Good morning, everybody, and welcome to class number 72. We continue with our upside-down theory. We started with the Chovot HaLevavot, which told us that when you get into a situation that causes you to exercise your bitachon (trust in God), don’t think that the bitachon is just a means to an end: “I have bitachon to get my parking spot.” No. You live in Brooklyn. There are no parking spots. The end goal is to exercise your bitachon, which will be tzafun, protected and waiting for you in Olam Haba (the World to Come). Furthermore, the reward for the bitachon is greater than the item that you wanted to begin with. That’s one point.
The second point we said is that HaKadosh Baruch Hu (God) will do things at times. For example, Yetziat Mitzrayim (we got out). We don’t commemorate Yetziat Mitzrayim because we got out. We got out so that we can commemorate. The goal was to produce a situation of Yetziat Mitzrayim remembrance.
Yetziat Mitzrayim takes it a step further, and this is an eye-opener in how to look at everything in life. To me, it’s the extreme of the upside-down theory. He says it like this: Why do we have parents? She said, “Well, I have parents because if you didn’t have parents, you couldn’t get here.” We need parents in order to produce people. Okay, so now you need parents to produce people, because how else are you going to produce people? Now that you have parents, logic says you should respect them. They brought you into the world; you should respect them. Very nice. It says, “You’ve got it all wrong.” God said, “I want there to be a mitzvah (commandment) of Kibbud Av Va’em (honoring father and mother).” That’s my goal.
Chickens come out of eggs. People could have come out of eggs. It would have been much easier. No nine months of pregnancy. Just, that’s it. And they incubate, just like you incubate and incubate. They incubate, incubate, and we’d have people. People could grow on trees. The only reason people don’t grow on trees, and the only reason animals pop out of their mother, a cow or a horse, and run off immediately, while people don’t, is because HaKadosh Baruch Hu wanted to set up a system to create a mitzvah of Kibbud Av Va’em.
The whole world is just there because God had a Torah, and He said, “I need to have a Torah, so I’m creating everything for my Torah.” It’s the opposite. Not, “Oh, there’s a world here, like the evolutionists believe, and now I have a world, let me be a humanist. I’m a world; let’s start being nice.” No, that’s not the way it works. There was no world. There was a Torah. And God said, “Here’s my blueprint. I need to have the world in order to fulfill my Torah.”
How far does it go? The Gemara tells us. Rabbi Akiva was asked a question by one of the kings. The king said, “Why are you giving poor people money? Imagine there was a king who put someone in jail, and now you go and start feeding him? If your God likes poor people, he should have given money to the poor people.” Rabbi Akiva said, “You know why there are poor people? To give merit to the wealthy, so that a wealthy man could have the mitzvah of tzedakah (charity). That’s why there are poor people.” So, they’re here to give a person the zechut (merit), and the opposite.
The whole world is here for nisayon (challenge). So the person who is having a financial challenge is here; that’s his challenge, to fulfill his mitzvot. He has to work on his emunah (faith), he has to work on his bitachon, he has to work on his simcha (happy). So how’s he going to work on them? If he has a life of royalty, he can’t work on those things. So his situation was created for him.
But that’s the understanding. We see situations, and every once in a while I think about this when you have one of these hard-luck cases. A Rabbi comes from Israel, his wife needs surgery, he has this problem and that problem, and we have to go now and raise money. Poor Kala, we have to raise money. Come on, what do you have to have all these stories for? Why couldn’t God just make everything nice and easy? Why does this guy have to have this, this thing? You know, what are we going to do? If a situation comes up, why are all these things here for? You’ve got to flip it around. It’s not like, “Oh boy, I’ll just get rid of the problem here; I’ll pay for it.” It was here just for you to give tzedakah. That’s the whole reason it was here to begin with.
So whenever an opportunity comes to you, you’re supposed to say, “Hey, it’s not like, ‘Oh, I wish there wouldn’t be poor people out there; I could keep my money to myself.’” No, they’re there to give you tzedakah. That’s what they’re here for—upside down.
We had our Lev Chana drive about ten days ago, and people said, “You know, that’s a nice thing, that we could give money to help people who need clothing for the holiday.” We sent out the clothing cards already, so the money was spent. We just have to pay for it. So Hashem gives us opportunities for zechut. It’s also a way to make you happy on the holiday, but that’s a side benefit. The main point is, every situation in life is there for you to have a zechut.