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Thought for the Day: Stepping Up Your Worldview -- Thanking HaShem for Providing You with All Your Needs

One of the morning blessings is for taking care of our all our needs: שעשה לי כל צרכי. Despite its all encompassing wording, it refers specifically to shoes. In fact, there is an opinion that on Tisha b'Av, when we don't wear shoes, one should delay saying that bracha until the late afternoon.

One may wonder why Chazal chose to have us express praise to the Creator for shoes using words that actually indicate every single need that is provided. R' Biderman provides a wonderful parable to appreciate the lesson from our shoes. (R' Biderman, of course, speaks in Yiddish. I am not giving a literal translation, but how I understand the message.)

A young man goes into a shoe store for new shoes and tells the salesman that he needs a nice pair of size 9 shoes. "Size 9? Oh no, no, no... an important young man like you needs at least size 12!" The young man is stunned. "No, really, I am a size 9; medium width." The salesman persists, "Young man, there is nothing ordinary nor medium about you; I insist you take 13EEE." Obviously we see the problem here.

Let's go a step further. (Of course every pun intended.) Imagine a young man is invited to go sailing. So fun! He'll need some appropriate sailing clothes, of course, including a pair of deck shoes. It is only a few hours on a boat, so nothing fancy, but he doesn't want to slip while walking around the boat. Our young man goes into the shoe store and explains he needs a pair of size 9 canvas deck shoes. "Size 9?", says the stunned salesman, "Why, an important young man such as yourself, should surely have nothing less than 13EEE! And canvas?! Absolutely not. You need shoes of the finest Corinthian leather. And silk laces." Now he is not only getting himself the wrong size, he is actually putting himself in danger. Slippery leather shoes tied with slippery silk laces on the wet deck of a small sailboat? Disaster.

So saying the bracha of  שעשה לי כל צרכי on our shoes not only refers to our physical needs, but also to explaining in a very tangible way that HaShem fulfills our needs to enable us to do our job. Anything else is at least a bad fit, and very likely even dangerous.

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