Sweetest My Friends, 

This is a Torah from the Holiest of Holiest Holies, Reb Kalonymos Kalmishl the Rebbe of the Warsaw Ghetto. It is Torah for Purim, which you may only learn if you are crying.  

Everybody knows that Reb Shimon Ben Yochai, author of the Holy Zohar, had a son named Reb Elazar.

Reb Elazar Ben Reb Shimon was so holy that when he died he was not buried, and he spent every Shabbes with his Holy Rebbetzin. The whole week he lays dead until it comes Friday night. One Friday night after many years, she says to him; "Elazar I see a worm crawling out of your ear" He answers her, "Yes I know my dear, they're showing us from heaven its time to bury me." 
Reb Elazar is buried in the Galilee, in Aqbara, and all the Rebbes from the whole world come to pay respects to the Holy widow.  
At that time the head of all the academies and Sanhedrin in the land, author of the Mishna, the Rebbe of all the Rebbes was called simply, "Rebbe". He was also known as Holy Rebbe, Rabbi Yehudah the prince, he was a friend of the Emperor Antoninus, a descendent of Rabbi Yochanan the shoemaker, from the house of Sh'fatya son of Avigayil, wife of David King of Israel, Chay V'kayam.

Rebbe was so holy he had never in his life touched himself below his waist.

Now after a decent time has elapsed, Rebbe asks the holy widow to honor him by accepting his humble hand in marriage. She refuses saying it would be too much of a letdown to go from being wife of Reb Elazar to merely being wife of Rebbe.
"He was bigger than you," she says.

Now Rebbe was intrigued. There was obviously more to Reb Elazar then he previously knew. So he asks her why her late husband was so great? "You know" he says modestly to her, "I have a reputation as a fairly big Talmid Chacham." In modern terms, (as Reb Shlomo would say,) he sends her his Masters from the University of Judaism, a Ph.D. certificate from Oxford and his Diploma in Judaic studies from Heidelberg.

She tells him, "Yes, but my Elazar has Mitzvahs, good deeds." 
So Rebbe puts together a resume to show that he also has good deeds. You know, without being harsh it's not quite so uncommon for Rabbonim to live an easy life. Sometimes they are born rich, or marry into a rich family, or things just go easy for them. Sometimes God forbid Rabbis have such an unexceptional life, it's difficult imagining any kind of Olam Haba, (world-to-come) half as comfortable as the life they've enjoyed in this world.

I won't go into a long, gruesome story, but Rebbe; Holy Rebbe suffered excruciating perforated stomach ulcers, for years without end. It's another story in the Gemara, perhaps another time we can learn the Torah of Rebbe's pain.  

So he asks her what good deeds does Reb Elazar have that he doesn't have?

She tells him, "My Elazar was a Master of Pain." Rebbe leaves her alone.

So, do you hear my friends what the widow of Reb Elazar is telling us she learned from her holy husband? Pain is a Mitzvah.

So open your hearts sweetest friends. Do you hear what the Rebbe of the Warsaw Ghetto says; Sometimes, sometimes, sometimes God gives us Mitzvahs at the level of Mishpatim, judgments. Mitzvahs that make sense. And then there are Mitzvah commandments that God gives us at the level of Chok, statutes, which we can not understand.  
Now please plunge in with me into the inside of the Torah of the Warsaw Ghetto; take the next step, hand in hand with the Piaseczna Rebbe.  
Sometimes we are in pain and the pain makes us a better person. And sometimes we are in such pain that nothing good can come of it. Sometimes we feel we are being punished at the level of Mishpat, judgement. And sometimes we are aware that what is happening is destructive. The first is a kind of Mitzvah pain at the level of Mishpat judgement but the second is much higher it is the mitzvah of pain at the level of Chok. Pain that makes no sense.

The exile in Egypt was obviously at the level of Chok. Anyone with eyes could see we were not getting better. If we'd stayed one more split second we would have been lost forever. The idea that God only brings pain upon us for our own good, that the things that happen to us are somehow cleansing or redeeming, is nonsense. So if the pain of the exile is not because we are to raise the holy sparks, if it is not to fix us but to make the world and us more broken, it ruins everything.

"But" says the Holy Piacsezna, "Whenever we are faced with a statute Mitzvah, a Chok, we must strengthen ourselves to worship and serve God with overwhelming strength of faith. Precisely because a Statute makes no sense we too must use a level of faith which makes no sense. We must be faithful to the Torah without recourse to reason, at the level of-no sense and unreason" 
"So when we tie and bind ourselves to God with absolute faith above and beyond reason, we can sweeten the pain at its source. If the pain comes from the world of madness then we must enter into the world of madness to sweeten it." 
When Moshe Rabeinu asks God for some tangible signs and symbols he can show the Jewish people to prove that God has sent him, do you know what God gives him as a sign? God gives him a snake and some leprosy. Symbols of the most unholy things in the universe, death, sin and uncleanness.

"It could be" says the Holy Piascezna, "God gives Moshe these two symbols precisely because they mean the opposite." Moshe says "But they won't believe me" and God gives him more death and sin and uncleanness to show them." 
The very things we use to help us hang on to and recover our faith in God, cause pain that can damage our faith in God. The very signs God sends us to boost our flagging faith, cause such seemingly non-sensical pain in us.

But within this very blemish in our faith is the seed of its renewal and its healing. Because the greatness, the very awesome, incomprehensibility of pain caused by the signs taken by God from the side of sin, death and uncleanness prove that God is unknowable. Trying to understand why pain is happening to us is madness, the very madness with which we must apply our faith in God in the face of pain at the level of Chok, statute.

Now, this minute, I am holding hands with everyone in our holy Chevrah.

With Yossi and Hadas, Moshe and Shira, Sister Jasmine, Brother Steve Amdur, Chanoch, Bob, Ephraim, Dovidl and all those, my friends who are holding me up, strong.

You know, if I thought for one minute I was becoming a better person, my life would make so much sense. Who could complain? If I were sure I was growing in stature, that the sins of yesterday are in my past that the future is cleaner, sweeter smoother, I would have nothing to work or worry at. It's like owning a ticket to ride. But it isn't so.  
When I compare myself to myself; what have I achieved? When I was a child, a Yeshivah Bochur and I went out to pray in the forest, the birds came down to perch on my shoulder and on my siddur to join me in praise of God.   
When I thought of doing an Avierah, sin, my flesh started to shudder. If I dreamt of breaking the commandments my day was ruined. And now I look at me and what do I see? Like the Gemara says, it is clear to me I will not die with even a half of my desires fulfilled.

But if I tell you I have faith that this is where and who I am supposed to be, it is clear that I am mad. This is madness. If this is where I am to be, and this is who I have to be, then it is clear I am at the level of Ad'dlo  yoda.
If God is so, so hidden that I must have faith that my life is a fulfilling of God's plan, that I am on a trajectory to a good place, then I cannot distinguish between cursed Haman and blessed Mordechai. Then while I cry, I might as well laugh, while my heart breaks I had as well dance.

"This I pray" says the Holy Piascezna, "Tzavei Yeshuot Yaakov" Master of the Universe, if You are giving out commandments already, Mitzvahs. So command Yeshuot, salvation instead of pain, and I will worship and obey with the same alacrity I brought to the pain. And if you are Tzavei Yeshuot, 'commanding salvations', do it with as much madness and nonsensicality as with the pain.
Let the salvation be beyond reason and beyond logic." 
Amen.

Hershy 