Ahavah Rabah 14: Appreciating Every Salvation

נגילה ונשמחה בישועתך

…may we exult and rejoice in Your salvation.

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We ask Hashem that, not only should we not be embarrassed, but we should merit to exult (feel elation) and rejoice in His salvation.

This phrase continues where we left off.  We are saying to Hashem: As a result of our bitachon, may we now feel elated and b’simchah over our future ultimate salvation through Mashiach.  HaRav Miller points out that “ישועה–y’shuah (salvation)” also refers to the spiritual gifts that Hashem grants us each and every day.  The gifts he mentions specifically are the privileges of [being able to speak with Hashem through] tefilah, of [Hashem speaking to us through] our learning Torah, and of performing His mitzvos.

He explains: Simchah is recognizing what Hashem has gifted to us, rejoicing in the pleasure of it, and utilizing it.

There was once a man who lived in poverty.  One day, he got onto a train in New York and sat down.  Next to him was another man who looked like a rav.  They began talking.  It turned out that the rav had been asked by a man during the Holocaust to find his son if he didn’t make it, and to give him the information for a Swiss bank account with a substantial sum of money in it.  The rav had been searching for many years after the war and had never found the son.  The man now sitting next to him on the train turned out to be the long-lost son for whom he had been searching all those years.

Was the son wealthy or poor all these years?  Technically, he was wealthy because the money was his.  However, in reality, he was poverty-stricken.  He was not aware of the money all those years and had no benefit from it.

Hashem grants us many gifts, privileges, and opportunities.  If we don’t recognize them, don’t take pleasure in them, and don’t utilize them, we are indeed living in “poverty.”  But when we do recognize, take pleasure in, and use the gifts that Hashem has given to each of us, we are wealthy beyond our imagination, both in this world and in the eternal world to come.

Integrating Mitzvos into Our Daily Lives

Using what HaRav Miller has taught us here in this explanation, as well as in some of his other writings, we can connect our phrase this week to the foundational mitzvah of Ahavas Hashem, and specifically to the times we are living in today.

Throughout most of our history, the freedom, prosperity, and resources that we enjoy today simply did not exist.  Not only are we not being persecuted, but we have unprecedented opportunities available to each of us, and those opportunities are numerous and readily available.  In many of our communities, baruch Hashem, we have a multitude of options of which minyan to daven at, which siddur to use to maximize our kavanah, which s’farim to learn from in almost any language that we speak, which recorded and videoed shiurim from around the world to listen to, which live shiurim to attend, and the list goes on and on.  Clearly our generation has many formidable challenges as well.  However, there is so much to be thankful for.  If we contemplate the gifts and opportunities we have today, it should lead us to thank Hashem for them and to increase our love for Him.