Nazis, Cucumbers and the World of Good- Bahalosicha -The Parshah On Fire

This Torah class is brought to you by tora anytime.com. Buried deep in the middle of the is perhaps the absolute hardest to properly fulfill. The states that you are obligated to bless Hashem for the bad that occurs in your life with the same level of appreciation and love as you would bless Hashem for the good. The is requiring us to thank Hashem for the bad in our lives, the tragedies, the hardships that befall us with the same degree of affection and passion as you would thank Hashem for the good. Now, here's the obvious question. How is anyone other than someone living in a psych word able to properly pull this off? How is it expected of a woman who just had a miscarriage to look 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 last child? Which part of our brain contains this ability? Which mental exercises could possibly train us to perform such herculean emotional feats? Besides, weren't we told since we were young that we thank Hashem for the good and we cry to him about the bad? Why are we thanking Hashem for the bad? Isn't bad bad bad? So I believe paras contains the answer. The Jews after wandering the desert for a while turned to Mosher Rabenu and said, "Listen, we are just absolutely starving for some cucumbers and some leaks and some garlic. We're just starving for them." So much so that not having them is making us absolutely reconsider our decision to following you in the desert. Egypt did us better. That's what they told Moshe. So intensely desiring these foods, the Jews in the desert began talking nostalgically of their lives back in Egypt. Going so far that they actually wished they were back in Egypt, which if you think about it for a minute is absolutely insane. She was one of the darkest moments in our entire history, which contains a lot of dark moments. We were whipped. We were crushed. We were abused. And yet these Jews with their apparent selective memory are looking back and wishing for Egypt's cucumbers and garlic. It's absolutely astonishing. But aside from 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 quotes the saf which writes that the mun had the extraordinary miraculous ability to taste like whatever the eater wanted it to. You wanted the mun to taste like papaya, it tasted like papaya. You wanted the mun to taste like chicken soup, it tasted like chicken soup. You wanted the mud to taste like a cracker with chopped liver on it. It tasted like a cracker with chopped liver on it. Tasted what? Like whatever you wanted. All flavors were embedded into the mud. All except five. Leaks, melons, cucumbers, onions, and garlic. Now, why would the man turn into every flavor except these? You might ask. Good question. So the saf explains that these five flavors were detrimental to the milk in nursing mothers and could potentially hinder an infant's milk intake. So therefore, Hashem extracted these five flavors from the miraculous makeup of the man in order to prevent the harm of innocent newborns. So, not only did these Jews complain, they were complaining about a perceived negative that it was an actual actuality there completely for their own benefit. They were going around kicking and screaming about the fact that the mun wouldn't taste like garlic and onions when the whole time their own children were being saved from malnutrition. This episode is a model for all seemingly troubling occurrences that befall all of us. The Tyra is teaching us that there is no such thing as a bad occurrence from Hashem. It's impossible by definition. Every single thing Hashem does is good. Bad is merely goodness in a different form. It's goodness that we don't necessarily understand. Like a one-year-old who doesn't understand why he has to sleep every night in a crib much resembling a jail with bars that literally go over his head. and he is completely utterly unaware that the crib is there purely to protect him. So is the case with everything that happens to us. Every single thing that happens to us is entirely for our benefit, for our best, whether we can understand it or not. Hashem didn't create the world in order to have servants working for him. Hashem doesn't need our prayers or our servitude. Hashem is perfect with or without minions chanting his praises. Hashem created the world for one reason and one reason only, says the Ramo. To give good to us. Much like a father and a mother 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 knowingly doing a single act that was bad for their child, so to Hashem showers us with nothing but goodness. A child might look at his parents with a little bit of confusion and confused eyes as the doctor sticks a needle into his arm. He may have looked at his parents with sadness and confusion as the bus to camp pulls away wondering why in the world they sent him to this scary and lonely place. He may not have seen good in what they were doing, but good it certainly was. Because normal parents only do what's best for the child. Well, 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. Consider this. Every single natural godmade edible food in the entire world is healthy and good for you. There is not a single natural divinely created fruit, vegetable, bean, nut or grain which is meant for human consumption that is bad for you. Unlike candy bars or Mike or a can of Red Bull where even one mouthful is harmful your harmful to your body on some level, fresh natural foods are almost by definition good for you. Why is that? Well, plain and simple because Hashem made them. Hashem is in the