What Happens When Life Is Stripped Of Meaning

There was a famous entertainer of whom I was a huge fan in my [somewhat wayward] youth [captured by the Gentiles...:-)]. He was a non-practicing, unaffiliated Jew. What did he have? Apparently - everything. Fame, fabulous wealth, wives [3 at last count] more beautiful than beautiful. What did he lack? Nothing, it would seem. In short - the American dream.


He also suffers and suffered from deep intense depression. He attempted suicide as well. His relationships consistently fail. I wouldn't want to be him for 5 minutes.


He is not a happy person. He is miserable. So what does he lack?


Everything.


He professes to be an atheist [as if one can be sure that there is no G-d, being that not one single proof has ever been offered against His existence]. If a person has no G-d, then he has nothing. Life only has meaning to the extent that he invents his own subjective meaning that has no absolute truth. The whole world is a big accident. He is an accident. We live, get sick and then die. How utterly depressing. I would probably try to commit suicide also if I felt that way.... [Although I wouldn't do it by swallowing furniture cleaner:-)].


There is an organization in Israel [and in the U.S. as well] that helps Charedi people adopt a secular lifestyle. In other words - it helps them become like goyim. Ahhh michaye!!:-). It finds them employment, tries to provide a social structure with support groups and the like and helps them integrate into the G-dless world which so many people inhabit.


Recently, there has been a spate of suicides of members of this organization. No wonder. Quite often people become irreligious due in part to emotional imbalances that are not solved by becoming secular. Also, these people lost their families and friends. No more parents [or a best a very strained relationship], or siblings etc etc. To go along with this, there are terrible guilt feelings for all of their sins [a great deal of repression is required in order to try to push away such basic feelings]. Most importantly, they have lost the most valuable possession a person can have - faith. Faith in Hashem, faith in the ultimate redemption of themselves and the world, faith that all that happens has a purpose. Instead, they live the post-modern life where the only god and judge of good and evil, right and wrong is themselves. A world where they are no boundaries for everything is OK if they just decide that it is. To live in a world with no absolutes, with no ultimate truths is TERRIBLY DEPRESSING.


I am not surprised but quite saddened about the suicides.


Torah provides not only a meaningful framework and structure for life but quite a bit of happiness as well. עבדו את השם בשמחה - It is an avodah, hard work, to be genuinely religious, but also the greatest source of joy.


I close with a quote that has stuck with me for years: "When man abandons G-d, G-d in not alone. Man is." 


לזכות כל הנושרים שירדו מדרך התורה והפסיקו להחזיק בעץ החיים, שישובו בתשובה שלימה ובמיוחד ב"י!