tells us listen to these incredible words about tolerating pain, Something that is painful, arduous on a person. It means that his soul is now bound, Something has now been placed on him that makes his soul short, as if a big package has been thrown onto you, but one's brain isn't broad enough to endure this heavy load. The ein lo makom betoch libo lo gorsham hatzar.

3:10 And this person doesn't have space in his heart for the pain to live. As she tells us, that vatik sar nefesh, that struggling inability to cope with all the suffering. It comes from a limited sense of perspective. It comes from an inability to be broad-minded. It would be cheating ourselves to deny the pain, deny the suffering and to flee from it. There's a part of us that we have to see it and know what's happening. But broad-mindedness, an ability to let the pain find a section in one's heart, betoch libo, logresham a place for the pain to live in his heart, and whether that means that one expands his heart so he has a spot there because of his now studying of faith.

4:05 Or chovos alevavos, to know that we're on the doorstep of Mashiach. It's been thousands of years and the geula is right around the corner and we know that only good comes to this world, ultimate good through the eyes of Hashem. So maybe that means broad-mindedness in that perspective. Or maybe it means there's a worry hour, a time where you can open up the door of worry but it doesn't incapacitate you or paralyze you for the rest of your day. Empathy about the suffering, a yarbis of losam, but also broad-minded, with a place for the suffering, to tolerate the suffering and feel bad and to pray and to feel it and to understand the messages, but to be broad enough, open enough, that there's a place in your heart for the pain to live.

4:58 This way we will be able to continue to ultimately do Torah and mitzvahs, which is going to be the only way that we can fix the situation. It will give us that strength and that ability to pray with devotion and with fervor, because that takes energy and it's our avodah. It's our job, our responsibility to find a makom, betoch, libo, log, risham, atzar, to have a spot in your heart that the pain can live. That's how empathy, bravery they come together to help us tolerate the suffering and to still continue on enduring it.