business of dispensing good. Creating edible foods that are harmful to the body is the antithesis of that goal. Therefore, the entire natural world is only filled with foods that are bene beneficial to your health. Or take the human body for example. There is not a single bodily function that the human body goes through that is naturally and inherently painful other than child birth which the Tory explicitly says is painful as an atone the atonement for the sin of kava. There is not a single function our bodies perform that is painful. We breathe, sleep, digest food, pump and filter blood all complete comfort. Millions of cells are splitting in our bodies 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 Hashem made it. And if he made something, it could only be good. Because that's the only thing he wants for us. The Jews in the desert had three million 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 own benefit. We on some level all make this mistake. Each and every one of us has 500,000 reasons to be grateful to Hashem. And yet we often find ourselves harping on the three things in our lives that we that don't appear to our limited, puny, hugely restricted brains to be going the right way. How refreshing it is to be reminded that not only are those things not bad, they are precisely placed there to give us even more good. Living with this mentality will not only save you tens of thousands of dollars in therapy and psychiatry bills. It will make your view on life a different view with a completely different lens where instead of looking around and seeing bad, you look around and all you see is good. Good in many, many different forms. The Tyra is replete with examples of perceived negatives turning out to be major positives. One example is that the Jews in Egypt were fishermen according to the Ramban and Schmis perf. And because they were fishermen, their diet in and income heavily relied on fish. So can you imagine the pain they must have felt when the Nile turned to blood one day, killing all of their fish. Okay, very nice. They got to see their oppressors desperately trying to find water, but their business went completely down the drain. All the fish died. Their food source shriveled up. So, where do they 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. Suddenly, business is booming again. Precisely the source of the Jews agony was in fact making them fabulously wealthy. Here's another example. Little Mosha finds himself sitting on Parro's lap under the suspicion of him turning into a rebellious son who would one day dethron his adopted father. Parro decided to perform a test to see if it was true. He placed his crown in front of Moshe as well as a glowing hot coal. If he reached for the crown, which would imply that he was trying to take overtake the empire, Pyro would kill him. But if he reached for the coal, it meant he was merely a baby attracted to shiny, glistening objects, and he would be spared. Moshe stuck out his hand and was about to reach for the crown when a God sent angel pushed his arm into the coals, instantly burning Moshe's hand and then subsequently his mouth, whereas he placed the coal, giving him a speech impediment that would last for the rest of his life. Now, would anyone standing there think for a second that the burning coal was a good thing for Moshe? No. And yet, precisely the item that was perceived as bad was the object saving Mosha's life. It's the same in our lives. In Hashem's world, there is only one thing, goodness. Sometimes goodness comes in the form of health and happiness and birthday cakes. And other times, goodness comes far more disguised. It may come as a fire that burns someone's house down. seems bad, but perhaps it's a catalyst to free the occupants of that house of their overattachment to materialism and force them to appreciate the less tangible things in life. Sometimes goodness comes in the form of losing a job. Perhaps the company you work for will go bankrupt in a few months and Hashem is giving you a little head start to go find work somewhere else. Sometimes goodness comes in the form of a tragedy that is atoning you from a sin you did, sparing you the horrors of gehenn. Sometimes goodness comes in the form of being publicly embarrassed and Hashem has given you a merit that because you didn't answer back in anger now your granddaughter who isn't even born yet who was supposed to have autism now she won't. Every single thing that happens to us without exception is for our own benefit. There is not a single exception to this rule. Hashem's reputation has been established a long time ago as the ultimate dispenser of goodness to humanity. How hugely smallminded to think that the issue we are dealing with Hashem somehow forgot about it somehow slipped through his fingers. Someone once debated with the yoyer back one of the great 17th century Rabonim in worms Germany and he asked him the following question. He said how could it be that all the sugulas and the mystical healing formulas found in the garum work if they make absolutely no sense according to modern knowledge medicine. The Kamazer looked at the man with a smile on his face and he said, "The same person who can make a 300 ft oak tree come out of an acorn can make those sigulas work." Hashem runs the world with unfathomable wisdom and sophistication. How refreshing it is to remember that he's doing it all for our own good. We might not get it, but we know it's true. Listen to this story relayed by Ramak Berman. Rablommo of Bubba, the great Roma Alberto, the third Bubba of Reba in an attempt to