01 Feb TERUMAH- WE CAN ADAPT

The Gemara teaches that when Haman made his lottery to determine the day when he would eradicate the Jews, and the lottery fell on 13 Adar, he was overjoyed. He was thrilled that the day fell out in the month of Adar – the month when Moshe Rabbenu died. Haman assumed that this was a good sign, because Adar is a difficult month for the Jewish People.

What Haman did not know, the Gemara says, is that Moshe died on his birthday. The day of Moshe’s passing – 7 Adar – is also the day he was born. And so Adar is not a bad month for the Jews; it is a good month for the Jews.

We must wonder, why does it matter that Moshe was born and died during this month? Why does this make it any more or less likely that Haman would succeed in his plot to annihilate the Jewish Nation?

Let us answer by taking a look at one of Moshe Rabbenu’s many outstanding qualities.

One of the things that made Moshe Rabbenu so great was that he had no “Moshe Rabbenu” to learn from. He was doing something entirely new. Nobody before had ever been this kind of leader.

Moshe confronted the most powerful empire in the world, and led a slave nation to freedom. He brought them the Torah from the heavens and taught it to them. He led them through the desert. They demanded food and water. They complained. They worshipped a golden calf. They refused to continue forward and instead wanted to return to Egypt. Moshe encountered so many different situations which no leader had ever dealt with before. He needed to somehow come up with ideas and solutions to new, unprecedented challenges.

And he did it. At every stage, with every new circumstance that arose, he met the challenge with confidence. He adapted. He did what needed to be done at every moment.

At the very end of the Torah, we read about Moshe’s death, and the Torah tells that nobody knows where Moshe is buried – תא†שיא†עדי†אלו†ותרובק. This means more than the fact that we do not know where Moshe’s grave is. The Zohar teaches that Moshe’s spirit is “spread” throughout the generations. For all time, we have some element of Moshe’s unique greatness. We all have this power to adapt, to change, to rise to a new challenge, to do something drastically different from what we’re used to.

Haman rejoiced when his lottery fell during the month of Adar because he wrongly assumed that Moshe Rabbenu had “died,” that his unique quality no longer existed. He was going to now thrust the Jews into a situation they had never before confronted – a government edict to annihilate the entire nation. He figured that there was no way they would know how to deal with this.

How wrong he was!

The power of Moshe Rabbenu was alive and well in Persia in the times of Mordechai and Ester. Under their leadership, the Jews rose to the unprecedented challenge, and they triumphed.

And this power is alive and well in every generation – and in every person, at every stage of life, and in all situations.

So often in life, we are called upon to do something totally new and totally different than anything we’ve ever done before. And so often we need to develop a quality that we don’t really have. There are times when a person who is soft and gentle by nature needs to be tougher. There are times when a naturally impatient person needs to be patient. There are times when somebody needs to start waking up very early every morning even though he is very much not a morning person.

And different stages in life call upon us to do different things. A parent’s job is to instruct, guide and give advice. When a child gets married, the parent’s job is NOT to do any of those things…

The good news is that we can adapt!!! We can change. We can do new things. We can learn new skills. We can develop new character traits.

If we ever find ourselves in a new situation or circumstance, where we need to do something new that we’ve never done before, we need to trust that we have a part of Moshe Rabbenu’s spirit within us. We can do it!! We need to have the confidence to know that we can adjust and adapt, and successfully meet any new challenge that Hashems brings us.