Today's class is about what we'll call the cat and mouse game.
It's a back and forth between the songs of the mouse and cat during a chase.
עַכְבָּר אוֹמֵרThe
mouse says,
אֲרוֹמִמְךָ יְיָ כִּי דִלִּיתָנִי
וְלֹא־שִׂמַּחְתָּ אֹיְבַי לִי׃ (תהלים ל ב)
I uplift You Hashem because you lifted me up, and my enemies were
not happy.
Simply, the cat chases the mouse and the mouse sings before he is
attacked. Hashem, my enemy won't get me. You'll protect me, you'll get me
out of this.
And the cat responds,
חָתוּל אוֹמֵר.
אִם־תַּגְבִּיהַּ כַּנֶּשֶׁר וְאִם־בֵּין כּֽוֹכָבִים שִׂים קִנֶּךָ מִשָּׁם
אוֹרִֽידְךָ נְאֻם־יְיָ׃ (עובדיה א ד)
If you lift yourself up like an eagle, and you place your nest
among the stars, from there, we'll take
you down, says Hashem.
So, the cat responds, Don't think you can get away from me.
Then, when he gets a little closer to the mouse, the cat says, אֶרְדּוֹף אוֹיְבַי וְאַשִּׂיגֵם וְלֹא־אָשׁוּב
עַד־כַּלּוֹתָם׃ (תהלים יח לח) /I will chase my enemy and I'll catch him. I will not turn back until
I destroy them.
And finally, when the mouse is caught, the mouse says,
וְאַתָּה צַדִּיק עַל כׇּל־הַבָּא עָלַי כִּי־אֱמֶת עָשִׂיתָ
וַאֲנִי הִרְשָֽׁעְתִּי׃ (ע"פ נחמיה ט לג)
God, You are righteous in everything that comes upon me, You did correctly and I have sinned.
This is a beautiful give and take, although of course they're
not singing as this is happening- it's their ministering angels. But it is not
a simple cat and mouse chase. There is a deeper give and take going on.
The sefer Shirat Chaim tells us that in the word for mouse
/ עכבר , the outer letters areר and ע,
which is /רע, meaning the mouse
is evilbecause he's attacking and eating
our food. Baruch Hashem, we have cats to eat the mice. That is the way Hashem
made the world.
*Fun fact: Why are there so many cats in Eretz Yisrael?
Because when the British came, there were a lot of mice so they brought cats in
from England to fight the mice. But Hashem created an ecosystem where there's a
right amount of everything, and if you mess with the equilibrium, It doesn't
work. We're supposed to have mice and
we're supposed to have cats. Now I understand that we are supposed to have cats
to eat the mice, but what are the mice
doing there?
Here we go: עכברlike we said , the outer letters are רע evil- which indicates the evil
mouse, but the
inner letters are כבwhich is 22, the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. So,
are the mice good or bad? There is a
story in the Yerushalmi Demai perek
א Halacha ג ,
that tells us there was a certain town that had an attack of mice. When Rav
Pinchas ben Yair came to the town he said, what's going on? The mice
were making sounds that Rav Pinchas was able to understand and he told the
people, "They're saying you're not taking your Ma'aser, you're not taking
your 10%. Fix it and take Ma'aser.
When they did, the mice went away.
There are similar stories about Rav Chaim Kanievsky- where people had mice,
and he said the only way to fix the mice is to take Ma'aser. When you
don't take Ma'aser, your food rots; your assets rot. That's the job of
the mice. Therefore, externally, the mouse is bad. But he is really good
because he's following the 22 letters of the Torah. He's sent on a mission. His
job is, If you're not taking Ma'aser out,
I'm going to eat it. That's why
mouse's song is וְאַתָּה
צַדִּיק עַל כׇּל־הַבָּא עָלַיI accept everything that happened. Not only does he mean to say that he accepts that the cat is
chasing him, but also that the person
now accepted and did teshuva, and so the mouse goes away. He is expressing the important lesson of Hashem
is righteous in what He did. And the person says, The reason the mouse
attacked my food was because I wasn't taking the Ma'aser properly. I'll fix that and the problem will go away.
So not only does the mouse say Hashem is righteous, but the
person says Hashem is righteous, and that's why the mouse goes
away.
Additionally, the mouse says, Hashem, you are good and I'm a
sinner, because at the beginning of the story, the mouse says, I'm going
to lift You up because You protected me,
and my enemy's not happy with me. But at the end of the day, the mouse got
caught. He was hopeful, but what
happened? The answer is, the mouse admits, Hashem, it's not Your fault. You gave me
the ability to run away. You gave me the ability to hide, but I messed up. I
didn't run fast enough, I didn't do enough hishtadlut. It's my fault. And
therefore, the mouse takes responsibility for getting caught.
That's a nice lesson for us.
There is a pasuk in Mishleh, אִוֶּ֣לֶת אָ֭דָם תְּסַלֵּ֣ף דַּרְכּ֑וֹ וְעַל־יְ֝הֹוָ֗ה
יִזְעַ֥ף לִבּֽוֹ׃ /Man's foolishness causes his path to become crooked, and he gets
upset at Hashem.
He says, Hashem, why did You
do this? And Hashem says, I didn't do it. You did it. It was your
foolishness.
Rav Wolbe used to quote the Gaon
of Vilna
on this pasuk, where it says on one hand, When someone wants to
become pure, Hashem helps him. Sometimes the person starts learning Torah
and keeping mitzvot, but it doesn't work. It's very hard. He doesn't feel like he
is getting helped. So he complains to Hashem, Why didn't You help me? But the truth is, it's his
own fault. Says the Gaon of Vilna, You have to go according to your level
and not jump.
The person blames Hashem for his lack of success, but in truth, it
was the person's lack of understanding and lack of proper guidance
properly that possibly caused him to
take the wrong track.
So when things don't work, don't say, "I tried really hard and it didn't work. I'm
giving up- it's Hashem's fault."
No, take some responsibility. That's the lesson of the mouse. He
went in positive, and he messed up, but he's not going to blame Hashem.
