Believe in Them

The Moment at the Table There is a moment every father knows. The child sits at the table on Friday night, at the Sabbath meal, and something between them is not whole. Maybe the father knows about something that is not good. Maybe the child knows that his father knows. Then, even if the father does not say a word, the child feels it. He feels the heaviness in his father’s eyes. He feels the careful, measured acceptance, which is really a kind of distance. “I accept you as you are” sounds beautiful. But the child senses judgment behind those words. He senses a father making peace with a reality he never wanted. So here is the question. The father loves. He tries. He even “accepts.” So why doesn’t the child feel that he belongs? What is missing? Accepting Versus Believing What is missing is the difference between accepting someone and believing in him. Acceptance is passive. It says: I have seen what is real, it is hard, and I choose not to fight it. “I accept that this is how you are.” That is a fine trait. But it assumes that what we can see is the child’s true reality: the struggle, the fall, the behavior that is not right. Acceptance agrees with the darkness. Faith in him is something else entirely. It is active. It says: I do not believe that this is who you are. I believe you are going through a hard time. This hardship is outside you, and it is only for now. It does not touch the core of who you are. I believe that your soul, just as it is, with no conditions, is pure, whole and holy. Our Sages teach: “A person does not sin unless a spirit of foolishness has entered him.” Notice the words “a spirit of foolishness.” It is something that comes in from outside and clings to a person. It is not the person himself. The sin, the struggle and the fall are an outer garment. They are not him. A Father and His Children Here there is a parable and its lesson. A father and his son are a parable for the bond between Hashem and the Jewish people. The Torah says: “You are children of Hashem, your Lord.” We do not only belong to Him. We are His children. It is a bond of our very essence. Hashem, so to speak, does not “accept” our sins as the real us. He believes in us. He sees the piece of Hashem inside us. The Tanya, the classic book of Hasidic thought, calls the soul “truly a piece of Hashem above.” Hashem knows that this piece can never be damaged. The dirt is only on the outside. The son is His own flesh and blood. This is the secret of the power of returning to Hashem. Hashem does not “agree to forgive” only after a person is sorry. He always saw the soul as it truly is. What comes to light when a person returns is that the son, too, has begun to see himself this way. The Hard Part But here it gets hard, because faith like this does not come by itself. Your child may cause you pain. He may do things you do not understand. You may be worn out. At such times, believing in him does not come naturally. The natural feeling is pain, sometimes anger, sometimes despair. So this is inner work, real work. The Hasidic master Rabbi Nachman of Breslov teaches that we must search for the good point in every person and every Jew, and find it, even if he seems far away. It is not enough to know that the good point exists. We must look for it, find it, and believe in it with all our heart. This is not empty belief, and it is not fooling yourself. Just the opposite: it is seeing a truer reality. As the Bible says: “People see with their eyes, but Hashem sees into the heart.” The eyes see what is on the surface. The heart of a loving father sees what is inside. This is a parent’s work on himself. He must lift himself above his own pain. He must see his son as he truly is at his core: a piece of Hashem above, a pure soul that has landed in a hard time. Back to the Table Let us go back to the table. Picture a Sabbath table where a father believes in his son. He does not talk about it or announce it, but the child feels it. He sits there and knows: I belong here. Not “accepted.” Belonging. My father does not agree with my struggles. He simply does not believe that they are me. That table is a model and a parable for the table of our Father in heaven. In the time to come, His complete faith in us will be revealed. As King Solomon wrote: “You are entirely beautiful, my beloved, and there is no flaw in you.” Then it will become clear that there never was a flaw. There was only a garment that fell away, and a soul that always stayed whole.