It’s not for anybody to say why things are happening, but we each have the right, in our own eyes, to view things and give ourselves hizzuk. One of my congregants shared the following thought with me, based on a class that he heard from me many years ago:
Everyone is locked in their house, they can’t really go out, and people are bothered. We went though Pesach and it was a lot of work. Then post-Pesach came with a lot of work, and then Shabbat. People are doing things they have never done before. Dayworkers aren’t coming, domestic help is not like it was before, people having babies aren’t getting the help they are accustomed to getting, and mothers and mothers-in-law are pitching in ways they haven’t ever done before. People are really working harder and doing more than they ever used to do. A man told me there was a pile of laundry in his house, and his wife was a little under the weather, so now he’s doing the laundry! These aren’t the worst things in the world, but what is the message behind all of this? What’s the lesson? What are we getting out of this? This fellow suggested the following thought, which I liked, and wanted to share:
The pasuk in Mishleh says לענוים יתן חן
G-d gives grace (or charm) to humble people.
Simply speaking, this means humility is charming, whereas arrogance is a turn-off. That’s a fact. G-d gives charm to humble people. We see this in life. People are charmed by someone who is humble; by someone who doesn’t grab all the honor and glory. A person who is comfortable being on the sidelines engenders a certain charm, which is actually G-d given. What does this have to do with us?
When we make Havdala, we say
ונח מצא חן
and Noach found charm.
The commentaries explain that this means that during the time of the mabul, Noach really didn’t deserve to be saved in his own merit. He was saved because he found חן - charm, in G-d’s eyes. This is an important concept.
It’s possible that a person is not deserving of being saved, but through the secret called חן -charm, he will be saved. So it’s important to have /חן charm in the eyes of Hashem.
The commentaries go further and ask why Noach was forced to be on the ark working with the animals for 12 months. Couldn’t G-d have simply caused all the animals to hibernate? It was a miracle that all the animals got on the ark to begin with. So why did poor Noach have to do the back-breaking work of feeding every animal, each at a different time? (It says in the Midrash that he could hardly sleep because each animal needed to be fed a different type of food, at a different time.). For 12 months Noach was practically a zookeeper. Why do that to him? He was a Sadik.
The commentaries answer that since Noach really didn’t have a merit of his own with which to survive, he needed charm. And as we said, the way you get charm is with humility. לענוים יתן חן
G-d gives charm to humble people. Noach was humble for 12 months, by being the server, the waiter, the concierge, and anything else he needed to be, for every animal in creation. That’s what protected Noach during all those months on the Tevah- the fact that he was being humbled on a daily basis.
This is something for us to take to heart. Anything that Hashem does for us is ultimately good for us. It’s not a punishment, it’s a tikkun. It’s there to rectify us, to help us, to protect us. At the time, we don’t realize it or understand it. This is a new way to look at Noach on the Tevah. He was being protected with his zoo-keeping work. And we must look at it that way for ourselves as well. In any situation that a person finds himself in, he must appreciate the benefits of that situation. We have to look at being locked in our homes, and doing laundry or other menial tasks, or even things like waking up in the middle of the night for a new grandchild this way. A lady might say to herself, “I didn’t get up in the middle the night for my own baby, and now I have to do it for my daughter-in-law’s baby??” It might be a little humbling.
This is a new way to looks at these things. During these times, we have to appreciate that whatever Hashem puts us through is in order to help us. We shouldn’t do it begrudgingly; we should do it with happiness.
Every day the Kohanim had to start off with the service called הדשן תרומת
taking out the ashes of the offerings. The question is asked: Couldn’t they find a sanitation worker to take out the garbage? What about a Levi, or maybe a Yisrael? The Kohen, the priest himself had to go and remove the ashes? He had to put on special clothing for that?
And again, it’s the same answer.
Hashem wanted the Kohanim to remain humble, so it wouldn’t go to their heads that people were waiting on line for them, so they wouldn’t feel too important. We need humility.
That’s one way of looking at the situation that we are in. It’s a different twist, and I appreciated it. I always like a good reframe, as longtime followers know, and I felt that this would be a really nice reframe to share.