Community Magazine May 2013

Hashem ” – led and designed by Gd, who ensures to bring us to the places we need to be to fulfill our special mission in the world. This is a very comforting thought, one which should help us avoid the aggravation that so many people experience when unexpected and unwanted situations arise. Imagine, for example, a person schedules an important business meeting in Chicago. He packs his bags, goes to the airport, takes a taxi to the office, and the secretary tells him to wait. While he’s waiting, she brings him a drink of water, and he recites a beracha and drinks. A short while later, the secretary receives a phone call, and apologetically informs the man that an urgent matter came up and the executive had to cancel all his meetings that day. The man naturally feels very frustrated, and likely angry, that he went through all this trouble for nothing, wasting time, money and energy on a meeting that never was. According to the Ba’al Shem Tov’s teaching, however, he has no reason to feel any disappointment. He traveled to Chicago “ al pi Hashem ,” because Gd brought him there. He may assume that he was brought there because a beracha needed to be recited at that very spot there in Chicago to reveal the holy sparks concealed within that building. Perhaps on his way into the building he politely smiled at and thanked the doorman, which is also a mitzva and thus brought holiness to that place. This is true as well of the berachot he recited and the page of Gemara he learned on the airplane. I was once visiting a religious neighborhood in London with two of my sons, and in the late afternoon, as it was getting close to sunset, we could not find a synagogue for Minha . We walked around for a while, hoping to find a Jew, but to no avail. We had no choice but to pray Minha on the sidewalk outside a building. We were disappointed that we could not pray with a minyan , but at the same time I felt gratified knowing that my prayer was needed to reveal the holy sparks of that particular location. Gd must have brought us there to that very spot in order to make a necessary tikkun , which we achieved through our recitation of Minha . With this perspective, a Jew is never lost. He is never in the wrong place. If a person takes a wrong turn on the highway, if the train does not come on time, if there is a traffic jam, or if he goes to a store to find that it is closed or that the product he needs is sold out, he has no reason to feel frustrated. He is right where he is supposed to be. Gd brought him there just as Gd brought Bene Yisrael to their 42 stations in the desert, for some vital spiritual purpose. “Be’ezrat Hashem” The Shelah (Rabbi Yeshayah Horowitz, 1558-1630) infers yet another lesson from the Torah’s description of Bene Yisrael ’s travels. The phrase “ al pi Hashem yahanu ve’al pi Hashem yisa’u ,” he writes, not only describes the procedure followed by our ancestors, but also instructs us how we should all “journey” and “encamp.” When planning any kind of trip, the Shelah explains, we should make a point of saying, “ Be’ezrat Hashem ” – that we will go “with Gd’s help.” And when we “encamp,” meaning, when we reach our destination safely, we Dedicated inmemory of   Sarah  bat LucetteKishik  20 Community magazine