ENGLISH BESHALACH 2013

HIDE AND GO SEEK

Things get interesting when you ask questions. Someone I learn with asked me if we could learn together about Emunah and Bitachon (Faith and Trust in G-d). To get a better idea of which sefer would be right for the job , I asked  him what he wants to get out of learning Emunah and Bitachon subjects. His reply set me off to write this article. “I want to stop worrying.”

My Rabbi once told me that we do not need to turn to Emunah and Bitachon for many things that we worry about. Although someone who has Emunah and Bitachon will worry a lot less than one who does not, Emunah and Bitachon is not a “quick fix” to stop worries. It is a life perspective. You have to live it, not only think it or read about it. When you live with G-d in your life, one of the “perks” that comes along with it is “worry free” life.  Emunah is not a worry buster – it is a religion. A religious person should be learning subjects of faith, even if he is not a “worried person”.  On the other hand, when people have a habit of worrying, it is very often a problem in the mindset and the person’s nature; it is not necessarily a religious issue. Having Emunah and Bitachon requires a lot of work and is certainly not the easiest way to stop worrying. You do not have to turn to Emunah to deal with the problem. There are atheists who are not “worried people”. But, if you had had Emunah to begin with, you would not have started to worry. When my rabbi told me this, I was shocked.  I realized that something about my own Emunah was off base, if my thinking was that I’d have to strengthen my Emunah only when I was worried.

I thought about this until I formulated my definition of a worry.  A worry is a thought about the future – a scary thought about the future:  “How will I manage over there?”  . Something bad might happen. We can suppose that the bigger the probability that the “something bad” will happen, the more worried people become. There are people, however, who are worried, even if the chances of that bad thing happening are slim.  They go into worry mode even though what they dread only may happen. But that thought of anything could happen– is not a true thought, once Emunah and Bitachon are in the picture. Only exactly what G-d wants to happen will happen.

Do you believe that what happens is what G-d makes happen? Do you believe that even your free choice and the free choice of others, people’s decisions, are greatly affected by G-d?  G-d gets down to the most minute of details, even down to what smell you are smelling while reading this article.

The biggest thing that holds most people back from believing that G-d is involved in everything in life is not seeing Him. A religious Jewish boy was picked on in public school by his anti-Semitic teacher. “There must be no G-d, because if there were – how come we can’t see Him?” The child answered back- “The teacher must have no intelligence in his head, because if he had – how come we can’t see it?” The way we know someone has wisdom or wit is not by seeing it. Rather, it is by deducing it. So, the more we can deduce G-d’s presence in everything that goes on, the more we can “see” Him. If we are not working on this deduction, then we are not “seeing”. Emunah needs to be deduced.  All the time.  And then, the worries will not only disappear. They won’t begin.

Now, there are different parts of our lives in which we can deduce G-d.  So I asked the fellow I was learning with, a successful businessman sitting back on his big, high quality, leather office chair, “Can you see G-d  in the chair that you are sitting on?  Can you see that it is because of G-d that you chose to buy that specific chair?  G-d, not you, made the decision to get that chair.” He said, “No. I bought the chair. I picked it out; it was my decision.”

I asked him why he bought that chair.  He said, because it was on sale. I asked him why the chair was on sale.  “Because it had a defect.” “Why did this specific chair have a defect and not any other? Why did the store carry a defective chair? Why would you want a chair that is defective, just to save a few dollars?  Do you buy everything defective, just to save money?” When you ask a person “Why” to everything he says to you – eventually, he will have no answer. (This is partially the reason why people get uneasy when you pose to them a question beginning with – “Why”. They do not have the answer.)  That “no answer” is G-d. G-d is in the decision of buying the chair. We don’t see Him. But He is there.  The more we play these exercises, the less worried we will be.

The last Mishna in Berachot spins a new twist on the words we say each day in Kriat Shema – בכל מאודך  ,  בכל מדה ומדה שהוא מודד לך הוי מודה לו במאד מאד. – You are to thank and love G-d generously for every behavior that he measures out for you.  Everything G-d does is Middah k’negged Middah – measure for measure.  Every punishment is measured and every reward is measured. G-d and His Torah are exact. To a tee. We see in our parasha how the Egyptians were killed at Yam Suf in exact accordance to their actions. The Midrashim tell us that the ten plagues and drowning in Yam Suf were all exact punishments directly related to how the Egyptians mistreated the Jews.  Rashi, on the Shira of the splitting of the sea, points out the different ways in which the Egyptians died in the water. Some were tossed up and down, suffering a slow death; some died immediately. Still others met death somewhere in between the two extremes.  All depending on the level of their evil. G-d didn’t just kill them all in one blow. Each one was meted out a measure reciprocal to how he had behaved.

We find that when Yosef was kidnapped by his brothers and sold as a slave, G-d saw to it that the Yishmaeli merchants passing by “happened to be” carrying pleasant smelling spices. Not the usual smelly tar that Yishmaelites habitually carried with them.  Do you think that Yosef was focused, at that time, on what type of smell he was experiencing? He had just been kidnapped, on his way down to Egypt to be sold as a slave, separated from his father and brothers at the age 17, betrayed by his own brothers.  A bad smell was an insignificant issue in comparison to what Yosef was going through.   But G-d showed Yosef that he cared for him.  Although Yosef had to go through all the trials that came upon him, he did not have to suffer a bad odor, as well. G-d measured out everything that was going on to a tee. And He measures everything that goes on in our lives, as well. Even which smells we encounter.

I got a phone call seven years back informing me that a friend of mine from America with whom I was very close had lost his nine year old daughter, unexpectedly and tragically, on Erev Shabbat. My friend had to think quickly to prepare a burial spot that he had never dreamed he would have needed.  His own mother had passed away when he was a young boy, and she was buried on Har Hamenuchot. Since then, Har Hamenuhot has filled up, and many people are now buried in what they call here in Israel “bunk bed graves”. So, just on a long shot, he called the Har Hamenuchot burial office and asked them if there was any chance of burying his daughter next to his mother- if not, he would just bury her in America. They answered him that over the last thirty five years, plots in that area have been completely filled. There can be just no chance at all that anything is still vacant next to his mother. He started making phone calls for burial plans on Saturday night, in a cemetery near home.

Saturday night, immediately after Shabbat, the phone rang. It was the burial office in Har Hamenuchot. They had stayed up in Israel till very late, until Shabbat ended in Baltimore. “What size plot do you need?” they asked.   After a heavy silence, my friend responded: “110 centimeters.”   “We took a second look and found that there is a plot available adjacent to your mother’s grave that we have not been able to fill all these years. It is 112 centimeters long. Get on the next plane to Israel.”  I heard that story from my friend at the Shiva. My hair stood on end. And every time I retell that story – I feel shivers throughout my body. We forget these stories. But they happen. Many times, without our knowing about them. These things happen silently. G-d acts silently. He acts invisibly. It seems that G-d has this game that He made up and likes to play. “Hide and go seek”. And, if we give up, we have lost the game. The Big Game.

If we truly ask, “Where is G-d?” we will start asking, instead, “Where is He not?”

THE NOISE OF THE IMPULSIVE