Matos: When There's Life, There's Hope

Hi, this is Rabbi Laskin with the Parsha in 5, where in 5 minutes we give you a insight into the Parsha Parshas Mattos. Parshas Mattos, you have the war against Midian. And in the war against Midian, we go out and Pinchas goes out with the tzitzit. Why? Because Bil'am, using his black magic, got all the kings of Midian to fly. But when they saw the tzitzit, it canceled that black magic and they came crashing down. And Bil'am fell right on a sword and died. That was the end of Bil'am. And it's very interesting cuz Bil'am makes his first appearance way early. I'm not going now with the Midrash who says he was Lavan. But he was one of the advisers of Paro. And we see him doing a number of things in that role. He's the one who said to kill Mosha when he was a baby. And that's why he had to have the test with the hot coals. Uh and he was even earlier, he was one of three advisers of Paro. It was Paro, it was Yisro, and it was Iyov. And they saw that the Jewish people were increasing and they were worried that they were going to become more powerful than Egypt and they asked, "What should we do?" And so Bil'am said, "Enslave them." And Yisro said, "Be good to them. They bring you bracha. Look at Yosef, all the good that they did for Egypt." And Iyov said nothing. And what was the result of this? Yisro got to become a Jew and his great and his descendants were part of the Sanhedrin. Iyov, who was silent, got all of the sufferings of Iyov. And Bil'am died by the sword. So, as the Khash of Lubavitch, it looks like Iyov got a worse punishment than Balaam. Cuz Balaam just got a nice clean death. And Iyov suffered and suffered. There's a Tosefta that says Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah agreed to be thrown into the furnace of fire cuz they knew they would die quickly. But if they were tortured, they would have ended up bowing down to the idols. So, here Iyov loses his wife and children, gets struck with disease, loses all his money, all these terrible things that happened to him. Cuz he remained silent. Now, the Khash of Lubavitch says an unbelievable thing. There's a pasuk. We say it in Hallel. Yissurim rabbim lo mavet lo nisani. Hashem gave me a lot of yissurim and a lot of suffering. But better a life of the worst yissurim and I'm still alive. I'm still alive cuz while you're alive, you you you can do things. When you're alive, you can you can accomplish things. Once you're dead, it's over. Chicken Soup for the Soul tells a story about a guy who was in a motorcycle accident, became a quadriplegic. They say he was a very happy guy. He couldn't move anything from his neck down. But he was a happy guy. He says, "How could you be happy?" He says, "I used to be able to do 10 million things. Now I can only do 1 million things. So, I can focus on the 1 million things I can do or the 9 million things I can't do. But as long as you're alive, People ask me, "How you doing?" I I have a standard answer. They say, "How you doing?" I said, "I'm still alive." That's good. I woke up this morning. Because after that, whatever happens is positive because I'm still alive. Cuz you know one morning when I wake up and I'm not going to be alive and that's going to be a real bummer. I'm not Shish, I'll probably not even get to shore. You know. And I often I make the minion. >> [laughter] >> And you're like, "Oh man, I'm dead." By the way, you don't always know. So you sometimes you need a little time to find out that you're dead, you know. But um but it doesn't matter what suffering you go through as long as you're alive with this life there's hope. You can't give up. And this of course is what Victor Frankl wrote about his experiences in the uh in the concentration camps. He says, "Those people who lost hope, they died. And those people who kept hope, they were able to survive." And so everybody has his sort of And don't ever make the mistake of judging somebody else's yissurim cuz you don't know what their tolerance level is. Some people can handle an enormous amount and other people a small amount of difficulty just sends them to their bed and pulls the blanket over their head. They can't go on. So don't judge anybody's pain. Everybody has pain. What you have to say to yourself is, "I woke up this morning. I'm still alive. Where there's life there's hope." And that's it. Torah is Heim. And everyone needs a bit of life. May Hashem we should have a beautiful Shabbos.