God Helps Those Who Help Themselves
Last
week, upon returning from the shuq; I met a
woman who told me that she is one of the Bank HaPoalim
customers whose retirement pension was lost by Bank HaPoalim
when they used the accounts, unbeknownst to the customers, to gamble in the
bourse and lost.
She
told me she went to the bank one day only to be told that her entire Retirement
Pension had been lost. Evidently, there is a problem with the insurance
covering the accounts. She was told, in a wholly non-committal way, that they
hope that they will be able to recover some portion of her pension, offering no
percentages or time frame.
She
told me that she was told by the staff at the bank to take heart – that she wasn't the only person this happened to. Indeed, it's
tremendous comfort and consolation to know that Bank HaPoalim
had gambled away the life savings of a large number of pensioners all over the
country.
She
told me that she is a widow who had been putting away a few shekels every month
for fifteen years. She must have been a young widow, as she doesn't look more
than about sixty years old.
I
asked her what she intends to do about it.
She
answered: "What can I do? What can anyone do? "They" do whatever
they want to do to little people like us. But don't you worry. There's a God in
Heaven and He'll see to it that they get their just comeuppance!"
The
singly most dangerous, disempowering, downright crippling social control
mechanism that was ever introduced into religion is the delusion that there is
a God "out there", "up there" who is going to come to my
rescue – some day. "I believe. I believe. I believe with perfect faith in
the coming of Mashiach. And even though he tarries,
still I await him". So, I need not exert myself to see to it that justice
is done. I am exempt from responsibility for righting the wrongs in the world.
I
could not decide if I was more heartbroken or livid. I was beside myself but I
knew it would not help to tell this woman the truth. I knew I had to keep my silence until such time
as she has experienced enough humiliation, fear and suffering personally and
witnessed that of others that God Indwelling would burst out from the core of
her being and she would know that she must take action for
righteousness' sake of her own free will because the fate of her creation
depends upon her Awakening. Some day she will take sufficient pity on herself
and on humanity and the mesmerizing, soporific tune and repetitive directive
that keeps her in lethargic thrall: "I believe. I believe. I believe with perfect faith in
the coming of Mashiach. And even though he tarries,
still I await him" will be washed away in a flood of light of
Self-realization. The fear the RaMBa"M was paid
by the Sultan to inculcate in her that if she didn't believe it she wasn't a
real Jew will be swept away with it, her fetters will be loosed and will break
– and She will arrive and begin to save her world, bit by bit. She will know
that She is the Savior, She is God, if not Almighty.
There is no other.
Either
we find God in the deepest interior of our own spark of indignation at
injustice and fan that little spark into an inferno of realization of God
Indwelling and save one another and ourselves, or no one is coming to our
rescue.
Doreen
Ellen Bell-Dotan,
Mommy, Mommy, what are the Illuminati?