Rav Shlomo Katz and the chevra of Shirat David learn a short but searing letter from Reb Usher Freund about what happens when pain starts to crumble. Writing to a woman trapped in an agunah reality, Reb Usher validates the anguish, and then reframes it: pain can be a cleansing wash (רחיצת שמלה) that scrubs away stains; the process still hurts, but accepted with love it stops being torture and begins to reveal Or Shivat HaYamim (the primordial “seven-day light). “Ketz sam la’choshech”— there is an end to darkness, and it arrives faster when we choose patience, prayer, and love over despair and victim-identity.
Topics include:
- “Ketz la’choshech” is real: why every darkness has an end even when you can’t imagine it.
- The wash-metaphor: רחיצה מכאיבה—how cleansing pain works, and how קבלה באהבה changes the experience (not always the facts).
- Validation before mussar: being seen as the gateway to healing influence.
- Pain vs. suffering: pain can be involuntary; suffering is often a choice of stance.
- Birth pangs & geulah: why labor-level pain hints at a light that follows.
- Where בחירה sits: tending to my nefesh and avodah even when others misuse theirs.
- From “worshipping the wound” to Bnei Emunah—trading victimhood for partnership with Hashem.
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