Only Good!

Imagine yourself being homeless for a night.

One night, you find that you have nowhere to stay. With no other options, you decide to sleep on a bench in a city park.

You wake up in the middle of the night to a loud bang. Looking around, you see that someone crashed into your vehicle and drove off! As you pick up your phone to call someone, your phone falls and breaks. You’re stuck there with no car and no phone

This is not a theoretical story. This happened to Rabbi Akiva.

The Talmud tells us that one night, as he was traveling from one place to another, he looked for shelter. The townspeople refused him entry so he decided to sleep in the nearby forest. As he was settling down, a wild animal came and killed his donkey. He was stuck there without anything! Nevertheless, he said “Everything is for the good”.

When he awoke in the morning, he saw that robbers had entered the town. They had destroyed and killed everything there.

Had he slept in the town, he would have been amongst the casualties. Had the donkey been alive, it would have made noise and directed the robbers to him, as well. As a result of his troubling night, he was saved.

In this week’s Torah portion, Parshat Ki Savo, we learned about all the rewards and consequences that will happen as a result of our Torah observance. Some of the consequences are really heavy and Chassidut explains how to see the good in them.

There is no bad that comes from above. In life, if seemingly bad things happen, we need to see the good inside it.

Notwithstanding that, the Rebbe still wishes everyone a good and sweet new year. It’s not enough that our year should be a good year, because good can be hidden. We want it to be a sweet year, where there’s no doubt that it’s good, even to our visible eyes.

Shabbat Shalom!

Shabbat candle lighting time this week is before 7:18 PM.