Most of us treat things that we see, hear and happen to us as being unimportant. Things just occur and we move on.
But for some, whatever they see is significant, everything is a teachable moment or will become so.
In describing the various garments worn by the Kohen Gadol, the High Priest, there is one article that Rashi struggles with – the Ephod.
“I have heard no tradition nor have I found ... any description of its shape, but my own heart tells me that it was tied on behind him; its breadth was the same as the breadth of a man’s back like a kind of apron which is called pourceint in old French which ladies of rank tie on when they ride on horse-back. Such, as mentioned, was the way in which the lower part was made ... this informs us that the ephod was something tied on the body.”
The way Rashi frames his arrival at a description of the Ephod is odd.
The Birkas Asher notes that “It seems to me that the beautiful expression ‘my heart tells me’ is out of place, since Rashi reaches his conclusion based on quite clear evidence, and not on the utterance of the heart. In the book "Perhei Rashi" he cites from "Otzar Chasidus" to reconcile these words of Rashi, and these are his words: The holy Rashi certainly had his heart above and his eyes below, and he would not peer out ... It happened that his eyes once encountered a mirror in which he saw women riding horses and wearing aprons. Rashi was puzzled and distressed by that sight, which his eyes had seen by mistake. He came to the parsha of the priestly garments, and he was troubled by the pattern of the ephod. Rashi searched and did not find its interpretation. He investigated and asked and did not hear anything that made sense. Suddenly, as he was studying this matter, a thought flashed through his mind: "My heart tells me" that the woman he saw ... was not an obstacle and was not for nothing, but rather to place me on the pattern of the ephod, which was a kind of apron that the service of the riders on the horses wore.”
The fact that Rashi takes the time to describe how he arrived at his description of the Ephod is a lesson in itself.
Whatever we come across, what we see, no matter how trivial it appears to be at the moment, will be significant at some point otherwise we would never have been shown or exposed to the situation. Hashem has a plan for each of us, and it is just waiting for the right time to be revealed.
