When we put our own needs aside and pray for someone else, we invite G-d’s blessings into our own lives.

Who Needs to Calm Down?

This week I heard a story about a teacher at a school in Israel who had a student with ADD. The boy was so hyperactive that he couldn’t sit still for a moment, and he gave the teacher a very hard time.

One day, the teacher called the boy’s parents in for a private meeting. He made it very clear: if they wanted their son to stay in the school, they had to take him to a doctor and get him medication—Ritalin—to help him settle down, concentrate in class, and learn along with the other students.

The parents didn’t want to hear it. Why take a young child and drug him with medication? But the teacher gave them an ultimatum: either the boy gets the medication, or he doesn’t come to class.

“Listen,” the father said, “I have a large family. Every morning is chaos. I have to wake everyone up, give them breakfast, make their sandwiches for school, and take care of a dozen other things. Now, on top of all that, I have to remember to give this child his medication? It’s just not realistic. I’m going to forget!”

The teacher generously offered to help. “Bring me the pills. I’ll make sure your son gets his medication at school every day.”

But the father still had a problem. If they did it that way, the whole class would soon know that his son was “on pills.” He didn’t want that.

“Don’t worry,” the teacher reassured him. “I have a small cabinet in the teachers’ lounge. I’ll keep the medication there. Every day, I’ll send your son to make me a cup of coffee. While he’s there, he’ll take his pill, and that will take care of it.”

With no other choice, the father agreed. He got the pills, paid for them, and handed them over to the teacher.

A month into the school year, the father hadn’t heard a single complaint. So one day he asked his son, “How are things going in class?”

“Thank G-d, everything’s fine. I’m calm, and the teacher’s calm.”

“What do you mean, the teacher’s calm?”

The boy let his father in on the secret. “Every time I make his coffee, I put in two sweetener tablets—and one Ritalin pill. I take a sweetener tablet myself. He doesn’t notice that I’m taking sweetener instead of my medicine. And ever since he started taking the Ritalin, things have been much calmer in class…”

Why All the Trouble?

In this week’s parsha, we read about Abraham. When Abraham was seventy and Sarah was sixty, G-d appeared to him at the “Covenant Between the Pieces” and promised him descendants. He would have a child (These ages follow Rashi’s explanation in Shemos 12:40.)

But time kept passing, and the biological clock kept ticking. Abraham turned eighty. Then ninety. Then ninety-nine. And… nothing. Still no news of the promised child.

Then our parsha tells us an interesting story that took place after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham moved to a place called Gerar, where he told everyone that Sarah was his sister.

Why did he say that? Sarah was a beautiful woman, and he was afraid that someone would kill him in order to marry her.

You see, people back then were very “moral,” especially kings and rulers. Marry a married woman? Heaven forbid! A king would never do anything so immoral. So if he wanted a woman who “happened” to be married, he would kill her husband and marry the widow. Now she was free to marry…

To keep someone from killing him in order to marry Sarah, Abraham made a point of saying, “She’s my sister,” whenever he arrived in a new place.

And that’s what happened when he came to Gerar. Avimelech sent for Sarah and had her brought to his home. That night, before he had even touched her, he dreamed that G-d came to him and told him he was going to die: the woman he had taken was married.

“I didn’t know she was married!” Avimelech protested in the dream. G-d told him to return her to her husband, Abraham, immediately, and ask Abraham to pray for him.

When Avimelech woke up, he soon discovered that this had been much more than a dream. He was seriously ill. All his orifices of his body were sealed. He was suffering from severe constipation, he couldn’t father children, and he had other physical problems as well.

Now he realized how serious this was. He immediately sent for Abraham, returned Sarah to him, and asked him to pray. Abraham did, and G-d healed Avimelech and his wife. They were once again able to have children.

Right after this story, we read, “VaHashem pakad es Sarah ka’asher amar—G-d remembered Sarah as He had said.” Rashi explains the earlier promise. When had G-d made it? Thirty years earlier, at the “Covenant Between the Pieces.”

In other words, it was just then, right after Sarah left Avimelech, that they discovered she was pregnant.

In fact, Rashi explains at the beginning of Parshas Toldos that the cynics of that generation were saying, “Sarah became pregnant from Avimelech. After all, she spent so many years with Abraham and never became pregnant from him.” Everyone was saying that Abraham couldn’t possibly be the father. Surely this was Avimelech’s child!

Rashi continues: “What did G-d do? He made Isaac’s face look like Abraham’s, and everyone testified that Abraham was Isaac’s father.” G-d had to make a special miracle so that Isaac would look like his father, Abraham, and nobody could claim that he was Avimelech’s child.

But this all raises an obvious question. Why did G-d have to make things so complicated?

He had promised Abraham a son thirty years earlier. This could have happened a few months before! Why did it have to happen right after the story with Avimelech? Naturally, all the nasty rumors would start flying. The cynics would have plenty to talk about. And then G-d would have to make a special miracle so the child would resemble Abraham!

Rashi gives us the answer: “Kol hamevakesh rachamim al chaveiro, v’hu tzarich l’oso davar, hu ne’eneh techilah—when someone prays for another person’s needs, and needs the same thing himself, his own prayer is answered first” (Bereishis 21:1).

Abraham had received G-d’s promise of a son thirty years earlier, but the blessing still hadn’t come. Only after he prayed for Avimelech—that G-d restore his ability to have children—did G-d answer Abraham’s own need as well. Abraham received his blessing, and his son was born.

Help Someone Else, and You’ll Be Helped

The Rebbe explains that G-d wanted to teach us a very important lesson in ahavas Yisrael, love for our fellow Jews. The best way to have G-d meet our needs is to pray for someone else who needs exactly the same thing we do. (See Vayeira 5743, Hisvaaduyos vol. 1, p. 476.)

Say someone is worried about making a living. Nothing seems to be working out. Then he hears that a friend is struggling with the same problem. What does a person usually do? He prays about his own troubles, and perhaps remembers to put in a word for his friend, too.

The story of Abraham and Avimelech teaches us to do something different. If you can put yourself and your own troubles aside for a moment, and pray for someone else who needs that very same blessing, G-d will help you. He will answer your prayers even before He helps the other person.

When G-d sees one person praying for another, it brings Him tremendous pleasure. And that is what brings His help to you.

People often complain to me, “I pray and I pray, and nothing changes.”

Here’s what to do: find someone who has exactly the same problem you do. Ask for his name and his mother’s name, and pray for him. Then there is a much greater chance that G-d will answer your own prayers.

Whatever your reasons for praying for the other person, the fact is that you prayed for someone else. By doing that, you opened the channel for blessing. And G-d will send that blessing to you even before He sends it to the person you prayed for—from His full, open, holy, overflowing, and generous hand.

That’s really what happened in our story with the teacher and the Ritalin. He was concerned about the hyperactive student in his classroom. He wanted the boy to be less restless, and he really wanted to help him.

He didn’t even realize that he himself—the teacher—needed the very same thing…

And G-d quietly sent that very same medicine his way, too…