Small tidbits and Sparks of wisdom

From a human perspective, we divide the world into good and bad — health and illness, life and death, peace and war. Torah acknowledges these categories, yet teaches us a deeper truth: Kol ma d’avid Rachmana l’tav avid — everything Hashem does is for the good. What appears to us as loss, disaster, or tragedy is not chaos, but part of a greater plan. The flood, the fire, the pestilence, the war — all of these too are encompassed within His perfection.

Good in Hashem’s terms does not always mean comfort or pleasure. It means purpose. Just as a surgeon may cut in order to heal, Hashem may bring suffering in order to refine, cleanse, or redirect. Death itself, though to us the ultimate loss, is not outside His design. The Torah teaches that the day of passing can be greater than the day of birth, for it marks the completion of one’s mission. Nothing is meaningless; nothing is outside His will.

Our task is not to enjoy pain, but to recognize Hashem’s hand in it. If we are alive, we bless Baruch Dayan HaEmes in tragedy and Shehechiyanu in joy. Both are acknowledgments that He is in control, that His world is perfect even when it appears broken to us. In our realm, we must fight evil, heal, build, and protect life. Yet at the same time, we believe with faith that all fits into His plan. These two layers of truth stand together — the human view of good and bad, and the Divine view in which all is good.

The Direction Is His Alone to Know

All of creation passes before the Creator as sheep pass before the shepherd. Each is examined, weighed, and set upon a path — one destined for growth, another for service, another for sacrifice. To the flock, the reasons are hidden, but to the shepherd they are clear. So too with us: life and death, comfort and loss, triumph and trial, all unfold according to His will. The direction is not ours to map nor ours to question. It is His alone to know, and our task is to walk faithfully in the path laid before us.

On Rosh Hashanah, the Mishnah teaches that all creatures of the world pass before the Creator like sheep before the shepherd. Each is judged according to its path, its trajectory already written. Yet within this teaching lies a dispute: are the Jewish people included in that same trajectory of fate, bound by the stars and the natural course of the world?

The sages differ. Some maintain that Israel too stands beneath the same decree of mazal, that the trajectory of the stars fixes their portion as it does for all nations. Others insist that the Jewish people stand apart, for individual Jews are given the power to alter their course. Through the fulfillment of mitzvot, through the hidden strength of tefillah — the very language of communion with Hashem taught by Moshe Rabbeinu and handed down through the generations — a Jew may break free of the decree written above.

If a man were to remain passive on Rosh Hashanah, his path would follow one straight line. But the majority of the sages affirm that Israel’s destiny is not chained to mazal. Rather, true free will exists — and by choosing to act, a Jew can change not only the trajectory of a year, but the outcome of each day, each hour, even each moment. Stories abound of Jews whose health, livelihood, and even the decree of life and death were transformed, not by chance, but by concentrated effort and connection to Hashem.

In contrast, those who do not incline themselves to spirituality — whether by nature or by philosophical choice — often remove themselves from this understanding. They believe the world to be a random collision of cells over billions of years, that humanity descends from a primordial monkey, and that existence itself is a cosmic accident. Such a view denies purpose and leaves man without rest. With no true measure of good and evil, they take confusion for wisdom, mistaking physical pleasures for ultimate good and social trends for absolute morality. Thus, when violence arises, they protest blindly, unable to discern innocence from guilt, for they judge only with surface eyes. Without Torah, without Hashem, their categories of right and wrong remain those of an animal level, never reaching the depth of what good and evil truly are.

Thus, while the direction belongs to Hashem alone, He has given His people the power to respond — to rise above what seems fixed, to shape their own path within His will, and to find in every moment the possibility of change.