“RABBI’S MUSINGS (&
AMUSINGS)”
Erev Shabbos Kodesh
Parshas Terumah
3 Adar I 5779/February 8,
2019
For all our technological innovations and uncanny
advancements, there is still one thing we have absolutely no control over - the
weather. Last week a polar vortex – whatever that is - enveloped much of the
United States, bringing dangerously frigid temperatures. Although New York’s
weather wasn’t as severe as that of the Midwest, where temperatures dipped to
unprecedented lows, 20-30 degrees below zero, it was still bone-chillingly
cold. The front page of last week’s Hamodia had a picture of a thermometer with
the mercury reading below zero with the caption, “Global Warming?”
And now just a few days later, we enjoyed a couple of days of
bright sixty degrees sunshine - unusually warm for early February. Go figure.
Last week, on Friday morning, when the temperatures were in
the single digits and windchills still well below zero, I pulled into a gas
station in New Jersey. (The state of New Jersey doesn’t trust its citizens to
fill up their own gas, so there is no self-service anywhere in the state.) The
attendant, dressed in a few layers, was jumping around and practically dancing
as he approached my car. When I rolled down my window, I heard blaring music.
The attendant gaily asked me how he could help me. When I asked him to fill up,
he spun around and jumped up and down as he inserted the nozzle into the tank.
As I drove away, I couldn’t stop thinking about the dancing
gas attendant. It was a freezing morning, a perfect day for someone who works
outside to be grumpy and miserable. Yet he was chipper and energetic. Why?
Because instead of grumbling about the reality, he embraced it.
How often do we try to live life on our terms, even when the
reality of the situation is clearly otherwise?
Rav Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev was once walking with a group
of his chassidim. At one point he asked his assemblage, “Do you know what I
would do if I was G-d?” The group stopped walking and it was dead silent.
Everyone leaned in with wide eyes to hear the great secret that the rebbe would
reveal. After a long moment the rebbe smiled and announced, “If I were G-d, I
would... do exactly what He’s doing!”
The Rebbe’s insight is very compelling. If he were G-d, he
would understand how everything happening was exactly as it needed to be. The
reason we struggle so much is because we are not privy to the divine knowledge
and therefore cannot understand how everything is for the best and is exactly
as it should be.
In his typical humorous fashion, Rabbi Dovid Orlofsky once quipped:
“I don’t want to be G-d; I don’t like the hours!”
We want things to go our way and to be comprehensible and
logical to our finite minds. But the reality is more often not that way.
One of the most important keys to living a life of inner
peace is to be able to have acceptance. That in no way precludes the need for
one to do all he can – an adequate hishtadlus. But once one has done so,
once he has done his research, invested all the energy he could, and has davened
(and davened again) he can have peace of mind and rest assured that G-d knows
exactly what He’s doing, and things are as they should be.
This is by no means an easy level to achieve. But those who seem
to live with serenity are those who accept life on its terms, for good or for
better. They aren’t frustrated by their futile attempts to force things to be
how they feel it should be. They know that G-d loves them and only wants the
best for them, even when it doesn’t feel that way.
When I grow up, that’s what I want to be!
Good Shabbos & Shabbat Shalom,
R’ Dani and Chani Staum