Against the Current

The Torah says: “Do not follow the crowd to do wrong. And when you speak up in a dispute, do not lean toward the majority to twist what is right.” There is a saying so simple it is almost blunt. Once you hear it, you can never forget it: Only dead fish swim with the current. Stop for a moment and think about that. A dead fish has no choice. The water takes it wherever the water wants to go. But a living fish, a fish that is truly alive, chooses to swim against the rushing water. Pushing against the current is not the fish’s failure. It is the proof that the fish is alive. A whole lesson in serving Hashem is hidden right here. The Current Called Habit What is the “current” we swim in? Don’t think right away of big, crude temptations. The great current that sweeps us along is something much quieter. It is habit. It is “this is just how things are done.” It is how easy it feels to walk the path we already know. Every young married man knows this feeling. It is morning. You have been awake only a few seconds, and already your body wants to sleep a little longer. Your head says, “Later.” Your tiredness dresses itself up as a perfectly reasonable excuse not to get up for morning prayers with the congregation. That is the current. It is not loud. It is not frightening. It simply pulls. This is the nature of the animal soul, as the Tanya, the classic book of Hasidic thought, explains. The animal soul longs for rest, for the easy way, for doing “what everyone does.” And this is the way we drift away, spiritually. Abraham the Hebrew: The Original Model Hashem made His world so that its signs carry a lesson inside them. That is why we are told to look closely at the story of creation and listen for what it teaches us. Our father Abraham, the first father of the Jewish people, is called “Abraham the Hebrew.” Why? The word “Hebrew” comes from the word for “the other side.” The Midrash explains: “The whole world was on one side, and he was on the other side.” This is not just about where he lived on a map. The whole world was drawn to one side: the side of comfort, of going along, of the majority. And Abraham stood alone on the other side. He did not go with the current. He did not go with it when they threw him into a fiery furnace. And he did not go with it when Hashem told him, “Go away from your land.” This is the model for every Jew. Deep down, at our very core, all of us are “Hebrews,” people of the other side. The soul inside us, the divine spark, goes against the current by its very nature. The only problem is when we forget which side we belong to. The Struggle Is the Sign, Not the Problem Here something needs to be said that can change your whole way of seeing things. Do you feel that serving Hashem is hard for you? That it takes effort, that it is a fight, that you are always wrestling with yourself? The truth is the opposite of what you think. This is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign of life. Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, author of the Tanya, explains that the “in-between person” is someone whose whole life is a battle. All of us should aim to reach this level. It is not a battle that happens once, and it is not a stage that passes. It is a constant battle. That is why he writes there of a person who “will never be wicked, not even for one moment, all his days.” This describes a lasting way of life. It is not a breakdown that needs repair. When a fish swims against the current, it feels the water pushing back. It works. It strains. And that is exactly the sign that it is alive. The same is true for you, as a Jew. You may feel how hard it is to get up, to study Torah, to pray with real focus. When you feel that, the divine spark in you is at work. Your divine soul is alive, and it is pushing back against the pull of the animal soul. The heaviness you feel is a sign of health, not of sickness. You should worry only when the struggle stops completely. Then you have to ask yourself: have we crossed over to the other side?