If nothing bad comes from God, why do hard times feel like a curse?
By Rabbi Shalom Landau.
Rabbi Landau answers that hardship feels like a curse only because we have not unwrapped it yet. “The curse is just the wrapping paper on the brocha.”
He bases this on the verse “Mei’ito lo seitzei hara,” from Hashem no evil comes out. If nothing bad comes from Hashem, then what looks bad must be something else in disguise. “So it looks like a curse. You didn’t unwrap it yet. See it, it’s a brocha.”
His image is a piece of carbon under invisible pressure until it becomes a diamond. From the outside, the pressure looks like damage. In truth, he teaches, there are not two options here but “one truth. The blessing is right there in the pressure.”
Related concepts: You can suffer twice · Giving up is not peace
In A Soul at Peace: The Blessing Hidden Inside the Pressure
Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level
Surface claim
Since no evil comes from Hashem, what looks like a curse is a blessing still in its wrapping.
What may be behind it
In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau writes that what we call bad is only an outer garment; the inner core is always good. It is not that bad turns good later; there was never bad there at all.
Deepest human truth
The blessing is right there in the pressure; seeing it means opening the package.
More questions from this teaching
More answers: Wealth, Work, and Divine Sustenance · All questions · Questions about Rabbi Landau and Rivnitz