Light will return

by Rabbi Deborah Bronstein

As many of us can attest, this season of the year, with it its growing darkness outside and the sometimes inaccessible brightness of the holidays, can be very bitter. We are not the first to taste its bitterness.

A story:

Several disciples of Rabbi Nahum of Tchernobil (1730-1797) came to him and wept and complained that they had fallen prey to darkness and depression and could not lift up their heads either in the teachings or in prayer. The zaddik (the righteous one) saw the state of their hearts and that they sincerely yearned for the nearness of the living God. He said to them: “My dear sons, do not be distressed at this seeming death which has come upon you. For everything that is in the world is also in man. And just as on New Year’s Day life ceases on all the stars and they sink into a deep sleep, in which they are strengthened and from which they awake with a new power of shining, so those men who truly desire to come close to God, must pass through the state of cessation of spiritual life, and ‘the falling is for the sake of the rising.’ As it is written that the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam and he slept and from his sleep he arose, a whole man.

Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim: Early Masters pg. 173

Light will return: to our spirits, to our hearts and to our minds.

Light will return.

by Rabbi Deborah Bronstein
INMI Board Member

The opinions expressed in this blog are those of the submitter. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the board of directors or members of the Interfaith Network on Mental Illness.