A story heard years earlier became the strength that was needed at exactly the right moment. Parshas Re’eh teaches that nothing we see or hear is accidental.
About thirty years ago, I met a relative from Israel at 770. During our conversation he said to me, “I want to tell you something that happened with our daughter. Until today, whenever I think about it, I become emotional all over again.”
He began telling me the story in great detail. He did not leave out a single point. This is what he told me:
Some time earlier, they had taken their daughter, who was about twelve years old, for a routine eye examination. It was a completely ordinary checkup. She sat in front of the eye chart and read the rows of letters: “Bigger… smaller…” The doctor completed the vision test.
As with every thorough eye examination, he put drops into her eyes to dilate her pupils and began looking inside her eye with the special instrument used to examine the retina.
Suddenly, his expression changed. He was silent for a moment. He looked again, then asked the parents to come into the room. “I see something inside the eye,” he said in a serious tone. “I cannot say with certainty what it is, but I am concerned that it could be a tumor. You need to go as soon as possible to the ophthalmology department at a major hospital.”
In a single moment, their world was turned upside down. Within a few days they arrived at the hospital’s ophthalmology department. Another specialist examined her and also saw the same spot. He explained that no conclusions could be reached until all the necessary tests had been completed.
That was the beginning of a long journey. They returned to the hospital again and again. At every visit, the girl underwent another examination: dilation of the pupils, retinal photographs, an ultrasound of the eye, MRI and additional imaging studies. Every result led to another test, and every test required another period of waiting.
The weeks passed slowly. Every time the telephone rang, the parents’ hearts skipped a beat. The uncertainty was almost harder to bear than anything else.
Finally, the good news arrived. The doctor told them that it was not a malignant tumor. It was a congenital finding, known medically as optic disc drusen, a condition with which some people are born. It does not endanger vision, requires no treatment, and only needs to be monitored from time to time.
For weeks they had lived with fear and anxiety, and now they discovered that everything the doctors had seen had been there since the day she was born. It was not a disease that had developed, but a congenital finding with no dangerous significance.
The story comes full circle
Seven or eight years passed. That summer I traveled to the Holy Land with my daughter to visit my parents, of blessed memory. She was about twelve years old, and I wanted her to see a little of the country. We decided to visit Rosh Hanikra. I remember standing on the balcony overlooking the sea. The blue water stretched to the horizon, and the view was magnificent.
Then my telephone rang. It was my wife calling from the United States. In a shaken voice, she told me that she had taken our 13 year old son for a routine eye examination with an ophthalmologist from our community, a close family friend. After completing the vision test, the doctor looked into his eye, and suddenly she saw his expression change.
He told her, “I don’t want you to go home. I want you to go straight to the hospital. I see something dark behind the eye. I don’t know what it is, but I am very concerned. It has to be checked immediately.”
He immediately arranged an MRI appointment, and they drove directly from his office to the hospital for the scan. Now all that remained was to wait for the results. The doctor, being a true friend, was deeply concerned. Precisely because he cared so much, his worry was written all over his face.
My wife called to share with me everything she was going through. When I heard what had happened, my first thought was: “I finally let myself enjoy one trip…”
But at that very moment I remembered the story I had heard years earlier from that relative. When he had told it to me in such detail, I had never understood why. Now I understood.
I said to my wife, “I have a feeling that it’s nothing. I think that, with G-d’s help, everything will be fine. He’s a healthy boy. I don’t think there’s anything serious here.” She asked, “How can you be so sure?”
I replied, “I can’t explain it. I simply have a feeling that everything will work out.” There was no way to tell her the entire story while I was standing in the blazing sun on the balcony at Rosh Hanikra. I simply told her that G-d would help and that everything would be fine.
And indeed, after another series of examinations, the results came back. It turned out to be exactly the same condition I had heard about years earlier. It was a congenital finding. Some children are born with this type of spot inside the eye, and it requires no treatment. Baruch Hashem, our son was completely healthy.
