Torah Tavlin
More than a hundred years ago, in a kollel in Yerushalayim, there was a person who was extremely jealous of his fellow kollel student, and was always slandering him, trying to harm him and lower his esteem in people's eyes. The poor student didn't understand why he deserved this treatment, and he complained to his rebbe, Reb Dovid Biderman zt'l. His rebbe advised him to follow Chazal's counsel, to be silent and to not answer back.
When his children became of marriageable age, his nemesis was still slandering him, and due to the lashon hara, he ruined many potential shidduchim. His rebbe encouraged him to have bitachon. "Hashem will help. Eventually, you will see that this is all for your benefit."
His oldest child was a daughter, but due to all the lashon hara, she was getting older, and was still single. And then his second child, a boy, was "in the parashah" waiting to get married. His opponent worked overtime, because now he spoke lashon hara on both children. Many possible shidduchim were ruined, r"l. Nevertheless, as Rebbe Dovid Biderman taught him, he focused on his bitachon. Hashem can do anything. Despite the lashon hara, a shidduch will go through.
Baruch Hashem, both children got engaged the same night, to the same family. There was another family in Yerushalayim that had an older boy and girl in shidduchim, and they made "an exchange" (what the people in Yerushalayim call "ah bayt"), and their children were engaged to each other.
He traveled to Vienna to collect money for hachnasas kalah for the two upcoming chasunos, but he hardly raised any money. His rebbe taught him not to lose hope, so he said to himself, "I thought I would get money in Vienna, but Hashem can help in other ways, too."
On his last night in Vienna, he went to the hotel's bathroom and found a wallet filled with money. Most guests of this hotel weren't Jewish, so according to halachah he wasn't obligated to return it. He went downstairs to leave the hotel, with the wallet filled with money in his pocket, but the doors were locked. The police had already heard about the lost wallet, and they locked the doors, so no one inside could go out. Everyone would be checked. No one could leave without an inspection.
He mixed the money in with his own and threw away the wallet. When the police checked him, they found the money, but the amount wasn't exactly the amount that was lost. The wallet wasn't the same, either.
"How do you have so much money?" they asked him. "You look like a poor person."
"Why do you say so?" he replied. "I have very big businesses in Yerushalayim."
The police sent a telegram to Yerushalayim to find out about this Yid, whether he was indeed wealthy. The person who received the telegram was none other than his arch-enemy, the one who sought every opportunity to slander him. Once again, he sought to harm his enemy, and he figured that a wealthy person from Vienna wanted to know whether the person collecting money in Vienna was legitimately poor. "I know him, and he has a lot of money" the evil man replied to the telegram. This convinced the police that the Yid was wealthy, and the money he carried was his own. They permitted him to return to Yerushalayim with the money.
We can learn at least two lessons from this story: (1) Everything is for the good. Reb Dovid Biderman told him that something good will come from his enemy who constantly tried to humiliate him, and that is what occurred in the end. (2) Have bitachon in Hashem and Hashem will help you. This man had a hard time doing shidduchim and earning money, but with bitachon, everything worked out well. He made shidduchim and he had wealth, too. Our first request in the brachah ולמלשינים in Shemonah Esrei is אל תהא תקווה, that our enemies should lose hope. Afterwards we request their downfall, as we say "May they be lost... uprooted," and so on. But we begin with אל תהא תקווה, that they should lose all hope, because losing hope is the root of all the troubles and disasters that follow.
