Emunah, Emaan, Faith

It is evident that the simple Jew, even though not very learned and well-versed in Jewish law, has a high level of emunah in the Creator of the world. Our own Jewish Persian history is full of incidents in which the simple Jew in Shiraz, Isfahan, Tehran or elsewhere strengthened his emunah in Hashem, in spite of all the anti-Semitism against him. Entire Jewish communities were threatened with annihilation and muss-murder, but they managed to hang on to the faith of our forefathers. Even the Mashadi Jews, who were forcefully converted to Islam for a while, managed to observe the mitzvot in clandestine fashions.

So, what is our source of emunah in Hashem? Where does our emunah come from? How is it nourished? How does it manifest itself in our daily lives, in our jobs, in our interaction with our families and others?

In a fantastic 25-part lecture series, Rabbi Moshe Wolfson, a master teacher of emunah, discusses all aspects of Jewish faith. You can listen to these lectures on-line or download them and listen in your car as you drive down 405, thanks to the great efforts of our friends at 613.org, who have offered Torah wisdom to many Jews for many years.

In brief (very brief!), Rabbi Wolfson goes on to explain that there are 2 types of knowledge in the world; the knowledge that one is born with, and the knowledge that one acquires during one’s lifetime. The in-born knowledge is not limited to the human experience. The mama spider does not teach the little baby spiders how to make a web, they just do it. The baby bees never go to engineering school to lean how to build perfect hexagonal structures, they just do it. The birds, monarch butterflies, etc., etc., are all born with an instinctive knowledge which guides them as how to live their lives. Similarly, the human-infant knows nothing about the laws of mechanics when fed by his mom. The infant is born with the perfect face- and lips-muscles coordination to allow him to create just the right amount of vacuum to get milk from his mother’s breast.

Similarly the Jew is born with the knowledge that there is a creator to the world. He has spiritually inherited this knowledge from Avraham and Sarah, who devoted their entire lives discovering G-d’s existence, and perfecting this knowledge in order to pass it on to us. That is the reason that it took years for them to have a son- Itzchak, since they had to be re-born (as it were) with perfect emunah and without connection to Avraham’s physical father (Terach), who was an idol worshiper.

What happens then, when Jews loose their faith and become “non-believers”? According to Rav wolfson, it is primarily the partaking of non-kosher food that closes the heart of the Jew to believe in G-d. But, in an astounding revelation, Rav Wolfson declares that there is no such a thing as a true non-believing Jew! The word in Hebrew for a non-believer is Kofer (kaafar in Farsi). The root of this world means to cover up, as it is used in Parashat Noach when Noach is instructed to “cover-up” the arc with tar. Therefore, the Kofer, the supposedly non-believing Jew, is doing nothing but covering up his in-born knowledge of the Almighty, consciously or otherwise, because he wants to go on to live his life as he wants in order to maximize his physical pleasure index. It is therefore not surprising, that so many Jews at different stages of their lives find the true path of G-d and return to their own believing selves.

This is a beautiful set of tapes, each one packed with golden nuggets of wisdom, which will help us uncover our emunah; that which came easily to our grandparents in Iran and elsewhere.