Recently, a great rabbi from Bnei B’rak, Rav Shimon Galai, came to the Yad Yosef Torah center and told us the following beautiful thought:
We know that Yetziat Mitzrayim was about open miracles. God made an open miracle and took the Jewish people out, as a whole. We also know that a person has to show himself, like he got out of Mitzrayim. As it says, Hashem did it for me.”
He added that the everyone has to appreciate and realize that these miracles happened for every individual, in addition to happening for the Jewish people as a whole. He quoted the Ramban that Open miracles are there to show us that there are hidden miracles in our own lives.
He went on to say that it’s a miracle when you are able to get out of bed and come to shul in the morning. Not everyone is able to do that.
He said that 22 years ago, he was in a very severe car accident. He was hospitalized for a few months (Rav Chaim Kanievsky visited him, which tells you the level that Rabbi Galai is on), and when he finally got back to shul for the first time and was able to answer Amen, Yehe Shemei Rabah, even though he was in a wheel chair, he was overcome with joy that he was able to go to shul.
He added that he recently noticed a man in shul who took a hospital band out of his koracha/ tallet bag and put it on. The Rabbi wondered why. People usually cut off the hospital bracelets when they leave, and yet this man was putting his on to pray. When the Rabbi asked him what was going on, the man explained that he had been in the hospital the week before, and was not able to pray in a shul. Now that he was back in shul, he knew that eventually he would forget the joy that he felt, and the appreciation of the miracle of just coming to shul in the morning. Therefore, he kept the bracelet in his koracha as a reminder.
It is a life‘s work to recognize Hashem’s Hashgacha Pratit in our lives, and realize how God is dealing individually with me.
Later that day, the Rabbi ate lunch at my home, and I shared the following story with him:
The gabbai had told us that the Rabbi has a delicate stomach and keeps a very strict diet, so my wife went out to buy the few things that the gabbai said that he eats, such as rice cakes, chamomile tea, honey and dates.
She was trying to remember all the things she needed, and when she got to the register, the man in front of her asked the cashier where the rice cakes were. My wife then suddenly realize that she had forgotten the rice cakes! She told the man that he was involved in a hidden miracle, because she needed to buy rice cakes for Rabbi Galai. The man responded that he had actually been in Yad Yosef that morning and heard the Rabbi speak.
Some people might say “small world,“ whereas others would say, “miracle.“
It all depends how you look at it.
When I shared that story with Rabbi Galai at lunch, he replied with a story of his own:
He was supposed to bring a pair of tefilin with him from Israel for his grandson’s bar mitzvah in Baltimore, but he was unsure of how he would get the the tefilin from New York to Baltimore. Then, as he was boarding the plane, a rabbi from Israel called to speak with him, and happened to mention that his own son was on the very same flight as the rabbi, and that he was heading to Baltimore after landing in New York. The rabbi was able to give the young man the tefilin, to deliver to his grandson in Baltimore.
He added that he knows people who sit around the table on Friday night, and each person shares stories of Hashgacha Pratit that happened to them over the week.
I told the rabbi something that I have shared before.
On the 24th of Av, in 1984, in the last year of life of both Rav Moshe Feinstein and Rabbi Yaakov Kaminetzsky, they wrote,
“Everyone understands how important it is to put Emunah in Hashem’s Divine Providence into everybody’s heart, especially children, because this is what the whole religion depends on. A good idea, to strengthen Emuna, is to write down, in a notebook, what you see and feel of God’s Divine Providence in your daily life. This will cause a person to realize that the world is not happenstance, or natural, and not to believe in his own strength. This will strengthen all 613 Mitzvot, as it says, Sadik B’Emunato Yihyeh.”
This quote was originally shown to us by the children of Charlie Sultan AH, who kept to this and filled 20 notebooks with such stories. They found the notebooks in his office, after he passed away.
If anybody reads this and feels impacted by it, it would be a great thing to write down your daily Hashgacha stories.
(or in this day and age when nobody writes things, maybe type them straight into your notes on your flip phone)
B’ezrat Hashem, by writing down and sharing our stories, we will strengthen our belief in the fundamental belief of Yetziat Mitzrayim, which is that God is dealing in my every day life. Just keep looking for Him and you will see Him. Have a wonderful day.