When Obstacles Are the Whole Point

How It Began A man once came to me and said, “Rabbi, it’s hard for me to keep the Sabbath. The Knicks are playing.” I tried to understand. What is the point of the game? He told me, “You have to throw the ball into the hoop better than the other team.” I said to him, “Give me a ball and give me a hoop, and I’ll throw it.” He laughed and said, “But Rabbi, the other side is blocking you.” Then I said to him, “Exactly. Without the blocking, there’s no game.” And that is where this essay began. An Empty Court Is No Game The question is simple, but it is sharp. We look at the hard parts of serving Hashem: the distractions, the heaviness, the evil inclination, that inner voice that pulls us toward wrong. Why do we see them as a breakdown? In every competition in the world, everyone understands that the opposition is the very heart of the game. The Knicks don’t win a championship by shooting balls into an empty hoop in an empty arena. That’s practice, not a game. The game begins the moment the other team walks onto the court and says, “You shall not pass.” Every working man and every young married man needs to ask himself this same question, and ask it precisely. Some mornings the body feels heavy at prayer time. Sometimes the evil inclination speaks louder than the soul, and the obstacles keep piling up. Why, exactly at those moments, do we tend to say, “I guess I failed”? In truth, that is the opening whistle of the game. Not a Reward for the Pain, but Pain That Creates Worth Our Sages teach: “According to the pain is the reward.” Notice how precise the wording is. It does not say “along with the pain there is a reward,” as if the reward were added on afterward, from outside. The wording teaches that the size of the reward is measured by the size of the pain. In other words, the depth of the victory, the realness of the reward, grows out of the pain itself. Without opposition, a victory means nothing. Without an opposing team, there is no championship. This is the new idea we need to engrave on our hearts. The obstacle does not interrupt your inner work. The obstacle is the inner work. Hashem did not forget to clear the barriers from your path. He put them there. Hashem guides every detail, and He placed each one with exact precision, exactly for you. The Torah says: “When you go out to war against your enemies.” Against your enemies. That is the way. Every obstacle you meet is, so to speak, your ticket into the real game. Maimonides writes in his laws about returning to Hashem that a test comes to show a person that he has the strength to stand firm. The difficulty is not proof that you are weak. It is proof that you are standing on the court. A Descent for the Sake of Rising Higher: The Game Is Worth the Fall And it goes deeper still. Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, author of the Tanya, the classic book of Hasidic thought, writes about the “in-between” person. That is the ordinary person who is neither completely righteous nor wicked. He writes that such a person is at war all his days. Not “sometimes.” Not “when there are troubles.” Always. And this is not a failure. This is the very nature of the path for most people who serve Hashem. So when you feel that the struggle never ends, don’t ask, “Why am I like this?” Instead, know this: this is what the real court looks like. For as the Zohar, the classic book of Jewish mysticism, teaches: “There is no light except the light that comes out of the darkness.” A victory that took no effort is not a full victory. Joy that never knew sadness is not full joy. A Sabbath that held no test is not a Sabbath in the fullest sense. It is the descent itself that makes the rise possible. That is why King Solomon wrote: “A righteous person falls seven times, and rises.” He did not write, “A righteous person does not fall.” Just the opposite: he falls seven times. The fall is part of the story. The getting up is the victory.