Chazal (Yoma 76a) teach that enormous amounts of manna descended each day – more than the nation required for a day’s sustenance. By midday, it was all gone. This was part of a Heavenly lesson to the people: Hashem provides for our daily needs – daily. To worry about tomorrow is a shortcoming in our emunah and bitachon, faith and trust, in Hashem. This is the gold standard for which a Jew should aspire. The amount of hishtadlus, endeavoring, that one should expend is correlated with his level and trust in Hashem. The Gaon, zl, m’Vilna, did not go to doctors, understanding that Hashem is the ultimate Healer. He knew that his physical ailment was a Heavenly message concerning a spiritual deficiency. Thus, he introspected to see what he could improve. We are not on that spiritual level; therefore, we turn to science as the agent by which Hashem heals our ailments. At the end of the day, however, we know that everything – both illness and its cure – comes from Hashem.
Horav Aharon Leib Shteinman, zl, was the paradigm of a baal bitachon. Every word that issued forth from his mouth, every action that he took, represented his deep-rooted bitachon. At the age of one hundred and four, his physician said to him, “The Rav lives by neis, miracle.” In his calm manner, Rav Shteinman replied, “You, too, live by miracle.” He was once asked by a petitioner, “Rebbe, where do we see nissim, miracles, in our lives? When the Jews left Egypt, they could sense Hashem in every aspect of their lives. The Clouds of Glory, the Pillar of Fire, the well of Miriam that miraculously traveled with them, and more accompanied them. Today, how are we to sense miracles in a realistic manner?
Rav Shteinman replied, “Today, too, we can experience miracles.” The questioner sought a clear example of Heavenly intervention. “The mere fact that one is able to marry off his daughter is a miracle.” Rav Shteinman became filled with regesh, emotion, as he declared, “Look at the wondrous miracles of the Creator.” He explained that, if one were to ask what is the greatest manifestation of Heavenly miracles in our generation, the answer would probably be: the continued existence of Klal Yisrael. [Indeed, in his Siddur, the Yaavetz writes that Klal Yisrael’s survival in galus, exile, is a miracle that supersedes even Krias Yam Suf, the Splitting of the Red Sea.] Yet, the Rav reiterated that the greatest miracle is the ability of an avreich, young Torah scholar, whose material bounty (if anything) barely suffices to feed his family, can marry off his daughter. He added that the period in one’s life in which a parent marries off his children is the twenty years between forty to sixty – the Hebrew letters mem and samach. We know that the letters on the Luchos, Tablets (Aseres HaDibros), were inscribed from both sides. This means that the inscription was engraved through and through. As such, the words were clearly legible on each side. Although the letters were engraved all the way through, they could, nevertheless, be read from right to left on both sides. Now, the Hebrew letters samach and mem are closed on all sides, such that nothing can hold them onto the stone. This was clearly a miracle. Rav Shteinman commented – “In our time, the samach (sixty years old) and the mem (forty years old) hang by a miracle.” (During these twenty years in which parents are marrying off their children – it is by Heavenly intervention.)
