Behaalosecha Visas, Cucumbers and the Goodness of Faith

[Music] very deep in the middle of the judaism's code of law is perhaps the singular hardest law to properly fulfill the in B states that one is obligated to bless Hashem for the bad that occurs in one's life just as one would bless Hashem for the good the is obligating us to thank Hashem for the tragedies and the hardships that befall us with the same degree of appreciation and love as one thanks Hashem for the good the question is how is anyone possessing a functioning human heart able to properly pull this off how is it expected of a parent who just lost a child to look up up to heaven and thank Hashem how is it expected of a man who just broke his collar bone to thank Hashem the same way he would thank Hashem the night he married off his youngest daughter where do we contain this ability which mental exercises could possibly train us to perform such Herculean emotional Feats also aren't we accustomed to thanking Hashem for the good and praying for the bad to change why are we thanking Hashem for the bad isn't bad bad I believe this paraa contains the answer the Jews after wandering the desert for close to four decades turned to Misha and cried we want cucumbers we want leaks we want garlic so intensely lusting these Foods they began talking nostalgically of their life in Egypt now think about that for a moment it borders on insan the Egyptian bondage was one of the darkest moments in our pretty long history containing a lot of dark moments and yet these Jews with their apparently selective memory longed for Egypt's juicy cucumbers and aromatic leaks and garlic it's almost unbelievable but aside for the ludicrousness these Jews were displaying with their deep Nostalgia of the Egyptian culinary scene they were also completely wrong in their very desires Rashi cites the cfre which writes that the mun the miraculous food which rained down upon the Jews every day from Heaven had the extraordinary ability to taste like whatever the eater desired you wanted mint it tasted like mint you wanted a pinac cola it tasted like a pinac cola you wanted a pumpkin pie it tasted like a pumpkin pie all flavors of the world were embedded into the mun all except five leaks melons cucumber onions and garlic now why would the mun turn into every flavor except these so the Safra explain sefre explains that these five flavors were detrimental to nursing mothers and could potentially hinder an infant's milk intake therefore Hashem extracted these five flavors from the mun in order to prevent the harm of newborns so not only did these Jews complain they were complaining about a perceived negative that was in actuality there completely for their own benefit this episode is a model for all seemingly troubling occurrences that befall all of us the Ty is teaching us that there is there is no such thing as a bad occurrence from Hashem Hashem it says inim every single thing Hashem does is good bad is merely goodness in a different form it is goodness that we can't necessarily understand like a 2-year-old who doesn't understand why he has to sleep every night in a cage with bars that go up over his head completely unaware that the crib is purely there to protect him so to all of us all that Bealls us is entirely whether we understand it or not for our best Hashem did not create the world in order to have servants working for him he doesn't need our prayers or our service Hashem is perfect with or without people singing his praises and giving their thanks hasham created the world for one reason and one reason only to give good to us so much like a father and mother who would never dream of doing a single detrimental thing towards their child so is Hashem towards us like parents who can go their entire lifetime without deliberately doing a single act that was bad for their child so to Hashem showers us with nothing but goodness now a child may have looked at his parents with confused eyes as the doctor stuck a needle in his arm he may have looked at his parents with sadness as the bust to camp pulled away and he was wondering why in the world they sent him to this scary and lonely place he may not have seen the good in what they were doing but good it certainly was Hashem loves each and every one of us infinitely more than we love our own children the Perfection of the world is demonstrative of that every single natural godm made edible food in the entire world is healthy and good for you there is not a natural divinely created fruit vegetable bean nut or grain which is meant for human consumption that is bad for you unlike Donuts or Mikes or a can of Red Bull fresh natural foods are by definition good for you why is that plain and simple because Hashem made them is in the business of dispensing good creating edible foods that are harmful to the body is the antithesis of his goal therefore the natural world is only filled with food that is beneficial to your body or take the human body for example there is not a bodily function that the human body goes through that is naturally and inherently painful other than childbirth which the Tyra explicitly says will be painful as an atonement for the sin OFA of Eve there is not a single function our bodies perform that is painful we breathe sleep digest pump and filter blood millions of cells are splitting every second veils are opening and closing neurons are racing to and fro every single one of these processes is painless a healthy and well-kept body runs seamlessly why because hasm made it and if he makes something it could only be good that's the only thing he wants for us the Jews in the desert had millions of reasons to thank Hashem for all the good in their lives and yet they picked five tiny issues to harp on pathetically unaware that even those five were for their benefit we all make this mistake each and every one of us has hundreds of thousands of reasons to be grateful to Hashem and yet we often find ourselves harping on the three things in our Liv that don't appear to our limited puny hugely restricted understanding to be going the right way how refreshing it is to be reminded that not only are those things not bad they are precisely what will give us even more good the trra is replete with examples of this the Jews in Egypt were fishermen the ran says this in shos yud Al of their diet and income heavily relied on fish can you imagine the pain they must have felt when the Nile turned to blood killing all the fish their business collapsed their food source shriveled up where are days to go now lo and behold what happened a mere day later the Egyptians in desperate need of water began buying water from the Jews at exorbitant prices precisely the source of the Jews Agony was in fact making them fabulously wealthy