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Thought for the Day: Plan, Put in Your Efforts, but then Daven; No, Really... You Need to Daven

Brachos 8a seeks to explain the meaning of על זאת יתפלל כל חסיד אליך לעת מצא/For this every pious person will pray to you at the time He can be found (תהלים לב ו). I figured this would go quickly. After all, I know as well as anyone, when can He be found? During the 10 days between Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur. Right?

Yes right, but this Chazal had something much different in mind. I started reading the Gemara and couldn't make much sense of it. I knew what all the words meant, but had no idea what realization I was meant to, well... realize. So I looked at Rashi:
יתפלל שיהו מצויין לו כשיצטרך/Daven that is should be available when you need it

Isn't that strange? What happened to just do your השתדלות/normal efforts and then rely on HaShem. The Gemara proceeds to list five things that you are most definitely going to need/want, but apparently they need more than just the normal השתדלות and reliance. I think Chazal are telling us that we need to plan our life around these things, and then daven that we are successful in finding them. They are, apparently, life changing and fundamental to our service to HaShem. Without further ado, here is the list.

  1. a wife
  2. Torah
  3. death (apparently there are 903 distinct ways to leave this world; many quite unpleasant)
  4. a burial place
  5. a bathroom
So... I really lucked into (1), as I met my wife long before I was religious and most certainly I was not davening for anything in those days. (This is not an "aww... that's sweet moment", but I have an explicit p'sak from my rebbi that my wife is my perfection. Just saying.) Of course we need Torah and for that you need a good place to learn and good teachers. Ok, clearly that needs davening. What about death? That's the only one on the list for which Rashi adds a comment: daven for an easy and pleasant. Of course we will all need a place to be buried, but it needs extra davening to get the right place. Finally: a bathroom. Really? Bathroom is up there with the other resources that are clearly critical to being successful in life?

I mean, it is true that the couple of times I have had surgery, I was not allowed to leave until I could relieve myself. I was once kept overnight (unplanned), in fact, because things were not getting moving as quickly as they expected. Moreover, the medrash says that one of the complaints Klal Yisrael had about the mahn is that they didn't go to the bathroom and they were afraid of dying because of that. Please also note that there we have exactly one bracha that mentions the Heavenly Throne of HaShem -- that delicate and sublime point of contact between the physical and spiritual worlds. Which bracha? You know it and say it several time a day: אשר יצר -- recited after leaving the bathroom.

That Chazal ends with the judgment of the sages of Eretz Yisrael about which item on that list is the actual simple meaning of the verse. I shall not comment further, but simply report: the bathroom.

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