Community Magazine March 2014

18 COMMUNITY MAGAZINE 212.594.2020 | www.therdgroup.com Offices in Manhattan and Long Island SERVING THE COMMUNITY f o r o v e r 4 0 y e a r s Experience helping four generations of community families minimize taxes and structure their financial lives KNOWLEDGE. EXPERIENCE. SOLUTIONS . Call Jeffrey Resnick , Managing Partner, for referrals or to set up an appointment. The “Amalek Effect” Understanding the precise nature of Amalek’s assault will help us understand the strategy employed by its heavenly representative, thus helping us devise a counter strategy. When Moshe Rabbenu recalls Amalek’s audacious assault in the Book of Devarim (25:17-19), he describes howAmalek “cooled you along the road” (“ asher karecha baderech ”). When Beneh Yisrael left and Egypt and crossed the sea, there was an overwhelming feeling of excitement and awe. They had experienced something unprecedented and extraordinary, and they were inspired and overcome by spiritual fervor. Amalek came and “cooled” this excitement. Moshe thus describes how Beneh Yisrael were “ ayef veyage’a – tired and weary.” Amalek knocked them down from the heights of spiritual euphoria and enthusiasm to a state of lethargy. They lost the excitement and energy that had characterized them until then. This is the most potent and effective strategy employed by the yetzer hara – to make religious observance boring, unappealing, ordinary, pedestrian, and onerous. We are “believers, children of believers,” and so the yetzer hara generally will not try telling us that mitzvot are unimportant or pointless. Instead, it finds a way to make them difficult, inconvenient, and a drain. Here in the United States, we unfortunately see the success of this strategy. The Jewish immigrants to this country had to make immense sacrifices to observe Shabbat. Saturday was an ordinary workday, and many Jews were given the choice of either working on Shabbat or finding a new job on Monday. Those who overcame this difficult challenge are heroes, and worthy of our utmost respect and admiration, but their heroism exacted a heavy toll. Rav Moshe Feinstein, the great leader of American Jewry in post-War America, observed that these men would sit down to Friday night dinner with a groan. They made great sacrifices for Shabbat, but not all of them were able to do so without feeling drained and worn by the understandable anxiety and stress that this situation caused. And these feelings of anguish did not go unnoticed by their impressionable children. Seeing the aggravation caused by their parents’ adherence to Shabbat, the children were turned off. Their weekend experiences taught them that Shabbat is a source of anguish, not a source of joy and elevation. Consequently, they wanted no part of it. Rav Moshe attributed the widespread neglect of Shabbat observance among American Jewry to this unfortunate set of circumstances. Just as a plant needs water and sunlight to grow, spiritual growth requires excitement, enthusiasm, rigor and passion. When we do a mitzvah like we are writing a check to the IRS, it has an effect on ourselves, our children, and the people around us. Let us not fool ourselves. Our children watch the way we go to shul in the morning, and they notice if we look at our watches excitedly and eagerly run to the House of Gd, or if we leave dispassionately or