Title: Strengthen Your Emunah
Author: Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer
Publisher: Feldheim
Every time period in Jewish history, throughout the ages, has encountered challenges unique to that particular time, place, and culture: challenges to both the body of the Jewish people, and to the soul of Judaism – our sacred Torah. And when our Torah comes under scrutiny or attack, its detractors, more often than not, aim straight at the very heart of our faith, and for good reason.
Our emunah is the foundation stone upon which everything else is built. Undermine our emunah with doubts, lies, and obfuscation, and the rest of the structure may very likely topple as well. Strengthen that emunah, reinforce and energize it with truth and immutable proofs, and the structure itself – all mitzva observance and avodas HaShem – will then stand taller and stronger, able to withstand all the vacuous winds of change.
In our day, we certainly face monumental challenges to our faith from a secular world that is driven to eradicate our bedrock values, deny or at least rewrite our history, and question our very identity. We need responses that can address the temper of our times and articulate anew, the fundamental faith upon which our Torah stands. One current title that meets this challenge head-on is a potent, slender, easy-to-read volume entitled Strengthen Your Emunah by Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer. Rabbi Fingerer has impacted thousands with his writing, popular lectures and sage counseling. He is the founder and Mora d’Asra of the Brooklyn Jewish Xperience Beis Medrash. His previous book Search Judaism: Judaism’s Answers to a Changing World received high acclaim from numerous Gedolim and quickly became popular around the globe.
Here is a text that first and foremost encourages questions and exploration, knowing full well that the Torah does not shy away, and never has, from any challenge that comes its way. The author first discusses classical sources to define what emunah is, as well as what it means to know and to love G-d. He thereby lays the groundwork for cultivating a meaningful, profound, and personal relationship with our Creator.
What follows is a series of chapters that provide compelling reasons as to why the Torah perspective, steeped in emunah, is far more reasonable than any other perspective on life. In a chapter entitled “Can Science Lead to Faith?” the author brings a variety of wondrous examples that highlight how nature is imprinted with the seal of G-d. From a quick peek into the galaxy, to an examination of the GPS on a leatherback turtle, to the intricacies of the DNA molecule, and more, the author shows how we can learn emunah from the world around us.
In other chapters, Rabbi Fingerer elaborates upon the powerful proof of our mesorah: our unbroken chain of Torah transmission. It’s rather rare, but you may still find an occasional American who traces his ancestry back to the Mayflower, and who rightfully expresses a degree of pride in that, for whatever it’s worth. Now compare that to a nation that has traversed the globe, experienced every triumph and tragedy the world has to offer, and through it all has maintained a meticulous chain of tradition, wisdom, Rabbinic scholarship and leadership beyond compare. Infused with this mesorah, we essentially appear, not as a relic, but as a vibrant people that simply has not aged – from Sinai to this very day.
When it comes to history, we in the present may not be privy to the Prophets of old, but we do have the astounding benefit of retrospect. We can gaze into the long, rear-view mirror of our history and see how the encouraging words of our ancestral Prophets are being fulfilled. The author delves into numerous illustrations of this: from verses in Sefer Devorim that herald the kibbutz galiyos we are currently in, to verses in Yirmiyahu and Michah that depict the Acharis HaYamim.
Whether Rabbi Fingerer is delving into the wonders and divinity of the Hebrew language or describing miraculous events in our own time, he is spot-on in the way each point serves to bolster our emunah. These chapters are also filled with fascinating stories, intriguing anecdotes, Sage insights, and quite fittingly, the text closes with a chapter entitled, “How Can We Bring Mashiach?” After discussing the reckoning that accounts for the “End of Days” era we are currently in, Rabbi Fingerer describes the qualities (based on Rabbinic sources) we need to develop, especially today; among them, the importance of achdus and ohaiv es ha’briyos.
We presently find ourselves moving away from the lessons of the Three Weeks while moving toward the introspective days of Elul, leading up to Tishrei. Strengthen Your Emunah turns out to be an ideal manual for this propitious time of year: a text designed to foster the fundamentals of our faith while pointing us in the direction of how we can best prepare for the awesome days ahead. If you wish to feel more connected and directed, in a deeper way, to your Creator, here is a book that will help you do just that.
