THE QUESTION IS WHO’S CRAZY?

Crazy things are happening in the world right now. But sometimes the “crazy” is “good”.

The opposite of “crazy” is “normal”. The question is who decides what’s “normal”.

On Wednesday night the President of the USA recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The international community almost universally condemned him. We the Jewish people believe that we built and first inhabited this city over three thousand years ago.

The question is who’s crazy?

Is “normal” determined by according to what is true or false? Or perhaps by a moral sense of right or wrong. Or maybe normal is decided by what is popular.

I would like to offer a most profound insight from the Tanya whose author, the first Lubavitcher Rebbe’s liberation from imprisonment by Tsarist Russia, we commemorated on Wednesday night.

Quoting a verse by King Solomon “I then saw that there is an advantage to wisdom over folly as the advantage of light over darkness”, he explains as follows:

That just as “light” is innately superior to “darkness” and therefore even a little bit of light banishes a great deal of darkness as a matter of course, so too is “wisdom” superior to “folly” and will inevitably vanquish it.

In other words when we measure the “forces” out there we must remember that it is not and never was a numbers game. Both the history of the Jewish people and its destiny transcend “world opinion”. The international community does not dictate our destiny.

But you may ask what about all the nations of the world and the power they wield? What about the threats and intimidation emanating in varying degrees from so many hostile countries that surround us? Surly we must take all of this into consideration. We as a people must act rationally and responsibly.

The lesson we learn from the Tanya is clear. The forces of light are innately superior to the forces of darkness. Yes the darkness at times seems all powerful and consuming. However we must never forget that precisely the opposite is true. It is darkness that is innately week. For in fact it is not even real. It only exists in a vacuum of light. And when the light begins to shine, it dissipates. In fact the light doesn’t even have to engage with the darkness, it only has to shine its light.

This lesson is relevant in our times more than any other.

Each and every Jew possesses that light.

Each and every must not be afraid to shine that light.

And when we do the darkness in all its shades of gray will dissipate much quicker than we ever believed.