Being Faithful to Faith - Rabbi Akiva Fox

[Music] this will be a series of classes and short segments of 10 minutes approximately 10 minutes um that we will be discussing the 13 principles of Faith the Yim a which are the essentials the fundamentals of amuna and of faith belief and Trust in Hashem and God uh which are not only uh essential and critical to Jewish philosophy faith and belief but also as we will learn um part of or a critical part of the essence of the Jewish person the essence of the Jewish man so we're going to start with the uh actual term amuna and for those of you who are not privileged with the opportunity to be here to see me live uh and are watching from the video I'm sorry to tell you but um the camera is not working very well today I have a lot more hair usually uh there's something wrong with the focus I have the same issue with my uh mirrors at home and uh we're working on it um but we're going to discuss the topic of amuna amuna is a word that is very often used in Judaism but we are going to try to Define also to describe but to define the word amuna what does the word amuna mean so many of you will say that it means belief it means faith it means trust I'm sure I don't know if a real woman named uh Brenda you know lerberg exists but I'm sure if she did she would say as follows Rabbi um I understand amuna which is a women's league uh that was founded in 1935 uh which was a uh critical part of the world Zionist organization uh specifically for women and that's what amuna is in my world and I would say of course thank you Brenda yes I I was referring to the concept uh the concept of amuna well rabbi our concept our mission statement is that we uh we want to forward and we want to better the world and bring everybody closer to it yes yes Brenda thank you thank you that is definitely one of the translations of amuna we're going to focus slightly on a different translation of amuna so as we said before the simple the most commonly used uh term to translate the word amuna is Faith or belief but i' like i' like to share with you the words of the ramban the ramban a one of the early rishonim um who was one of the great talmudic philosophers and uh sages of the generations has a fascinating thought that really penetrates um penetrates the Jewish heart and it really uh depicts exactly what amuna is and he says as follows the Torah tells us that Moshe Moses ordered his his servant or his his prime uh disciple yosua to battle the nation of amalik and Moser Renu went to the top of a mountain with his brother Aaron and with his nephew hore and they went to the top of the mountain and Mosher rinu raised his hands high in the air and as long as his hands were outstretched then the Jewish Nation was victorious in their battle but the second that he let his hands go down then the amalik nation would overcome and be victorious over the Jewish people so obviously moshu wanted to keep his hands outstretched but they were cim the Torah tells us they were heavy they were hard to keep out try yourself try to keep out your hands like this I don't know how the Statue of Liberty does it she's been doing it for years like this I don't know I hope she uses deodorant also but um how does a person keep it stretched out for so long so his brother and his nephew Aon andore they assisted him to keep his hands in that formation by putting a rock for him to sit on and they both each one held out one hand and the PK tells us the Torah says his hands were amuna his hands were Faith his hands were belief his hands were trust what does it mean his hands were amuna says the ran a very powerful Insight the ramban says that the translation of the word amuna is not have faith it's to be faithful when M's hands were the the verse says it doesn't mean that his hands had faith it means his hands were faithful to what he wanted them to do he wanted them to stay out he wanted them to be outstretched and though was difficult they stayed that way so they were faithful to what he wanted them to accomplish so thean says that the technically the translation of the word amuna would not be Faith but faithful the difference between faith and faithful is not just the f l spelling at the end of the word there's a much more powerful difference between faith and faithfulness Faith does not necessarily require testing amuna belief trust does not necessarily require going through difficulties or standing up to something or being challenged faithful requires going through a challenge and remaining faithful the blessing the BR that we give to a and to a bride and groom when they get married is that they should build a bias literally it would sound like it means a house bias NE of belief or faith and although there's truth to that but it's also a house of faithfulness you should both be faithful to each other and to what you want to what you believe in faithfulness is not just a abstract concept of belief or a system of intellectual Clarity faithfulness is to stand with what you believe in stand strong up to other challenges and be faithful to what you believe in there's an old uh Yiddish story a man wants to find the proper sh the proper uh you know husband for his daughter so a young man um asks or offers his hand in marriage and the girl and the boy meet and the father of the of the girl the possible bride says he'd like to meet the K first he'd like to meet the young man see what he's all about so he says to the young man he says so what are you going to do uh you know as far as parasa what are you going to do as far as uh making a living and the man says you know the young man says I have faith I have faith in God so he says well what are you going to do if you know if things get hard and you know you have to pay tuition and you have to pay you know um for a house and rent and more what are you going to do he's like I have faith I have faith in God and he says what are you going to do you know down the line you're going to have children and you're going to have to marry them off and how you going to you know put food on table he I have faith in God faith in God so the father-in-law says okay he goes back to his daughter he says he's a very fine young man but he thinks I'm God because I'm going to provide he thinks I'm going to be the one to pay for everything Faith sometimes appears as if it's a concept like that like yeah I have faith in God it's in the back on the back burner like oh everything will work out what ramban is telling us is that faith is not enough it's not some abstract concept it's to be faithful to stand strong with what we believe in when we're going to have to deal with challenges or difficulties don't whimper don't dry away melt away no we stand up to or against what we're facing because we are faithful to Hashem the more the challenge the more we can prove our faithfulness to paraphrase John F Kennedy ask not what God can do for you but what you can do for God don't just have faith and say yes God will help yes God is all merciful yes God will take care of me that's not enough faithfulness is what can I do to prove my faith to God how can I stand up to the challenges against me stand strong in what I believe and no matter what happens no matter what I'm tested with no matter what I go through I will be faithful to my own faith that is the end of our first segment of [Music] amuna