Defeating the Rat | Rabbi Eliyohu Meir Schmeltzer

I was recently told a story by one of the illustrious Rebbeim in Yeshiva Orchos Chaim, Rabbi Berliner. There was an elder Yid who witnessed a bunch of young fellows who caught a rat. And they were chepping the rat, and they were torturing the rat. And he begged them: Please stop it. Please stop it. They said: What? A rat? Why would I stop torturing a rat? A rat is the biggest menace, the biggest nuisance to society. And he said: Let me tell you the following story. I was in the Lager, I was in the concentration camp. And we slept, lined up 7-8 people in the barracks, on the hard, wooden, shall we call it, bed? And we were frozen in paper pajamas, frozen in the cold. And the only body heat we got was by the person laying next to us from both sides, wedged in. And that's the little bit of body heat we were able to maintain, and that was the little, little bit of comfort that we were able to have. The person who was at the end of the barrack, was not sandwiched in by two people. He only had one person on one side of him, and on the other side he was totally exposed to the winter, to the cold, to the ice, to the frost. But when he would wake up, he would have a line of rats lined up against his exposed side, and those rats provided him with heat. Said this Yid, How could you torture a rat? Rats are those creatures that provided to us that little bit of heat, that little bit of comfort, in our worst trauma, in our worst torture, in our worst hours. The Aibishter gives us situations which are horrible. The Aibishter puts things out there which are so difficult for us to deal with. But the Aibishter gives us, there's something hidden in everything that's out there that's lousy. The Aibishter confronts us with Nisyonos that look so disgusting. It looks so horrible. But there's a silver lining underneath everything, because when we could defeat that challenge, when we could overcome that challenge, there's something special about it. We must appreciate everything that the Aibishter gives us, appreciate even the Nisayon. We daven: אל תביאנו לא לידי ניסיון, but when that Nisayon comes, it's a gift from the Aibishter. The Aibishter is providing us a certain warmth. The Aibishter is giving us opportunities to grow. When you smell a rat, that rat is an opportunity for growth.