There are organizations in Israel that help US citizens living there get visas to travel out of the country. One day, a boy came into their offices, requesting that they help him get a visa immediately. The issue was of utmost importance, he told them, and he needed a visa ASAP. They took his information and said they’d get on the case.
Later that day, the man in charge of his case got a call from a lady, asking if her son had come to them requesting a visa. “I’m begging of you,” she pleaded, “do whatever you can to ensure that he doesn’t get approved. Unfortunately, he has left the proper path, and I’m very worried that if he leaves Israel, he is liable to lose whatever religion he has left. He may even fall to rock bottom, r”l.”
As much as the man sympathized with her, he had to follow protocol and couldn’t just refuse to help. He did tell her that he would try to make the boy’s case look bad, as the boy had a few negative points in his application. He was both single and unemployed, which didn’t sit well with the American consulate, who didn’t want bachelors and poor people coming to America.
Despite this, the boy got his approval for a visa. The mother was so distraught that she hired someone to go to the organization’s offices to destroy the visa! However, the boy was so desperate that he had rushed over there faster and had gotten his visa before anything could happen to it.
The mother had been davening from the depths of her heart to stop her son from leaving, but it seemed that she was not answered. If we’d stop the story here, we’d think that the boy’s connection to Yiddishkeit was over. But, as we know, Hashem always has a light at the end of the tunnel.
In the end, the boy did go to the US, and there he met up with some very special young rabbis who took an interest in him, spoke to his heart, and gave him the right chizuk. They helped him come back to Torah and mitzvos, and he became a fully observant Yid.
Ironically, when he reached out to his parents in Israel a few months later to tell them he wanted to return, his mother tried to deter him from coming! She was scared that he would reconnect with his old friends in Israel and be influenced negatively by them.
This story illustrates how what we may imagine to be “extremely bad” may very well be the actual “cause” for the brachah. This mother never thought that this visa would be the actual cause for his full return and bring the ultimate success in his life. And yet, over time she saw the yad Hashem how the darkness itself was the source of the salvation.
The darkness in life is there only to be the cause for the light. Rabbeinu Yonah teaches us that the believer knows that the darkness is the mere cause of the light. So, the darker the darkness, anticipate the greatest light.
