Whatever Your Hand Finds to Do

“Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your strength.” An Opening Thought “Peace, peace, and there is no peace.” This is the cry of the prophet Jeremiah. But look closely. Why does he say it twice? Why not simply say, “There is no peace”? The doubling points to something very frightening. Some people have peace on their lips. They even feel peaceful inside. And still, in truth, there is no peace. They have built themselves a world of false calm, like a room with no windows. They sit in it, relaxed, and they do not know that the walls are rotting. This is the hidden test of every young married man: in his home, in his inner self, and in his serving of Hashem. It is not the crude test of throwing off his commitment. It is the delicate test of keeping things quiet. Comfort Is Not Neutral Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, author of the Tanya, the classic book of Hasidic thought, writes about the animal soul. It does not only pull a person toward obvious, crude wrongs. Its main strength lies in things that look innocent: laziness, comfort, avoiding. “It suits him.” It is comfortable for him. Simply comfortable. So what is wrong with comfort? This is what is wrong. Comfort is not standing still. It is an active choice. Every time a person swallows the “dangerous” truth, he is not keeping things as they are. He might be swallowing the hard conversation his home needs. He might be swallowing the honest look inside himself that he has avoided for years. He might be swallowing the work of breaking a bad trait, which he puts off again and again. Each time, he is choosing a slow death over a healing that is quick but painful. King Solomon says: “The wounds of a friend are faithful.” The word that hurts, the touch that goes deep: that is the sign of real love. But “the kisses of an enemy” are the soft hug, the “everything’s fine,” the “not now.” They are hatred covered in sugar. Every time you “keep the peace” by swallowing the truth, you are not protecting what you have. You are destroying it. “Do It with All Your Strength”: The Verse You Cannot Run From “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your strength.” King Solomon is not talking about ordinary doing. Ordinary doing needs no special command. He is talking about the thing you “find.” It came to you. Hashem, who guides every detail, placed it in your path. And still it sits at the edge of the impossible. “With all your strength” means with everything you have, with the very core of your soul. Think of the thing that feels impossible. The conversation you have avoided for three years. The question you keep pushing off. The “I just can’t do this.” It is not your last way out. It is your only way out. Hashem did not put it there by mistake. False Peace and True Peace We must make a basic distinction between calm and peace. Calm can be what the Book of Psalms calls the well-being of the wicked. It is a quiet on the outside with nothing underneath but rot. True peace is different. The Hebrew word for peace comes from the word for wholeness. Peace is a state of being whole. That wholeness is born only after things have been honestly sorted out, after facing them head-on, after the honest inner judgment a person makes with himself. In the Tanya, Rabbi Schneur Zalman explains the inner work of the ordinary person, the one who is neither fully righteous nor wicked. His task is not to be at ease with his evil inclination, the inner voice that pulls him toward wrong. His task is to fight it. And here is the point. He feels how hard it is. He feels it is almost impossible. And still he does it. This is a war with no compromise. Someone who only manages the symptoms, and is happy that the “sickness” did not break out today, is busy with the outside while the inside keeps getting worse.