Finding the Hidden Sweetness
At the conclusion of the third book of the Five Books of Moses, the Torah lays out the blessings and the rebuke:
“If you follow My statutes and observe My commandments and perform them, I will give your rains in their time, the Land will yield its produce, and the tree of the field will give forth its fruit.”
The Torah then continues to describe the rebuke, the painful and tragic exile that will occur if we abandon the Torah.
Chassidic philosophy teaches that all negativity and darkness within the world is a shell which covers and conceals the spark of good that lies at the core of every experience and phenomenon. .If this is true about worldly matters, it is certainly true about every verse in the Torah. Thus, the rebuke, which, read literally, describes terrible curses, contains a deeper hidden meaning. Beneath the surface, the curses actually contain hidden blessings, blessings so intense that the only way they can descend upon this earth, unobstructed by the forces of judgement, is under the guise of a curse.
One example for this principle is the following verse:
Each man will stumble over his brother, [fleeing] as if from the sword, but without a pursuer. You will not be able to stand up against your enemies (26:37).
Rashi addresses the words “Each man will stumble over his brother” and explains:
“Each man will stumble because of his brother,” i.e., one person will stumble because of someone else’s sin, because all Jews are guarantors for one another.
Rashi is telling us that in addition to the simple reading - we will stumble on our brother in the physical sense - there is an additional meaning to the curse: we will be responsible and accountable for the sins of each other, because we are guarantors for each other.
The Hebrew word for “guarantor”, ערב (Arev), has two additional meanings: “mixed” and “pleasant”. These three seemingly unrelated words, (1) “guarantor” (2) “mixed” and (3) “pleasant”, are, upon deeper analysis, deeply connected. Why is every individual Jew a (1) guarantor responsible for all other Jewish people? Because we are (2) integrated and mixed with each other. Just as all parts of the human body comprise one organism, the wellbeing of one limb affecting all others, so too all Jews are specific parts of one collective soul, each part of the soul integrated with all other parts of the collective soul.
The exile is horrific, but there is a hidden blessing. While living in Israel we didn't necessarily appreciate how we are interdependent and connected to each other. Yet, under the tragic circumstance of the exile, we realize that (1) we are guarantors for each other (2) Because we are connected to each other. Because we are part of one whole. This recognition is the (3) pleasantness that is the blessing in this verse. The pleasantness of discovering that we are indeed all one. This recognition will ultimately serve as the spiritual healing to the exile, and will allow us to experience the sweetness of the return to our homeland.
(Adapted from the teachings of the Rebbe, Igros Kodesh vol. 2 p. 346)