How can the same situation be either a problem or an opening?

Rabbi Landau explains it with chemistry. Some things are made of the exact same atoms, hydrogen and oxygen, yet “one explodes and one gives life.” The difference isn’t the ingredients. “It’s the combination.”

He cites the Baal Shem Tov: all reality is rooted in the otiyos, the divine letters Hashem created the world with. The letters are the same, but the results can be opposite. Tzarah, a problem, and tzohar, a window, are made of the very same letters. “The shift is only how they are arranged.”

Hashem gives you the letters, the raw energy. “But you are the chemist.” Plug in fear, and life burns. Plug in faith, “you’re going to create water that heals.” In his words: “The letters never changed. You changed the formula. Stop blaming the misery, start fixing the combination.”

Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level

Surface claim

The same raw material can produce opposite results. It depends on the combination.

Fear, vulnerability, or tension

When fear is plugged into a situation, the same letters that could be a window become a trap that burns.

What may be behind it

What is the world really made of?

In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau writes that, according to the Baal Shem Tov, everything that exists is “nothing but a revealing of the letters of Hashem’s speech, combined in different ways.”

Deepest human truth

Hashem gives the letters; a person is the chemist. The letters never change, but you can change the formula.

More questions from this teaching

• What did the Baal Shem Tov teach about the letters of creation?