On Erev Taanis
Esther, my husband and I were en route to Eretz Yisrael to our grandson’s bar
mitzva. We boarded the plane with very mixed emotions. Not only is Purim time the
busiest, most hectic time of the year for my husband’s grocery business
(pre-Pesach) but the shadow of COVID was just beginning to have an impact both
here and in Eretz Yisrael. For some unfathomable reason, I felt an urgency to
get to Eretz Yisrael before Purim that I couldn’t explain, even though the bar
mitzva wouldn’t take place until more than a full week later. Our mechutanim, Rabbi and Mrs. Nota and Leah
Gelb, would actually be arriving in
We had no way of knowing that by
the time we were settled on the plane an older brother of the bar mitzva boy
collapsed suddenly in the yeshiva dining room and was niftar (had passed away). He was 19 years old. When we landed, our
younger son came to meet us at the airport and very slowly and gently informed
us that we were headed to our grandson’s levaya
(funeral).
We cannot begin to comprehend
Hashem’s cheshbonos (plans). During
the levaya, our granddaughter, an
older sister of the bar mitzva, gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. We had a levaya, shiva, Purim, shalom zachor,
bris, and a bar mitzva – all during
the 14 days we were there. And last but not least, COVID came out in full force
during that period as well.
* * *
In the ensuing weeks, our children have received countless
letters, notes, and messages from Yehoshua’s friends, classmates, rebbeim,
neighbors, and acquaintances. We have come to learn more than we ever knew
about his beautiful middos (character
traits), his massive Torah knowledge, his ahavas
Haborei (love of G-d), and his bein adam l’chaveiro (love of his fellow
man). We also discovered that he wrote countless kutreissim (treatises) and kept countless notebooks in which he recorded
his efforts to grow and develop in all these aspects of his life.
One concept that was repeated time
and again was Kol ma d’avid Rachmana
l’tav avid Rachmana (everything comes from Hashem and everything is for the
good). To give you a greater picture of who Yehoshua was, I’d like to share a
few short paragraphs about him with you.
* * *
Last summer zman
(semester), he missed about two weeks because he wasn’t feeling well. One
of the bachurim (fellow students) called
to see how he was feeling and told him that the chevrah (classmates) missed his notebooks but that meanwhile they
were using someone else’s notebooks. Yehoshua immediately responded, “Now I
understand! I’d been trying to figure out what could be the ‘kol mah d’avid Rachmana’ that I wasn’t
in yeshiva. It’s so that the chevrah
will use the other bachur’s
notebooks.”
In his kuntres Siach Haderech (Learning
on the Road), he wrote an entire
chapter on the topic of “Kol mah d’avid
Rachmana.” In the second edition, he wrote that the first time he went on
the bus after the kuntres was printed,
he was going home for an off-Shabbos. He said to himself: Let’s see what kind
of siyata d’Shemaya (Heavenly
intervention) we’ll have today. He ended up missing the bus, and wrote
about a few good things that happened as a result. It’s incredible how he
invested effort to notice the hashgachas
Hashem (G-d’s hand) and the gam zu
l’tovah (all is for the best) in whatever happened to him. His attitude constantly
was “Let’s see how Hakadosh Baruch Hu’s
chasadim (G-d’s merciful ways) will
be revealed today.” Simply astounding.
An older bachur who knew Yehoshua said they were once waiting at the bus stop
together, and many buses drove past without stopping. Yehoshua turned to the
older bachur and said, “There’s a mefurash se’if (specific paragraph) in the Shulchan Aruch about what we
should do now.” The bachur couldn’t
figure what he was talking about. So Yehoshua told him he was referring to
Orach Chaim siman 230, se’if 5, where it says: “A person should
always be in the habit of saying, ‘Kol
mah d’avid Rachmana, l’tav avid – Whatever the Merciful One does is for the
good.’” He said to the bachur, “What
do you think, that you only have to say it when something particularly unusual
happens? No. It says in the Shulchan Aruch l’olam,
always.”
