The sounds of crying and wailing that have filled the air over the past two weeks paint a grim picture of reality.
The ultra-Orthodox murder, the national religious burn babies in their sleep. A society that humiliates women, cuts down olive trees belonging to peaceful farmers. Soldiers who abuse innocent old people, shoot children (who were just playing with five stones...). A country where madmen run rampant without hindrance and fanatical zealotry sweeps through it.
Many in the public already know how to separate reality from the negative image that the media is trying to distort, but there are those who are dragged along by this evil spirit and truly feel that the situation is terrible and even hopeless.
Some of them even talk about their desire to emigrate to another country (someone should compile for them the crimes committed in the past year in that longed-for country. Maybe suddenly we won't seem so bad...).
Distorted proportions
A film crew going to a fancy hotel can look for the cobwebs that escaped the cleaner, the cockroach that slipped past the kitchen, the napkin that was thrown on the dining room floor. It's easy to write a story that presents the hotel as a filthy, musty place. It's all true, but the proportions are completely distorted.
Hotel guests, who see the whole picture, have a completely different impression.
Is reality really that black and gloomy? Are those negative events the rule or are they the exception? Are we a society dominated by hatred or, on the contrary, a society in which there is endless love and acts of kindness? A society in which thousands answer the call to come to complete the minyan at the memorial service for an unknown person, or to make a bride and groom happy at a wedding with few attendees.
Who decided to direct the spotlight towards a few dark corners instead of illuminating all the good and beautiful in our midst?
There is no other people in the world that has such caring, such mutual guarantee, such wonderful acts of volunteerism. True, here and there you come across the 'ugly Israeli,' but in front of him there are many times more manifestations of love, generosity, compassion, and consideration.
Wallowing in negative things does nothing to improve society. Quite the opposite. It's an alphabet of education.
When you reinforce the flaws, you don't encourage the child to improve. You make him feel like he's a bad child and hopeless.
Days of grace and mercy
In fact, this is one of the principles of Hasidism that contributed to its great success. The way to correct deficiencies is not by highlighting the negative, but from a positive attitude, focusing on the positive and striving to transcend and progress.
Darkness is driven out with light, says the Hasidic proverb, not with a stick.
Indeed, sometimes something negative happens that requires a response, but it must be very focused, only to the appropriate extent, and one must immediately return to dealing with the positive aspects.
The Baal Shem Tov established a rule: "Where a person's thoughts are, there he is." When you think about positive things, you become a positive person.
This week we enter the days of Elul, the month of repentance and correction. Repentance should also be done in the same way – not wallowing in flaws and shortcomings.
What needs to be corrected should be corrected, but the main attention should be directed to the virtue of these days, days when 'the King is in the field,' days of grace and mercy. The light will naturally push away the darkness.
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