Hidden Love

The Talmud tells us that when he Roman conquerers entered the Holy Temple they saw that the two cherubs that were on top of the Ark were facing each other.

What's unusual about this is that we are told that these cherubs had a miraculous ability to mirror the relationship between G-d and the Jewish people; that their facing each other would reflect on G-d being happy with us whereas if unfortunately the relationship was strained, the cherubs would turn their backs to one another.

Yet here, during the destruction of the Holy Temple, at a time when G-d was seemingly not at all pleased with the Jews, these cherubs were surprisingly facing each other. Why was this so?

Hidden within all the most terrible times in our history when we sense a concealment of G-d's kindness, is G-d's desire to lead us to something more beautiful and complete than what we had before. This can be compared to a teacher who while trying to explain a difficult concept to his student, realises that the student is not understanding. He therefore takes a break from speaking to the student in order to rethink how to better explain it to the student. Now while to the student it may be uncomfortable and upsetting to feel temporarily ignored by his teacher, in truth this silence is really an expression of the teacher's great love and care for the student. That is why the cherubs were facing each other, because the real purpose of all this darkness is only in order to bring us to a much brighter day, when as a result of our hard work in these thousands of years, we will have slowly made the world into a better place.

Adapted from the wisdom of the Rebbe, LK"S V.4 Parshat Devarim                                   Photo from Chabad.org