Emuna Daily

Rav Yisrael Salanter, the founder of the Mussar movement, was once giving a Shiur in Gemara, and as he was delivering the lecture, a student asked him a question. The question was very strong, and negated the premise of the entire Torah thought Rav Yisrael was trying to develop. Rav Yisrael thought for a few minutes, and then he looked at the student who asked the question and told him, “You are right. I have no answer to that question.” He then closed the Gemara and ended the Shiur.

After the Shiur he came over to his students and told them, “You should know that while I was thinking about that question, I had five different answers that I could have given. However, I didn’t feel that they were completely Emes, they were not entirely ‘true’. I thought to myself that it might be worth it to say one of these answers just to save my Shiur, but to do something unethical, when I have devoted my life to promote Mussar, would not be very ethical!”

The very fact you know about someone who is in trouble means that in some way you are able to help. Otherwise, why would this knowledge have entered your world?

Arik Sharon, when he was Israeli Minister of Defence, came to visit the Lubavitcher Rebbe. After his private audience, he related to his friends, “The Rebbe was very cordial. He asked when I was leaving, and when I told him I was taking a flight back tomorrow he insisted that I stay a little longer.” General Sharon’s Lubavitcher friends explained to him that the Rebbe doesn’t say such things just out of politeness and insisted that he postpone his flight.

The plane that Sharon was to have taken was hijacked to Libya.  At a later date, another Israeli cabinet member, in private audience with the Rebbe, poised the obvious question. “If you knew,” he asked the Rebbe, “why did you not report the matter to the authorities and attempt to circumvent the whole hijacking?” “Do you think I knew?” the Rebbe responded in a very serious tone. “It is not a matter of prophecy or knowing. It is simply that when I see someone standing before me, I am so completely obsessed with doing that person a favor —  that is why I say what I say.” R’ Tzvi Freeman