At that moment I understood why G-d had arranged for me, years earlier, to hear that entire story in such detail. At the time, I had no idea why I needed all that information. But when the telephone rang at Rosh Hanikra, that very story gave me the peace of mind I needed more than anything else.
That was when I truly internalized one of the great principles taught by the Baal Shem Tov, a principle the Rebbe repeated many times: Everything a person sees or hears is purposeful.
If G-d arranges for someone to see something or hear a particular story, then it contains a message for that person. He may not yet understand why, but the day will come when he will need it in his own life, in his service of G-d, or in order to help another Jew.
Sometimes it does not happen that same day or the the next day. Perhaps only a year later, ten years later, or even twenty years later. But if G-d caused you to meet a particular person and hear a particular story, it is not a coincidence. Everything is directed through Divine Providence.
From Hearing to Seeing
This brings us to this week’s Torah portion: “See, I place before you today…”
The Rebbe asks: “At first glance this is difficult to understand. After all, Moshe was not giving them anything. Blessing and curse are not objects that can be handed from one person to another.
Likkutei Torah explains that the reason Moshe wanted to enter Eretz Yisrael was because then he would have drawn into the Jewish people the level of seeing G-dliness.
Our Sages taught that hearing is not comparable to seeing. When something is known only through hearing, questions and answers are still possible. Even if a person fully understands the matter, it can still be challenged by an intellectual question.
When a person actually sees something, however, even the greatest question in the world cannot undermine the certainty of what he has seen or weaken it.
Although Moshe did not enter the Land, the very fact that G-d showed him the Land from afar nevertheless brought about within the Jewish people a measure of this level of seeing G-dliness. Their service of G-d would therefore not be based only on intellectual understanding, but that understanding would also contain something of the certainty that comes through sight.
Accordingly, the verse, ‘See, I place before you today,’ can be understood to mean that Moshe Rabbeinu gave them the power of ‘seeing,’ this level of seeing G-dliness, because he himself had seen the Land from afar.”
Toras Menachem, Vol. 9, p. 143
That is why Moshe Rabbeinu is not satisfied with the Jewish people merely hearing that there is Divine Providence and that there is blessing.
He wants them to reach the level of “See,” where G-dliness and Divine Providence become as real to them as something they can actually see with their own eyes.
That is exactly what happened in my own experience. What years earlier had seemed like a story with no particular significance turned out to be vital knowledge. What had once been only something I had heard became a tangible reality.
Suddenly I saw how G-d had prepared in advance the strength and peace of mind I would need for the moment when I would require them.
Today, forty years ago
I would like to share with you something I heard from the Rebbe exactly forty years ago, on Shabbos Parshas Re’eh 5746.
I remember the Rebbe explaining at the farbrengen that the word “See” is not merely the content of the verse. It is a way of serving G-d. A person can study a Kuntres, a Likkutei Sichos, or read one of the Rebbe’s directives and understand it very well. But the essential element is still missing.
Our service of G-d must be in the spirit of “See, I place before you today,” as though the Rebbe is standing before us right now, looking directly at us, and at this very moment giving us our mission. In other words, when we study Torah from the Rebbe, we should not feel as though we are reading a book that was written many years ago.
We should feel as though the author is standing before us and speaking to us at this very moment. The Rebbe adds that looking at a picture of the Rebbe can help a person visualize that the Rebbe is standing before him and personally giving him his mission. When a person truly feels that the Rebbe is standing before him and entrusting him with a mission, all obstacles and all delays simply fall away.
The Rebbe therefore concludes: “Then the entire approach to one’s service is completely different, as is obvious and self understood.” In other words, the difference between hearing and seeing is not merely a matter of how much a person knows. It is a difference in the quality of commitment. When a person merely hears an instruction, it can remain only a theory. But when he feels as though he is standing before the One who sent him, receiving his mission face to face, then his service is transformed. It is carried out with vibrant life, with joy, and with a glad heart.