All Fixed
I have never had good luck when it comes to winning raffles or similar random drawings. In fact, one of my only winnings came when I was eleven years old.
For those in my age bracket, you may recall that once upon a time the cereal boxes used to often contain a prize. Well, to my tremendous delight I once discovered that I was the lucky winner of a team pennant for the baseball team of my choice. My joy knew no bounds and, despite the fact they were perennially one of the worst teams in baseball, I submitted the winning form requesting a Cleveland Indians pennant.
I watched the mail for weeks waiting for it to arrive and when the big day came I excitedly ripped open the package and saw it - the little flag with the team name and logo of …the New York Mets. Whaaattt?! My excitement quickly took a nosedive as my joy was extinguished faster than a plate of latkes at our family Chanukah party.
That should have given me an inkling of what my future was to hold when it would come to winning things. Other than the time that I got a free brownie bar from a vending machine for being a certain random number customer, that was pretty much the extent of my winnings.
My genes must be strong because my children pretty much take after me when it comes to winning. So it came as a great surprise when my son Tzvi, also eleven, won a prize last Saturday night at a learning event that I attend together with him. This wasn’t some lousy team pennant (even had it been the right team). No, this was an expensive drone. And not just one drone but the package contained two drones so that two people could play with them and race them!
The next day Tzvi joyously took out his brand new drone and, together with his cousin and best friend, Gavriel, they began to play with it. After only a few minutes someone present (no names) accidentally sat down on the drone - and the propeller cracked.
In an effort to salvage the broken part, Gavriel took one of my screwdrivers and proceeded to remove a piece of the propeller from the intact drone to try and attach to the now-broken drone.
Let’s just say that these two were not quite ready to build anything more complex than a snowman. Before you could say “(Not so) Happy Chanukah!” my Tzvi found himself with not one, but two brand-new broken drones.
Let’s just say that the disappointment of getting to use a brand-new and expensive toy that you won for a grand total of fifteen minutes is a whole lot greater than getting the wrong baseball team’s pennant. (To his credit, Tzvi handled himself beautifully. Guess he got those genes from his mother!)
This episode brought to mind something that happened with me a few weeks ago.
I was cutting something in the kitchen and I accidentally sliced my fingertip. It bled a lot and was quite painful. Two days later I was looking at my wound and saw that it had begun healing. Normally I wouldn’t give it a second thought but lately I have been reading the writings of a great man by the name of Rabbi Avigdor Miller who had an unbelievable appreciation for all of the wonders of G-d and His creation and his words are (hopefully) slowly penetrating their way into my brain.
Looking at my finger which had begun to heal I marveled at the amazing creation that is the human body. G-d created the most incredible and sophisticated machine in so many millions of facets, one of those being the ability to heal itself.
I sat there and contemplated how it is truly a miracle that a body can just literally sew itself back up – without my even having to do anything!
Imagine, I thought, if a beautiful Rembrandt painting got sliced right down the middle! That painting would forever be ruined! It would cost a fortune to repair and entail hours of labor and toil - if it could even be fixed at all. Even then it would likely never be completely restored to its former self.
Imagine further if I showed someone a paper or any other object that can get cut and repair itself; that fellow would be absolutely mesmerized. I would be able to charge admission for people to watch such a feat. And yet the body can get cut and just heal itself and be restored to as good as new and no one gives it a second thought!
“It’s a simple law of nature,” they say. And they would proceed to explain how the blood cells and platelets in your body work to restore the torn skin etc, never stopping to think that the fact that such cells exist and do what they do are such a miraculous event in itself. And why does a body contain those cells but a Rembrandt painting does not? Only because of the will of G-d!
Now back to the drone, I remembered my musings about my finger and wished there would be a way for the drone propeller to heal itself too. But alas, like Humpty Dumpty – all the 11-year-olds and all their cousins and friends could not put the drone together again.
We are now celebrating Chanukah. One of my all-time favorite lessons to be gleaned from the holiday is the following thought.
There is a well-known question asked – why is the holiday celebrated for eight days; it should only be celebrated for seven? After all, there was actually one jug of oil which had enough oil to burn for one night. As such, the fact that it burned for eight days is only seven parts miracle and one part nature?
This question has literally hundreds of answers, but one particular answer that always resonated with me is that one of the days is to celebrate the fact that oil has the ability to burn at all. Even that first day which had its oil is deserving of celebration. True, it is a law of nature that oil burns but what is “nature”? I once coined a saying – “Nature is nothing more than a miracle that happens frequently.” In other words, the fact that oil can burn and provide light and heat, or that any given object has in it the “nature” to do a given feat is really an incredible miracle and is only because that is the way the Divine Creator made this world. It could have just as easily been the case that water is flammable and oil is not.
When we appreciate the little things that we usually take for granted because they are “just nature” and we recognize that they are indeed no less miraculous and a gift from G-d, then we have cause to celebrate.
Yes, it is natural for a cut finger to repair itself and for a broken drone to remain broken, but the same awe and feeling we would have if we one day woke up and broken drones fixed themselves should now be aimed at the human body which can fix its own skin. And of course, that awe will lead us to a great love and appreciation for the Master who created this “natural” world with such abilities.
If there is one takeaway from the holiday (aside from the extra pounds from eating too many latkes and doughnuts) I would suggest it be to look around at this amazing world and be appreciative to G-d for all the miracles that He bestowed us with.
In the meantime if you need any handymen to repair anything in your house I have two young fellows I can recommend. Just keep them away from your drones.
Shabbat Shalom and happy Chanukah,
Rabbi Yosef Koval
