A Whisper in Our Ear | Rabbi Tzvi Sytner

Hi, I'm Tzvi Sytner. I'm a rabbi at a Kiruv Shul here in Toronto, Canada. And one of the things that we get to do all the time is the zchus to be able to host these big Kiruv Shabbosim. And every time we have these big groups Friday night, for many people, it's their first time ever having a Shabbos experience like this. And so we introduce the idea of השגחה פרטית, divine intervention, we call it H.P., and we'll have every person around the Shabbos table share a story where they have seen Hashem in their life at some point. Well, one Friday night, after several hours of going all around the table, the last person his name was Zane. It was his first time ever at our Shabbos table, first time ever experiencing a real Shabbos like this, and I thought maybe we should give him a break, maybe let him pass, but when it came his turn, he said, I have a השגחה פרטית story. He says: I am a paramedic here, in the EMS in Toronto, and we got a call, not long ago, about a 22-year-old young man who was having trouble breathing. We responded to the call, we're in the ambulance, we arrive on scene, and by the time we got there, he was already in full cardiac arrest. His heart had stopped. We start working on him, we're giving him oxygen, we're giving him medication, everything we can to revive this young man. And the whole time we’re working on him, we load him into the ambulance, we’re rushing the ambulance all the way to the hospital. We get him into this dedicated room called the Resuscitation Room, and we're working on him in this room the whole time. Unfortunately, it had been 55 minutes and there was still no pulse, and the doctor's about to call it. But just before he calls it, he looks over to the window and he sees the boy's mother looking in the window. And he turns to us and he says, Keep on working on him. Let's call the mother in to say goodbye. He motions to the mother and the mother comes in. We were all quiet as we continued to work on this young man. And she walks up to her son and she leans over and she begins to whisper, singing into her son's ear. We all just continued to work on him, not saying a word. And after about a minute, all of a sudden, we hear beep and his heart had started up again. None of us said a word, but I'll never forget looking up at the doctors and paramedics all around the table, and there wasn't a dry eye. That's my story where I saw Hashem in my life. So many of us find ourselves in situations where things are so difficult, just like this young man, where we think to ourselves: Where am I going to get the energy? I feel like I'm on my last breath. I don't know how I'm going to overcome this. I feel like it's over. And at that moment, just like that young man, his mother came and whispered into his ear like a בת קול, like this voice coming, that somehow infused and brought him back to life, that gave him that energy. Every single one of us, we may not have our mother nearby, but we have אבינו שבשמיים, we have our Tatte in Himl, we have HaKadosh Baruch Hu, the Almighty, that at any given moment, no matter how difficult the situation is that we're facing in life, no matter how difficult the Nisayon, we know at any moment that HaKadosh Baruch Hu כהרף עין, in a blink of an eye, can whisper something into our ear, into our Neshama, into our heart, into our mind, and it can infuse us with the energy to overcome even the greatest of Nisyonos. And B’Ezras Hashem, no matter what challenge we face in life, we remind ourselves, HaKadosh Baruch Hu, I know You could instill this in me. Give me the strength, give me the energy, so that I can overcome this Nisayon.