Seeing into the Future | Rabbi Ari Bensoussan

This story is going to come to you from a very personal place inside my heart. This is a story in which I, Ari Bensoussan, I'm going to be the one telling you about me. You see, unfortunately, I had been sick with cancer not once, but two times in a few years away from each other. I was single at the time. And, to be honest, it was something where ‘scary’ is not the word. It is something in which you literally take a moment and then a day and then a week and then months of going through treatment, going through chemo, going through radiation. You take all those moments and you compound them together to think What will be with tomorrow? If only I could see it. How can I have any kind of future? Even if I go beyond the sickness, even if I become Baruch Hashem better, even if I have a Refuah Shleima of my body, but what about a Refuah Shleima of my future, of my life? How would I ever be able to have a wife? To build a family? Any of these things? I was petrified and I davened and I begged. And Hashem answered. And I have to tell you how he answered. I was brought to an incredible Tzaddik, Baba Elazar Abuhatzeira ע”ה. Baba Elazar Abuhatzeira, very famously, always had a hood over his head and over his eyes. Baba Elazar would never look anywhere, at anything, except into Torah, except into Sefarim, and except into people's souls. I was brought to him. He was visiting New York. I put my hand out. He takes my hand in his, and he starts to make me feel so good by just saying to me: אל תדאג, don't worry. The sickness is gone. It's not going to come back to you. Baba Elazar pushed back his hood a little bit and he smiled. He looked very close at me and he said, And invite me to your wedding. You have to appreciate, at that time, my hair had not grown back, I didn't have any eyebrows. At that time, I had to wear a mask because I could not control even my own spittle coming from my mouth. I was in a terrible place. My body was still giving forth that green, sickly glow that you get from too many months of radiation. And yet he said to me: Invite me to your wedding. רבותיי, when you’re Shomer your Einayim, when you watch yourself from what you look at, when your eyes are clean, you’d be shocked at how far you could see, how far in the future you could look, because about a month and a half later, when I was engaged, I flew to Eretz Yisroel to spend Pesach, but also to go to Be'er Sheva, to hand Baba Elazar Abuhatzeira an invitation to my wedding. And his only response was he gave me a look, which was, What took you so long? I saw it, he said. He knew. רבותיי, today we live in a world of darkness. We’re trying to see, Is there any hope? Is there any future? You keep your eyes guarded, you keep them clean, you'll be surprised how far, how clear, how positive, and how much light you, too, will be able to see.