Rabbi Ephraim Sprecher, Dean of Students and Senior Lecturer at Diaspora Yeshiva, is not only a popular speaker and teacher, but also a dynamic thinker and writer. A student of Harav Yaakov Kamenetsky and Harav Gedalia Schorr, Rabbi Sprecher was granted smicha (rabbinical ordination) by Torah Vodaath Yeshiva. Prior to his current position, Rabbi Sprecher was a professor of Judaic studies at Touro College in New York. In addition to his duties at Diaspora Yeshiva, Rabbi Sprecher writes a regular column on various Judaic topics in the Jewish Press, and lectures regularly at the OU Israel Center in Jerusalem.
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The Helpmate Who Opposes!
Published: Tuesday, September 27, 2011 08:41:28 AM
Number of views: 2707

God said, “It is not good for man to be alone. I will make for him a helpmate who is against him.” (Genesis:2:18)
 
At first sight this verse seems to be a paradox: a helpmate assists, she does not oppose. The Talmud (Bavli Yevamot 63a) phrases the question as follows. The Hebrew word, Ezer, is a “helper”, and K’negdo is “against him”?! The Talmud solves the difficulty by saying, “If her husband is worthy, she will help him, but if he is not worthy, then she is against him.” Perhaps, however, she helps him particularly by being against him. If she smoothes over his rough edges, corrects his faults and points out when he is wrong, she helps him by not reinforcing his shortcomings. Only a wife can appropriately correct her husband. Thus the Hebrew for wife, Isha (Aleph, Shin Heh) has the same gematria (numerical equivalent) as the word Musar (Mem, Vav, Samech, Reish).
 
According to the ARI (Rabbi Yitzchak Luria Ashkenazi), every soul who enters this world was sent here to fulfill a certain and specific mission. It came here to restore and repair one specific defect. But a person can spend a lifetime without learning the nature of the shortcoming one came here to repair. How can we know what our Tikkun is?
 
Our verse (Genesis 2:18) hints at the answer. If there is one good deed that one is extremely loath to do, one good quality that seems to beyond one’s reach, then one should know that this is the very Mitzvah one was sent into this world to accomplish.
Everyone knows what that one, special Mitzvah, is that one finds most difficult to achieve.
 
In a Kabalistic sense, this is what is meant by the verse, “I will make for him a helpmate who opposes him.” This means according to the ARI, that Hashem will give you a clue to pinpoint the defect that you must repair. The clue is: “who opposes him” – the matter that presents the greatest obstacle, the greatest challenge to which one has an inherent aversion, this is the defect, the character flaw that one was sent into this world to restore and repair. This is one’s goal and mission in life.
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