THE LOTTERY OF LIFE
By: Rabbi Eliyahu Schusterman
The winning ticket was sold in Maryland! Did you win? That was a text I received last week from a friend. - Rabbi Kushi
Imagine waking up each Monday and knowing that you have enough money to pretty much do whatever you want to in life and you don’t have to work. Amazing! What a life! Could there be anything better?
In fact this is what happened to our ancestors in the desert. Each morning they would wake up and there was Manna at the door or maybe a few feet away.
You’d think, “What a blessing”?!
In fact our ancestors call it “a test” and a “starving”. No less than Moses uses this language. How indeed?
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One of the difficulties of these Covid days are the many unknowns and the anxiety it brings. Will the vaccine work? Will there be a new strain? Can the kids go back to school? When can we go back to normal socializing? And we don’t have the answers. Because, no one has the answers. Time will tell. This unknown however creates an opportunity to uncover our inner resilience and trust in G-d.
As modern Jews in a more peaceful country with religious freedoms, we’ve been spared the challenges our ancestors have experienced that birthed this trust. In these days of challenge however, the opportunity to uncover our inner trust in G-d has never been more pronounced.
Covid has created a challenge that can propel us forward or crush us. We can recognize G-d’s hand in it and put our trust in the Above, or we can disconnect ourselves from that trust and be lost in our fear and anxiety.
The Manna was the same but opposite (the other side of the same coin) in many ways. The Manna didn’t require any effort, it was an unrestricted flow of G-d’s love. A visible and obvious literal food from heaven. But it also created a form of resentment. We didn’t need to work for our food and so it felt like we were starving – nothing in, nothing out. It was indeed a test; could we maintain our commitment to our trust in G-d when we didn’t have any skin in the game?
Job says “Man was created to toil”. The Talmud says “we are day laborers”. Clearly we need to have skin in the game. But at the same time we need to realize that, that’s all we need to have in it. We don’t control outcomes, we don’t control incomes, we don’t control anything at all except for our attitude and the choices we make.
This is the message of the Manna and the message of our time. Nurture the trust in Hashem and the anxiety will dissipate. As that occurs, we develop a stronger connection to G-d and find much greater peace in the challenges of the day.
Good Shabbos!
Rabbi Kushi Schusterman
