Have you ever experienced an HP moment?
HP stands for Hashgacha Pratit, in English, Divine Providence.
As Yitta Halberstam, author of the Small Miracles series says
“coincidence is a tap on the shoulder from Gd”.
Nothing in life is a coincidence.
Everything happens for a reason.
My husband is a wandering Rabbi.
One of his favorite duties is teaching in some of Atlanta’s finest high schools, during their lunch break.
Rabbi Silverman goes to a number of schools and brings pizza and conversation on Jewish topics to high school students.
A number of years ago, the president of the club in one of the schools brought in an article. The young lady, who was the president of the club, proudly showed my husband an article featuring her great grandfather, Rabbi Jerome Tolochko.
The name rang a bell with my husband and after conferring with his father, ob’m, it turned out that my husband’s great grandmother was a Tolochko.
We had found long lost relatives!
At the end of the senior year, we were invited to her graduation party.
We arrived a bit early, and were given the grand tour of the home and all the Jewish artifacts within.
My husband spotted some old books encased in a bright red box. The books had Hebrew writing on the outside. Our new relative explained she had no idea what the books were all about. She had selected them from her grandfather’s collection of books because she liked the bright red box, it caught her eye.
After inquiring, my husband was given permission to peruse the books and was astonished to find novellae, original writing, on all six Tractates of the Talmud, the Oral Torah.
With the gracious permission of our newly found cousins, my husband embarked on an investigative mission to discover who wrote these works and what they actually contained.
The manuscript was written in a copperplate Hebrew script and difficult to decipher. Eventually it was sent to Israel, and a scholar worked on the manuscript for over a year.
It turns out that this work was composed in Grodno, which is in Belarus, in the 1840s.
It has approbations from world class Torah scholars of the time, whose rare signatures are included within.
This rare and illuminating manuscript, written by my husband’s great, great uncle, was printed this week, the Torah within available now for study for scholars and laymen alike.
The author writes in the document that he hopes his work will be printed and brought to light so that future generations will be able to study his elucidations on the Torah.
In this week’s Torah portion, which is called V’Etchanan, which means “and he pleaded”.
Moses is entreating Gd to allow him to enter Israel, the Promised Land. Gd tells Moses he will not be able to enter instead Joshua will be leading the people.
Moses then reviews the covenant between Gd and the Jewish people including the Ten Commandments.
One of the ideas that Moses emphasizes is the famous statement of Shma Yisrael. This is the source of the Shma prayer.
“Hear Israel that Gd is our Gd and Gd is One”
On a surface level this refers to monotheism, the idea there is only one Gd.
On a deeper level, the idea of the Oneness of Gd is that everything in life is an expression of Gd’s will.
Some incidents are easy to see as an expression of the Divine hand, like Niagara Falls, others may be much more challenging, like pain, challenges and suffering.
Ultimately the message is everything that happens in life is an expression of Divine providence.
When we recite the Shma we accept the idea that life is made of a string of divine providence moments.
Therefore we should look for those moments.
When we say the Shma we should review our experiences of the day and look for those taps, the kisses so to speak, of Divine providence which enrich our lives.
This is a fulfillment of the message of Shma.
Our family had the privilege of seeing a tangible expression of this idea.
We received a message from a holy ancestor from the past.
This one came wrapped in a bright red box in the most unlikely of places.
A coincidence?
I think not.
Shabbat Shalom and so much love!