Now this is a mashal to many things that happen in our own lives. Not only big events like that; if you look back on your life you’ll see many incidents when you thought it was unfortunate that this happened to you and later you discovered it was for your benefit. Only that it needs a certain amount of concentration, of dedication to fulfilling this mitzvah, and people are lazy; they’re loathe to take the trouble to think into them. But you have to; everyone is obligated to make time to think about their own biography until they gain this attitude, this awareness.
I did that and I discovered at least a dozen times in my career when I was disappointed and I discovered later it was a chesed Hashem that it happened that way. I was once thrown out of the Hebrew school. When I was a little boy I was sent to the Hebrew school, the old time Talmud Torah, and something happened that I was thrown out. Now, all the other boys in the Hebrew school were good boys; they weren’t thrown out and all of them graduated at bar mitzvah. They graduated from the Talmud Torah and they succeeded in becoming nothings; nothing came of them.
But I, because I had some trouble, I was thrown out and I had to look for another place. I found a private rebbi who wanted to teach me and he made a mentch out of me. And finally he sent me to a real yeshivah. I look back now and I understand that it was the Hand of Hashem that was sending me on to a career of Torah.
