Approximately 950 years ago, there was a very great rabbi in Am Yisrael (the people of Israel) by the name of Rabbi Avraham Ibn Ezra. Ibn Ezra had a burning desire to meet Rambam—Maimonides, Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon—because he knew he was a genius in Torah knowledge, a genius as a doctor, and a genius in all subjects. So he traveled to Egypt and arrived at the king’s courtyard, where Rambam was an advisor to the king and also his personal physician.
When Rambam came out and saw Ibn Ezra, he immediately told his servants to take him to a small, dark, cold dungeon underground and feed him only some water and dry bread. The servants immediately took Ibn Ezra, without Rambam even speaking to him, threw him in the dungeon, and gave him dry bread and a little water. Ibn Ezra was beside himself. Not only had he not gotten to speak to Rambam, but now he was in a little, cold dungeon with only a little dry bread.
Rambam told his servants to put a little pitcher inside the dungeon because Ibn Ezra had become very saddened. He couldn’t understand what Rambam had done to him, and he began to cry profusely. His tears went into the little pitcher Rambam had told his servants to put in the dungeon. When Ibn Ezra finished crying, they took the pitcher out and gave the pitcher of tears to Rambam. When Rambam saw the tears in the pitcher, he immediately told his people to take Ibn Ezra out of the dungeon and bring him to the palace.
Ibn Ezra went and met Rambam. Rambam smiled and welcomed him with great, great words of praise, and started sharing Divrei Torah, deep Torah, with him. They spoke together, and Rambam was very nice to him. When they finished, Ibn Ezra turned to Rambam and asked him, “Why did you do this to me? Why did you throw me into a dungeon and give me dry bread and water for days and days?”
Rambam looked at Ibn Ezra and told him, “Because, you know, I’m a very big physician. The minute I saw you, I knew that because you were very excited to see me, you were given a disease that was going to cause you blindness. And I knew the only cure for that disease that was going to cause you blindness was for you to cry a lot. So I decided to throw you in a dungeon so you could cry a lot. That way, the disease that you were going to have would disappear.”
At that point, Rambam showed Ibn Ezra the pitcher. Ibn Ezra looked into it, and Rambam showed him that inside his tears were worms that were going to cause him to become blind. Rambam and Ibn Ezra parted ways with tremendous happiness. From this story, we see that sometimes—if Rambam did that to Ibn Ezra in order to cure him by making him feel bad—HaKadosh Baruch Hu does things to us that seem bad, but at the end of the day, they’re very, very good.