What does a crisis accomplish?
It breaks the iron curtain and allows a person to feel.
Many people in the world act, speak, go through the motions of life yet are in a state of anomie.
They conduct the entire cycle of their lives on one plane.
Such a person comes and goes, enters a scene and leaves a scene.
Things in his life are constantly changing, but he never has a genuine experience.
Only a crisis can challenge such a state.
After the crisis, he is like a person who has suffered a burn.
As the old skin peels, he begins to feel with the new skin.
Although he feels pain, he has pleasant sensations as well.
A new sensitivity has been created, open to everything.
—Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz