In a lecture delivered last night, Rabbi Yoel Pinto — son of Rabbi Yoshiyahu Pinto — addressed questions of faith, coping with the past, and understanding reality from a Torah-based perspective.
“God did not create the world nearly six thousand years ago and leave it to exist on its own,” Rabbi Pinto said. “Rather, at every single moment, God is creating the world anew.” He emphasized that the world does not sustain itself independently, but relies on constant divine vitality — much like a lightbulb that shines only when connected to electricity: “There’s a lamp that lights up a room — does that mean the light comes from the lamp itself? No. There’s energy flowing into it. Disconnect the power, and the light disappears.”
He went on to speak about people who remain fixated on the past: “Maimonides writes that the most disgraceful state a person can fall into is bearing a grudge… A person who says, ‘He did this to me, and I’ll get back at him,’ is stuck in the past and cannot move forward.”
Rabbi Pinto quoted the Kli Yakar to illustrate his point: “It’s like a child playing on the beach, building a sandcastle, and someone comes and knocks it down. The child runs to his father and demands a harsh response, but the father knows it’s just sand and doesn’t react the way the child expects.”
He added that people often interpret events in exaggerated ways compared to their actual significance: “We see something happen and think it’s the end of the world. But God won’t disrupt the entire fabric of life because of a fleeting feeling. There’s a process, a structure, and even challenges have a role.”
Rabbi Pinto concluded: “A person who advances without letting the past weigh him down — who walks forward with the understanding that life has a purpose — is someone to whom God gives the tools to keep going.”
This article was written in cooperation with Shuva Israel