If It's Meant for You, No One Can Take It - Rabbi Moshe Borger

The great Kamina Rebba tells us an incredible thing. Even though he was such a great and righteous man, the only thing that truly kept him sane and connected throughout all of his tribulations in life was the fact that he had just a simple amuna, a simple faith in God. And that's what carried him through all of his tribulations. And that is really what is our main test in this world is in the moment still staying focused, not getting upset, not getting angry, not getting upset with other people, but rather realizing that everything is part of a gigantic divine plan. So there's a story told by the Beneshai Rab from Baghdad that there was a certain young man in the local yeshiva. One night as he was walking through Baghdad late in the night he noticed that there was a door front door open belonging to a very wealthy widow and he was suddenly grabbed by a desire to go and steal. He was extremely poor. She was extremely rich. Doesn't it make sense? Robin Hood. You rob from the poor. From the rich and you give to the poor. So he went in there and he started very quietly and stealthily helping himself to all of this wealthy woman's jewelry, her money, everything that he could find. And what did he do? He got to a certain point. He was about to leave. And then suddenly he said to himself, "What's going on? What am I doing? This is so wrong. I sit and I learn Torah. The Torah tells us don't steal or take don't rob others. How could I be doing such a thing?" And now Hashem loves the He loves has a particular special protection for the widows, for the orphans. How could I do such a thing? What a terrible crime. You know what? If God intends me to give to get this money, I'm gonna get in in a permitted way. And with that, he took his stash. He put it down on a table, closed the door, and he left. Unbeknownst to him, this poor widow, she wasn't poor, but she was a widow. This lady was upstairs. She was frozen, terrified because she heard that there was a robber downstairs and who knows what's going to be and maybe he's going to come upstairs at any moment and she just hid hid herself in the room under her covers praying to God that he wouldn't come in in the morning. Finally, she plucked up the courage. She went downstairs. She realized to her amazement a very strange thing that there was all of her jewelries, all of her wealth was right there on the table. But she said to herself, "This cannot go on. I'm a young woman. I may be a widow, but I cannot go on like this. I need to have a man. I need to have a husband. I need to I need to have somebody to protect me." So she said, "I'm going to the local yeshiva. I'm going to find a god-fearing good man." She went to the yeshiva. She found the head of the yeshiva, the rashiva, and she said to him, "Please, can you help me out?" She told him basically what happened. She said, "Do you have somebody suitable, suitable young man and preferably good-looking who could maybe, you know, he could maybe uh be a good husband and could be there to take care of me and he will not have to worry his entire life. He'll be able to sit and learn the Torah. He won't have to worry about penny. Can you think of somebody?" The rabbi thought for a moment, he said, "I've got the perfect map for you." And of course, it was none other than the thief in the middle of the night from previous night from the previous evening. And lo and behold, they met. They met again. They fell in love. They got married. And lo and behold, he ended up getting all of the wealth and the wife and everything all put together. Just have to realize that God has a plan. This was Bam's problem. That Bum came to curse the Jewish people. And despite being told by God directly, "Do not curse them. Anybody who curses them will be cursed." It wasn't enough for Bum. Why not? Bam spoke to God. Bam had miracles that happened to him. His own donkey spoke to him. A miracle. He saw angels that were there to prevent him from doing this this wrong thing, this evil. Why did he not just take the message? And the answer is because he was missing this fundamental in his life that God is in control of everything. And if you're meant to get something, you'll get it. And if you're not meant to get something, you won't get it. And if you meant to get something and you take it in the forbidden way, you didn't do yourself any favors because you really are destined to get it in a permitted way. And when we look at our hero in this week's par and all the actually spanning three par three par in the Torah, we have Pinas who in this week's para in Mat he takes it he takes it to war against the Midionites. He goes out to fight against them. That very same Pimas who was technically a nothing, he wasn't a Cohen because he missed out on being a Cohen. The the the the way it worked is that Auron and his sons specifically and any future children that they would have would have would be Kohanim. But Pinos was already bored at that point. Which means he wasn't a Cohen. He wasn't a lab a ley. He was a nobody. What we would call today he was a loser. He was just a common regular person. Hopefully that's not a loser. But he was not the he was not one of the greats. Imagine how he felt. And yet the rabbis tell us that when he did this act, this courageous act and he stood up risking his life in order to intervene in the immoral act that was being done between the prince of the tribe of Shimon and Cosby Matsur which wasn't actually her real name tells us but the midenite princess he stood up and he took action and he risked his life and he came through and because of that God gave him edit Shalom. He gave him the priesthood because the kohanim the priests are there in order to make peace in order to breathe the proliferators of peace in the world. That's why the kohanim are there. And he got that covenant. Think about it. Had he been a Cohen before, he would never have been able to do that because a Cohen that kills somebody becomes impure and loses his rights in certain ways to be a coin was only because he did the act of zealousness because he before he became a coin and he was destined for that greatness. That was our rabbis tell us that which was fitting to him. He got the reward that was fitting for him all along. And that's what we need to remember ourselves. No matter what we're doing, we just need to do that which is right. We need to stand up for that which is right. And that's all. And that's what we have to remember. I want to share with you another amazing idea I just learned recently. They say that Rabisha Ben Khan, one of the great sages speaking to the Roman princess, and she had many questions for the rabbi. One of the questions he said is, "It seems to me that your God is, and I'm putting in parentheses, nothing more than a carpenter." As it says, Hashem cordens off the water in his high places. He's a carpenter. If he's a carpenter, I guess that's all that he does. He just makes things and he leaves them. Says, "I want a spindle." I don't know how old she was. I want a spindle. Yeah. Not just what they used to use in order to go and and weave back