evade the Nazis ran to take refuge in the city of Lmberg. And not long after he and his family arrived in the city, 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 begged and pleaded with them to give them visas so they can get out of the city. The only ambassador to agree 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. So huge lines began forming outside his door and like all the other Jews in the city, Rebellum hur schlammo hurried to gather the money to purchase visas for his whole family. And he finally gets the money and he runs as fast as he could go to the ambassador's house. And while standing online waiting nervously to get the visas, the door to the ambassador's house suddenly slammed shut and a cold voice rang out through the window. The ambassadors no longer issuing visas. All those standing on line should go home. The rebel was horrified. He was mortified. He was shocked into disbelief. But Schloma just stood there. He couldn't He could almost smell the Nazis approaching. Where should he go? What should he do? He looked at the sack of money he had in his hand. Completely utterly useless. He was crushed. And he began walking home. But unable to face his poor wife and kids, hoping to see him with the visas, he decided to stop off at a nearby shul. and he sat down on a bench and he picked up the nearest safer and he looked up to heaven and he picked flipped to a random page in the safer and he cried out, "Hashem, I need give me." The safer he happened to have picked up was called and was a commentary on and the very page he turned to was a quote from the which stated the following. When said he was telling Hashem that if what I am asking for is good for me then answer my prayers but if what I want in life is in actuality bad for me then don't answer me. The schlug goes on to explain that in life we don't actually know what's good for us. We can only guess. David was turning to Hashem and saying that if what I want is good for me then bestow it upon me. But if what I want is actually bad, then don't give it to me. Reploma closed the safer inspired. He picked himself up and he walked home. Less than one hour later, terror broke out. German troops rode into the center of the center of the town and got wind that there was an ambassador who wrote visas for the Jews. And from a crack in the shutters, Rip Schlomma was able to see the Nazis receiving the list of recipients of those visas. He then saw the Nazis begin combing the streets looking for the recipients of those visas. And horrified, Replooked on and while screaming to his wife to pack their stuff and get ready to run, he watched as all the people who were online in front of him mere hours prior were gathered like cattle into the middle of the street. And he watched as the Nazis took out their guns. And he watched as the Nazis stripped all the Jews of their clothing. and he watched as the Jews were lined up and he scanned the surrounding area and he saw a place to escape to a hole in the fence a gap in the woods and as those Jews were facing their gruesome deaths the man who didn't get a visa was escaping and by the time the Jews in that town were completely gotten rid of and the Nazis turned their attention to the rest of the city was long gone the visa that he didn't get was his ticket to surv survival throughout the hardships of our lives. The mantra of Gamu Lativa has been our one and only consolation. We clutch close to it no matter what. We hold tight to the idea that no matter where and no matter when, Hashem is always giving us goodness. We scream it out when we understand it the least. We look up and cry, a piercing cry. It's been our way of life for thousands of years. From the woman who was told by her OB that her child has no heartbeat to the 50-year-old man who was just told he has stage three lung cancer. From the parents who get a call that their child was just kicked out of yeshiva for the sixth time. To the doctor who tells the innocent young parents that their child has Down syndrome. From the 27year-old girl who hasn't gotten a date in three years to the 33year-old boy who just got a no from his 300th girl. From the man who lost his wife, his entire life saved in a failed stock to the woman who was just told the lifealtering news that she has ALS. We look up to the sky, shedding a tear, and through gritted teeth when we understand it the least, we belt out the words, "Gamu lativa." We look down, we wipe away our tears, and we're overcome by calm because we know deep down somehow, some way, God has a plan. And this too is for the best. Everyone knows that there are 613 mitzvah in the Tyra. A lot of people know that there are 613 organs and senus in the body. Here is something you may not have known in it says the average lifespan of a person is 70 years. Now if you do a little calculation, there are 24 hours in a day. Multiply that by 365 makes makes 8,760 hours in a year. Multiply that by 70 years and do you know what number you get? Do you know how many hours there are in the average person's lifespan? Yeah, 613,000 hours. You heard that correctly. There are 613,000 hours in the lifespan of an average man. Is that a coincidence? There are 613 mites in the Tyra. There are 613 organs and senus in the body and there are 613 hours in the lifespan of a man. Is that a coincidence? Of course, it's not a coincidence because Hashem and his Tyra are hovering over every minute of every hour of every day of our lives, ensuring that our lives are the absolute best. You've just experienced another Torah class brought to you by tora anytime.com.