D'Var Torah - Behaaloscha
By Rabbi Baruch Lederman
The Jews traveled through the desert on pure faith and trust in Hashem
(G-d). The Divine Cloud protected and guided the Jews throughout
their journey. They moved ahead when the Cloud moved and they encamped when the
Cloud stopped. They never knew how long each encampment would be. They might be
staying for a day or a year or ten years. They never knew in
advance.
There may have been times when they thought
the best thing to do would be to go, but the Cloud stood fast. There may have
been times when they thought they should stop, but the Cloud pushed on. We might
have gone crazy from anxiety if we had to live under such uncertainty, but that
generation understood with total conviction that Hashem would always do what was
good for them - whether or not it seemed to make sense. The following incredible
true story told recently at the Maalot Dafna
Melave Malka illustrates this point.
Remember the bomb that was
found in Meah Shearim a few months ago, in an attache case that a guy opened?
and he disarmed it? Well here's the story behind it. One morning this lady goes
out to her mirpeset (balcony) and she notices a guy throwing an attache case in
the garbage. So this lady thinks, "Oy vey, that guy stole that bag from some jew
here in the neighborhood and it probably has his tallis or tefillin in it and
the poor jew is now without them, he must be so worried."
So she looks over to the side and sees her
brother-in-law who was fixing his car, and she says to him,"Go over there and
get that bag out. There's probably a tallis and tefillin in there and some poor
Jew has probably lost it"
So he goes over there right away, he
doesn't say, "Sure one minute I'll do it when I'm finished." No, right that
second he goes. He opens up the bag and he finds a cellular phone and a bunch of
wires ... he realizes it's a bomb and disconnects it. A minute later the phone
rings ...and we all know the rest. A near tragedy was
averted.
How did this man who's a charedi (ultra-orthodox), know
that this was a bomb and even more interesting how in the world did he know how
to disconnect it without blowing himself up? The answer goes back 15
years. Fifteen years ago, ten chassidim from Mea Shearim suddenly got drafted
into the army.!!!!!! Everybody was up in arms, how can they let them go to the
army?? They should have been covered by a Religious Exemption.
The ten families used all the protekzia
they could possibly get and finally the army let go of nine of them - they
didn't have to do the army. But this one guy is left and no matter what, they
just can't get him out. This is of course this same guy and he had to go to the
army for 6 months. Guess what he learned there? Bomb Diffusion! Hashem put this
exact man right at that exact location at that precise moment.
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