When Hashem Wants, the Bachur Knows

I wanted to get in to a certain yeshivah.

“You have no chance,” people in the know told me. “It’s a yeshivah for metzuyanim.”

I wanted to be with the good boys in this yeshivah, I wanted that “matzav” in learning, which would obligate me as well, and there were several other things I wanted, which I would find in this yeshivah.

“It’s a yeshivah that accepts only a certain number of boys,” a friend explained. “And you need connections in order to get in there. Listen,” he said, preparing me for the disappointment that would surely come, “it’s not that you’re not successful; it’s simply the hanhalah there. Why insist on something that’s doomed to failure from the start?”

But I insisted. I asked them to allow me to take an entrance exam, even if they had no intention of accepting me. “This is a very difficult test,” I was warned. But I wanted the challenge.

I showed up, and the rebbi who interviewed me (bochen) asked involved questions about the masechta. Baruch Hashem, I knew how to answer all the questions.

“How many times are Abaye and Rava mentioned in the masechta?” he asked as his final question.

I knew the answer to that question as well – and I was accepted into the yeshivah.

How did I know the material so well? How did I know to answer the question about how many times those Amora’im are mentioned in the masechta? The answer is that not long ago, I was tested in the framework of a certain organization.

During the test, the person who was testing us asked us, “How many times are Abaye and Rava mentioned in the masechta?” He did not expect us to know the answer, and so he told us.

That’s how it came to be that during the yeshivah’s test I knew the answer to that difficult question. That’s how it is when Hakadosh Baruch Hu wants his child to learn specifically in a yeshivah that he so strongly desires.