Parashat Mishpatim talks about judgements. When people have an argument they go to the judge.
There is a very interesting Zohar on the first pasuk of Mishpatim,
וְאֵ֙לֶּה֙ הַמִּשְׁפָּטִ֔ים אֲשֶׁ֥ר תָּשִׂ֖ים לִפְנֵיהֶֽם׃
These are the judgements that you should set before them
That talks about gilgulim in relation to court cases: The Zohar says:
דא סוד הגלגולים
This is the secret of reincarnation
What could Mishpatim have to do with reincarnation?
The Sefer דגל מחנה אפרים says that sometimes a person loses a court case, even though he’s in the right. How could that be? The Zohar is telling us that the secret is a Gilgul. Perhaps a person’s previous Gilgul stole money from someone. Now , this gilgul has to pay it back. When a person goes to a Jewish court of law, they are directed by Hashem. Therefore, the court will get the money to where it needs to go, sometimes in a way we might not understand. This is a principle in life.
Over 20 years ago a very special woman from our community, Mrs. Cookie Massry a’h, passed away young. The family had a gathering during the sheloshim at the home of family friends, Tunie and Eddie Missry.
Rav Yaakov Hillel spoke to the family and explained that the concept gigulim was only revealed at the time of the Arizal , about 400 years ago. Prior to that, for thousands of years, the concept was unknown. No one knew that a person could pass away and come back again to to continue his previous mission. This was only revealed at the times closer to Mashiach, when Hashem has to start squaring off all His calculations so to speak. Many of the tragedies and other inexplicable events that we see nowadays are a result of this “book-keeping.” So in order for us not to despair at things that are difficult to understand, Hashem revealed this concept to us. Rav Hillel used this concept to explain why Mrs. Massry ah passed away so young, which we couldn’t understand.
Rabbi Ozeri tells a story he heard years ago at a Torah U’Mesorah convention, from a Rabbi who experienced this phenomenon. The rabbi had gone to France and visited the home of a couple- a rabbi and his wife. While there he noticed a strange curtain in the living room. It looked odd and out of place. The couple was reluctant to discuss it but ultimately he learned the curtain was blocking a door to a Mikveh that they hadn’t been using. The couple explained that when they had moved to that town, there was no Mikveh in the area. With great effort and much fundraising, they were able to build the Mikveh, but it had to be built as part of their house. When they’d finally completed the Mikveh, their young child accidentally gained access to the room and drowned. They couple could not be consoled. Then one night, the man had a dream in which his child spoke to him. The child said that he’d been one of the baale Tosafot, one of commentators on the Gemara, and he’d been killed in a Crusade. He was never buried or properly purified. Therefore, he’d had to come back down, and spend a year or two, after which he was able to be purified in their Mikveh. He related that for the past 700 years there hadn’t been a Mikveh built that was as leshem shamayim ( for the sake of G-d) as this one, so he’d been waiting those hundreds of years to come back, just to go to their Mikveh. This consoled the couple.
The way Hashem makes His calculations is mind-boggling and not for us to understand.
Our part is to realize that Hashem gives all of us tests. We don’t know what we’re doing or why things happen, but we have to appreciate that Hashem knows what He’s doing.
Another story:
A boy had been dating with the goal of getting married. He went out for a few years with 20-30 girls to no avail and was becoming frustrated. He went to Rabbi Schwab, a great rabbi in Monsey to ask him why he’d been wasting all this time. Why keep going out with all these girls? Wouldn’t it have been easier if he’d just waited until 28 and saved everyone all that time and heartache? The rabbi told him to imagine that in his last Gilgul, he was a tough boss that had fired 20-30 secretaries ruthlessly, and now he had to make it up to them. How would he find them? Hashem sent their addresses so he could go their houses, pick them up, take them out, give them a nice time and at least get a chance to be nice to those 30 fired secretaries.
So when we come across people that just get under our skin, and we can’t figure out why we have to deal with these people, we should realize they’re there for a reason.
This outlook of Gilgulim is deep, but with Bitachon we can sometimes can use it to try and understand what’s going on.