another example young mha once found himself sitting on parro's lap suspicious of a budding rebellious son who had Dethrone his adoptive father parro decided to perform a test to determine if it was true he placed a crown as well as a glowing hot coal in front of mosha if mosha reached for the crown implying his desire to overtake the Empire he would be killed if he reached for the co on the other hand it meant he was a merely a baby attracted to shiny glistening objects Moshe was about to reach for the crown when an angel came out of nowhere and pushed his arm into the co instantly burning moshe's hand and subsequently his mouth giving him a speech impediment that would last his entire lifetime and yet was the burning cold bad precisely the item that was perceived as bad was the object saving moshe's life in our lives too there is only one thing it's called goodness sometimes it comes in the four of health happiness and birthday cakes other times it comes far more disguised it may come as a fire that burns someone's house down seems bad perhaps to Catalyst to free the occupants of their over attachment to materialism and prompt them to appreciate the less tangible things in life sometimes goodness comes in the form of losing a job perhaps that company will go bankrupt at a few months and Hashem is delivering a PR to go elsewhere hashem's credibility has been established long ago as the ultimate dispenser of goodness to humanity how hugely small-minded to think that the issue we are dealing with he somehow forgot about someone once debated the kavos Y Yim backrack one of the seventh 17th Century's most prominent rabbis and asked him the following question how could it be that all the sigos the mystical healing formulas found in the gurra work if they make no sense according to Modern knowledge of medicine theer looked at the man with a smile and replied he who can make a 300 foot oak tree come out of an acorn can make those sigos work Hashem runs the world with unfathomable wisdom and sophistication how refreshing it is to remember that he is doing it all for our own we might not get it but we know it's true R bman relates the following Amazing Story R schlomo Howers them of bub in an attempt to evade the Nazis ran to take refuge in the city of Lumberg not only after he and his family arrived in the city not long afterwards news spread that the Nazis were a frightening two days away scrambling desperately to save themselves the Jews of the city reached out to all the ambassadors and beg them to Grant visas the only one that agreed was the ambassador to Costa Rica anyone who brought a large enough sum of money to the office of the Costa Rican Ambassador was granted a Visa huge lines began forming outside his door rip schlomo hurried to gather the money to purchase visas for his whole F family he finally got the money and ran to join the line in front of the ambassador's house suddenly the door the Ambassador 's house closed a cold voice rang out through the window the Ambassador is no longer issuing visas all those Still Standing online must go home picture the horror where should they go what should they do the Nazis were closing in was this the end cut clutching the useless sack of money rmo began walking home sorry to return home without the coveted visas he decided to stop off at a nearby show delaying the inevitable he sat down on a bench and picked up the nearest safer he looked up to heaven as he flipped to a random page and cried Hashem I need give me some divine inspiration the book he held was called to feris uzil and was a commentary onto Hillen the very page he turned to was a quote from the schay haritz a Polish Rabbi and calist who lived in the 1500s which stated the following that when King David said his request of Hashem was if what I am asking for is good for me then answer my prayers but if what I want is act in actuality bad for me then don't answer them the SCH explains that we don't actually know what's good for us we can only guess David was asking of Hashem only if it is good for me should you grant me my request but if what I want is actually bad then don't so inspired rlma picked himself up and walked home less than 1 hour later Terror broke out German troops rode into the center of town and caught wind that an ambassador had been writing visas for the Jews the Nazis swiftly obtained the list of recipients of those visas and began combing the streets for those people as the halberstam family quickly packed their things and got ready to run all the people who had been online in front of rib air PRI hours prior were gathered like cattle into the middle of the street then Nazis lit a fire and stripped all the Jews of their clothing as the fire got bigger reemus scanned the surrounding area and found a place to hide a place to escape a hole in the fence a path through the woods as those Jews were being led to their gruesome deaths rea the man who didn't get a Visa was escaping by the time the the Jews in the Town Square met their deaths and the Nazis turned their attention to the rest of the city rlma was long gone the Visa that he didn't get was his ticket to survival inim Sadi it says that the average lifespan of man is 70 years there are 24 hours in a day multiply that by 365 days and you get a total of 8 ,760 hours in a year multiply that by 70 years and you get the golden number 63,000 hours in a lifespan you heard that correctly there are 63,000 hours in the lifespan of an average man coincidence I doubt it for Hashem and his T are hovering over our every hour of our every day ensuring the quality of our life is at its highest throughout the hardships of Our Lives this seemingly difficult has been our one and only consolation we clutch close to the Mantra of G we hold tight to the idea that no matter where and no matter when Hashem is always giving goodness to us we scream it out when we understand at the least we look up and cry a piercing cry G zulaa it's been our way of life for thousands of years from the woman who was told that her child has no heartbeat to the 50-year-old man who is diagnosed with lung cancer from the parents who get a call that their child was kicked out of Yeshiva to the young couple who learns that their child has Down Syndrome from The 27-year-old girl who hasn't gotten a date in three full years to the 33-year-old boy who just got a no from his 100th girl from the investor who lost his life saves and a failed stock to the person who just got the news that they have ALS we look up to the sky while shedding a tear and through gritted teeth we belt out gamzo laa we look back down and we wipe away our tears and are overcome by Cal for we may not always understand it but we are oh so sure that one way or another it's the truth call [Music]