in the days when actually people used to weave. I'm sure you can remember your grandmothers, your great aunts sitting there with balls of wool and weaving away and making all kinds of that and and one of the things they had is they were weaving as a spindle called in Hebrew a plaque and he said that's what you want fine and he prayed for her and she caught a disease called saras leprosy badly translated as leprosy but it could be in this case it actually was because what would happen is the law was in Rome that anybody that had leprosy would have to sit. I presume more particularly the women who caught leprosy would have to sit in the shook in the marketplace. They'd have to sit and they would weave. So Kanya knew that she would therefore she would be given a spindle. She would be given she would be given a plaque in order to do what she needed to do. Now she had to ras and she was sitting there in the marketplace amongst the lowest of the low amongst the porpus amongst the people. How terrible that was for her. And a day later was walking past the market and he saw her there. He saw her weaving and he turned to her and he said, "So tell me what do you think of the spindle that God gave you? It's nice, isn't it? Was his implication in a very, very sarcastic tone. IT'S NICE SPINDLE HE GAVE YOU. NO. Isn't it great? Isn't this isn't this what you wanted? And she said, she said, "No, why couldn't he just take it back?" And he said to her, "That's not very nice. You asked him for it and he gave it to you and you now you're asking him to take it back." So it's a very very strange story of course for us to understand we're dealing with an extremely extremely righteous holy person rais what's going on and how can he deal with things in such a way and pray for her to become sick. So fortunately for us the benesai once again comes to save us and he explains over there in this commentary that really understood exactly what she meant insidiously in her question. What she was really saying is God just created the world and he left it. He created he's like a carpenter. He made something and he left it. And he cannot intervene in our lives in any way. And certainly he doesn't have providence like you Jews claim in our individual lives. And he can't even give me even a simple little little thing, a tiny little spindle. I said, "Really? Let's see." And he prayed for her and because of the circumstances, it turned out that she ended up now going from riches to poverty. She was sitting out there in the marketplace. I'm sure maybe her father was coming and sending her schwamas and different things to eat during the day. Maybe the occasional falaful. I don't know. But she was out there IN THE MARKETPLACE WITH THE LOWEST OF the low, a princess. How could it be? But this was his message to her. You think God doesn't do anything? Well, I'll show you according to your laws, the Roman laws, that even you yourself as a princess are not protected and you according to your laws will end up behaving just like everybody else with your little spindle that you asked for. It could be, it's just my idea, could be that was specifically a spindle that she asked for because what you do when you're weaving, you're creating something. You're taking raw materials and you're making it into a fabric. You're making it into something. So that's what she was really saying. We're the ones that are doing things here. You think God is doing things here? We're the ones that make things. We're the ones that weave things. That's what we do. That's what we that's what we're here for. And God has left things alone. And when he came to her and he passed and said, "Do you like it?" And she said, "What? He couldn't have done it in a nicer way?" And he said to her, "Well, you didn't believe he was in any way interactive in your life. If you would have asked him for something in a nice way, if you would have asked him for a treasure chest, he would have given it to you. But you didn't ask for that because you didn't believe. And now you see that absolutely he's 100% in control of everything. You see, and even though the Gomorrah ends there, but the Beneshai adds and there is no question that Rebua at that point once she had learned the lesson, he prayed for her. She got better. And then she learned another lesson that when you pray, God listens to you. When you talk to God, he answers your prayers. And the holier you are, the probably the more he answers you. So that was maybe a message for her as well. So we see in this week's para pinas standing up for what is right, risking his life in order to go and help the Jewish people to save the Jewish people not thinking about himself but thinking about everybody else. Have the daughters of Salaf come to claim their portion of the land. This is in paras. They came to claim their portion of the land. So you could look at it well obviously because they wanted the land for themselves and they felt that they were going to miss be missing out. And I know Kazal tell us it's because they didn't want that land to be taken away from its rightful owners from the tribe of Manash. And therefore they wanted to take hold of it worried that maybe somehow it would get passed on to somebody else. And indeed once they received the portion of land which is given to them then they actually ended up marrying their cousins or their uncles actually did end up staying in the tribe of Manash as it was supposed to all along. Amazing thing. They stood up. They stood up for what was right. Mosher Raenu in the only p in the entire Torah where it says Moshe Elashem. EVERY OTHER Pretty much says there are certain exceptions. Moshe and God spoke to Moses saying over here says Elashem and Moshe spoke to Hashem. Why is Moshe speaking to Hashem? Speech is a strong language. You know why? Because Mosher Rabenu knew he was about to leave this world and he was concerned. How are the Jewish people going to carry on without a leader? They need a new leader. And then he asked God, "Please, you must choose a man who's going to lead the people who will be there, who will be there to lead them in all of their ways, in all of their battles, in all of their m in all of their matters. You they need A LEADER." MOSHE STOOD up to speak to God in order that the Jewish people would have a leader because he didn't care about himself. He cared about his fellow Jews. And that's what we have to learn from here. We need to realize that as long as something is destined for us. As long as we're doing what we need to do in order in in that case, God is going to take care of it. So may Hashem bless you, bless all of us. Please God, we'll be able to use each and every one of our individual talents because Pinas could have lived his life feeling he was a failure, but instead he stood up to do that which was he which he felt was right and because of that he ended up get getting that which was really destined for him. May we all get all of the good that is destined for us and please God the ultimate good of the coming of Mashiachu speaking in our days. Amen. >> Excellent. I don't know if the noise from the door was coming. I felt like I just hold it.