Yehoshua’s roommates related that
he constantly made references to Shem
Shamayim (Hashem’s Name) and truly lived with and felt hashgachas Hashem. Specifically, when anything happened in their
room, Yehoshua always explained how it was l’tovah,
for the good. He always said, “Gam zu
l’tovah,” and caused others to love Hashem.
* * *
Yehoshua’s last summer, Av 5780, he, his father, and his
brothers took a trip to Tzfas for a few days. They had never done that before,
and it was the only time Yehoshua was ever in Tzfas. They got a little lost
coming back from the beis hakvaros (cemetery)
and in their detour passed a sign about the yahrtzeit
of Nachum Ish Gamzu, who is buried on one of the streets in middle of the city.
The yahrtzeit was the next day, and
Yehoshua was very excited about this amazing hashgacha since he had been working a lot on the idea of kol d’avid Rachmana l’tav and gam zu l’tova for the last year or so!
He saw it as a siman tov min haShamayim (sign
from Heaven) that he should have the opportunity to be there – and not only
that but exactly on the yahrtzeit!
Yehoshua wrote in his Siach Haderech: “On the last day in
Tzfas, we took a bus to Meron to Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai’s kever (grave). Then we hiked back to Tzfas. My father and the
younger boys waited for the bus back to Yerushalayim at the entrance to the
city, and we three older boys walked into the city, back to the apartment we
had rented, to pick up our suitcases. At first, it seemed like having to walk
all the way to the apartment to get the suitcases was a little bad. But in the
end, we realized how good it really was – for two reasons: 1) On the way to
pick up the luggage, we decided to pass by Nachum Ish Gamzu’s kever (burial plot). That night was Tu
B’Av, Nachum Ish Gamzu’s yahrtzeit!
(By the way, Tu b’Av is known to be a special day for davening for shidduchim. There seems to be a
connection between Nachum Ish Gamzu’s yahrtzeit
on that day and davening for shidduchim.) Usually, older singles look for segulos (Heavenly portents); this can
remind them that ‘gam zu l’tovah.’ 2)
After we picked up our suitcases, the bus stop we waited at was near the
beginning of the bus route, so the driver stopped. Once the bus filled up, he
just drove straight past a couple of bus stops without stopping. We knew our father
and younger brothers were still waiting at the entrance to the city, so we
asked the driver to stop and pick them up. He agreed! Had we taken a different
bus, it would have taken us longer since the other bus took a different route,
so we also got home earlier — another advantage.”
Yehoshua had a notebook full of vertlach (commentaries) on Chumash. Most
of these vertlach would identify a concept that at first glance would
seem to be bad but would actually be for the best. Then he would go on to
explain exactly why this was so. For every single Torah portion, along with
other concepts, he would always bring out an example of kibud av v’aim (honoring
one’s parents). This was very important to Yehoshua. Whenever he
had some time off from yeshiva, although he kept a full learning schedule, he
would always start his day by asking his mother what tasks he could do for her.
He would allot the needed time to fulfill those tasks properly. His kibud av v’aim was exemplary. When the family read through the notebook
carefully, they realized that the first vort
in the notebook was about Chanoch. Compared to the rest of his generation,
Chanoch had died young. This seems to be something not good. “However,” writes
Yehoshua, “kedarla’omer” (a mnemonic
for “everything is for the good”). He goes on to explain why this was indeed good.
After his explanation, Yehoshua writes, “It’s important to internalize that
whenever any young person passes away, it is for the good….”
* * *
Little did we know that we would be reading these words
after Yehoshua’s petira (passing). In
Yehoshua’s memory, and as an aliyah
for his heiliga neshama (blessing for
his soul), our family has taken this midda to heart, and we are trying to
work on embracing it for ourselves and passing it on to others. So far, we have
done this in a few different ways. At the end of the school year, our youngest
daughter and her husband sponsored a Zoom class presented by a preschool
teacher who has over a thousand followers. They asked her to dedicate one week
to the concept of “gam zu l’tova.” We
sponsored one night of “Night Seder
Please think about this concept,
talk about it, and help spread the word l’ilui
nishmas Yehoshua ben Yizchok Halevi.
