Parshas Shemos - Daddy Knows Best | Mr. Charlie Harary

One of the most empowering parts of Torah, I believe, is Hashem convincing Moshe to be the leader. Hashem reveals Himself to Moshe and says, Take Klal Yisroel out of Egypt. Moshe pushes back and says: We have Aharon. And Hashem says: No, I want you. So ultimately, Hashem wins and Moshe and Aharon go to Pharaoh, Pharaoh says no, and they start to do the plagues. Now, you would think that who would take the lead on the plagues? Moshe. And Hashem says: Actually, I want Aharon to take the lead. And Aharon takes the lead on the first three plagues, blood, frogs and lice. Why? I thought Moshe’s in charge. If Hashem wanted Aharon to be in charge, then He should just had Aharon do it. So I heard a beautiful answer from R’ Zecharia Wallerstein. Rashi says clearly, Why can't Moshe hit the water or the sand? When he was little and his mom put him in a little ark, she put him in the water, and later on, when he killed an Egyptian, he buried him in the sand and so the sand and water protected him. And R’ Wallerstein says, What? No, it didn't. It didn't do anything special. The water didn't, like, rise up and hide Moshe. The sand didn't come around the Egyptian and hide him when no one was looking. They just did what they did. Water is water. When you put something on it, it floats. And sand is sand. You can bury things in sand. The sand didn’t do anything special for Moshe. So why does Moshe have to go out of his way to not lead the plagues, when all it did was what it typically does? And R’ Zecharia Wallerstein says the following. You see, Hashem wasn't giving Aharon the mantle of leadership. He was giving it to Moshe. But he was beginning Moshe's leadership with the following lesson, Gratitude. When you think about gratitude in your life, usually we are grateful for things that we don't have and want and then get or things that we had and then lost. When was the last time you woke up in the morning, and by the time you left your house, you were blown away by your body and your eyes and your mind and the oxygen and that there's food in your fridge and your family? It doesn't do it for us. We need things to be new. And Hashem says: Yeah. You know what the water did? What it typically does. But you know what the sand did? What it typically does. But guess what? You have to be grateful for that. And when you, as a leader, understand that gratitude goes to the things that are typical and that gratitude goes to the things that are dependable, now you’re ready to be a leader. You know, in the area of Kedushah, we think that the number one muscle we need is strength. Perseverance, resilience, strength. But maybe the number one muscle is not strength. Maybe the number one muscle is trust. You know, I was once at one of the iconic pizza stores, Shimon's Pizza, and I overheard a conversation between a six-year-old and a three-year-old, which you know for sure is going to be filled with wisdom. Apparently, their parents took them for pizza and ice cream and the whole deal, and they wanted more. Shocker. So in the corner of the store is a big gumball machine, and then a machine with, like, little tiny prizes for a quarter. So Daddy gives each one a quarter and says, Don't get the gumballs. It's going to break your teeth. Get the prizes. So they go. The girl walks over, puts the quarter in, and gets a little tiny prize. And the boy, the three-year-old, looks around and sees that Daddy's not watching and he goes to the gumball machine. And she goes: What are you doing? And he goes: I want a gumball. And she goes: But Daddy said no. He goes: Yeah, but I want a gumball. And she's: But Daddy said no. And he goes: But I want a gumball. And she says: Well, Daddy brought us here, got us pizza, got us ice cream, and he said: No gumballs. Daddy knows what's best. And I thought to myself, Is that not truth? When you could acknowledge that Hakadosh Baruch Hu gives us every little thing in our lives, then we walk the streets, when we see something or we’re confronted by challenge, it's not the ‘I wish I could have it, but I'll be strong’ muscle, it's I am so filled with a belief that Hashem is with me and He's taking care of me. Daddy knows best. So try this, once a day, sometime in your morning routine, take something that is dependable, something that is usual, and turn to Hashem and say thank you for it. Build a relationship of gratitude with Hashem. Build trust. So that if sometime in our life we're thrown a challenge, we have such a strong relationship of trust, that we won't need the strength, because we'll know Daddy knows best.