Believing In Ourselves

People endure two kinds of oppression and pain: tzaros and bizyonos. Tzaros is suffering, and the way to deal with it to try to protect yourself. Bizyonos is humiliation, and the general reaction is to try to persuade the humiliator to stop the torment, that you really don’t deserve it, that you’re better than he thinks.

Once, Rav Hutner said, Yidden understood that the hatred of nations was tzaros, so we reacted by trying to protect ourselves. Today, we mistake it for bizyonos and we try to change their minds and persuade them that we’re better than they think.

But that is futile. The greatness and the glory and the splendor — Knesses Yisrael! — is in a different league, and if we believe it, then that’s enough.