These days in Argentina, people are talking about the infamous Swine Flu, or Flu A, or H1N1. Classes are being suspended, court recesses are being declared, even the Argentine Football Association (AFA) is suspending all activities for the month of July! If even the football world is addressing the issue, it means it's important, right?
Among the various precautions one can take to avoid infection is frequent handwashing. The virus thrives in damp environments, and when an infected person sneezes, covers their mouth with their hand, and then touches a doorknob, a handrail on a bus, or anything else where the virus can remain, anyone who touches that surface and then touches their mouth, nose, or eyes will become infected within the next ten hours. Therefore, those who wash their hands frequently are at lower risk.
As we have mentioned many times, the Baal Shem Tov teaches us that we should extract a lesson from every matter we see or hear for our service to God. For God creates nothing in vain and, in turn, directs everything that happens in the universe, even a leaf in autumn swaying in the wind as it falls to the earth, is directed, moment by moment, by God. Therefore, the occurrence we see or hear was evidently placed before us by God for a reason: so that we may learn something from it.
The flu is obviously something negative. We could say it represents those things that are not directly connected to God, or even more so, those things that oppose God's will. Therefore, essentially, no one wants to catch the flu... no one wants to be separated from God. So, what can we do to avoid catching the flu? Wash our hands.
Our sages explain that one of the spiritual meanings of washing hands (after rising in the morning) is the refinement of one's potential for action. In short, the soul is clothed in thought, word, and deed to affect the world around it and make it a dwelling place for God. Each of these "garments of the soul" must be refined and perfected to draw the maximum benefit from them and, as mentioned, to refine through them the body and the world around us.
Therefore, the flu is giving us a very clear message: we must wash our hands! That is, it is time for us to realize that we must improve our actions, that they be according to what God wants, with humility, honesty, joy, for the sake of heaven, refined, etc. Each person according to their level, from the one most disconnected from God to the great Torah scholar, we must cleanse our potential for action so that we may definitively reach the Final Redemption, with Messiah, now!.