e-geress Vol. 1, No. 16 27 Sivan, 5760 June 30, 2000
Publisher: Rabbi Yechezkel Fox
Editor: Rabbi Yisrael Rutman
|
by Rabbi Yonason Goldson Nobody likes fundraising dinners. The speeches are less than spectacular, the menu is less than memorable, and the seating arrangements seem to have been drawn up by the Marquis de Sade. No one looks forward to these affairs, and we attend them only out of a sense of obligation. Since one dinner I attended last year, however, I have become more wary than ever of this kind of event. The evening began typically and proceeded typically, up to a point. The food was unexpectedly edible, the speeches ran even longer than usual, the company was as good as could be hoped for, and I never saw the dinner plate that slipped from the tray of the passing waiter and struck me squarely on the forehead. "I didn't hit you, did I?" asked the waiter in response to the alarmed gasps and cries from the people who shared my table, several of whom assured him that he had, indeed, scored a direct hit. "Are you all right?'' he asked, inevitably. A silly question, really. A pound-and-a-half of glazed ceramic packs quite a wallop after accelerating at thirty-two feet-per-second-squared from a height of six feet in the air. At least I was still conscious, still sitting upright, and I didn't think I was bleeding. "Get a doctor," someone said. "He doesn't need a doctor," said someone else. "Get him a lawyer." The manager arrived with an ice pack. "Here, take this." "I was hoping for scotch with my ice," I said. He laughed, but didn't bring me any scotch. "I'll need your name and address, sir," he said, handing me a pen and paper. "Don't sign anything," a person at the next table called out. I scribbled my vital statistics. "I'm really very sorry, sir," he said. "Is there anything else I can do for you?" "Just the scotch." He laughed again and went away. I figured the hotel would give me vouchers for a complimentary night's stay, or at least send a letter of apology. They didn't. I wasn't getting my whisky yet, either. I began regaining my bearings to a chorus of more lawsuit jokes. From across the table, however, another rabbi offered the only profound comment of the evening: "What were you thinking about before you got hit?" I knew exactly what he meant. Torah philosophy teaches that there are no accidents, no coincidences, no random events. Everything comes about through the guiding hand of Divine Providence, what we call hashgochoh pratis, of spiritual necessity and accord-ing to design. In other words, if I got smacked on the head, I must have had it coming to me. This is a far cry from the popular notion that whatever I want, I have coming to me. Privileges and entitlements are not birthrights; they must be earned through the fulfill-ment of obligations and responsibilities. And when we do receive an apparently undeserved blow, we should assume that the equilibrium of the cosmic scales of justice somehow needed to be set back in balance, and we should reflect upon the message that has just been sent us from on high. Sometimes we can easily identify a concrete lesson to take away from such little mishaps. Other times not. But the principle holds even when we can't identify any clear cause and effect. We can still say: This was something necessary. Now we need to brush ourselves off and get on with life. The Talmud provides the poignant example of the High Priest, Rabbi Yishmoel, who died as the skin of his face was peeled away to suit the whim of the Roman governor's daughter. The malachim, the divine beings that inhabit the heavenly spheres, protested in outrage: "Is this the reward for living a life dedicated to Torah?" they demanded. "Be silent!" commanded the Almighty, "or I will return the world to void and nothingness." The incomparable Torah genius, Rabbi Eliyahu of Vilna, explains G-d's reply with an allegory: A king once received a gift of fine Turkish wool, the most luxurious fabric in the world. It was so beautiful, in fact, that the king could not bear to think that even a tiny piece of it should end up as scrap on the cutting floor. He went to every tailor in his kingdom and asked each to make him a suit without letting even one thread of the wool go to waste. But every tailor claimed that such a feat was beyond his ability. Finally, the king found a tailor who agreed to do the job. When the king returned to the tailor's shop on the appointed date, he discovered that the tailor had indeed produced an excep-tional suit of clothes. The king was elated. "But have you fulfilled your promise?" asked the king. "Did you use every thread?" "You really don't know," answered the tailor. "And the only way you will ever will find out is if you tear your beautiful suit apart and lay out all the pieces in the original shape of the fabric." Similarly, we often think that life is full of unfair knocks or is missing essential pieces. But to know for sure, we would have to see all of human history undone before our eyes. Only then would we have the right to assert that there were flaws in the slow sculpture of creation. It makes much more sense, then, to trust that the tailor has done his job, and that the Almighty understands the plan of eternity better than we do, even when bricks -- or china plates -- fall down upon our heads. So should I have sued the hotel? The waiter? The school holding the event? The principal who was speaking when I got hit? No doubt, I could have found any number of lawyers eager to take the case. If a woman could receive 4 million dollars for spilling a cup of coffee in her own lap, this should be worth at least as much. But life is full of honest accidents resulting in superficial scrapes and bruises. It's better for us (and better instruction for our children) to look for what we can learn from life's bumps and knocks, not to look for whom we can blame and how much we can squeeze out of them. The waiter returned, contrite and apologetic, perhaps more shaken than I was. "In 12 years this has never happened to me," he said. Evidently, he also had a date with Providence. "Is there anything else I can do for you, sir?" "I wouldn't mind a scotch on the rocks." "I'll see what I can do." He did. It wasn't 4 million dollars, but it was better than a knock on the head. 
|