Hashem Has His Waze

by Rabbi Mordechai Rhine

One of the difficulties that some people have with religious perspective is that they find it hard to believe that G-d really pays attention to the individual. Perhaps their logic is, “If indeed G-d is great, why would He care about me.” The Torah perspective is that indeed Hashem is great AND He does care for the individual.

This Torah perspective was felt by the Jews of the Purim story when they realized that Hashem had orchestrated Haman’s edict, and their salvation from it, with the greatest precision. In fact, one of the most powerful statements in Megilas Esther is the statement that Mordechai makes to Esther when she expressed her reluctance to go to the king to plead the case of the Jews. Mordechai  says, “Perhaps it is for this moment that you became queen” Mordechai is a firm believer that things happen in this world because there is a Plan. And he is fairly certain that the reason that Esther was chosen against her will to be the queen  was so that she would be positioned so well to save the Jews.

Recently, with the advent of Waze, I have become less understanding of the notion that G-d can’t possibly keep track of all of humanity and really care. “Interesting,” I have come to muse, that we are fully understanding about a computer system that keeps track of your location and the locations of thousands of others, and directs you based on traffic patterns on the roads that you could potentially take to reach your destination.  In fact the system is so opinionated that, quite frankly, I am sometimes a bit perturbed by the way it directs me make multiple turns down side-streets, just to reach a destination a minute or two earlier.

People will say, “Well, Waze makes sense. After all it is an APP.”

“Correct,”  I reply, “And when we said that Someone was keeping track of all of humanity we weren’t talking about just anybody. We were talking about G-d.”

Even more remarkable than Mordechai’s confidence that Hashem positioned Esther as queen so that she can help the Jews, is his confidence that if she wouldn’t go, Hashem would orchestrate a different venue of salvation.  Realize that the statistical odds of Esther being chosen as unwilling queen are about a gazillion to one.  Yet Mordechai says with confidence that Hashem will orchestrate another, perhaps equally unlikely venue of salvation, if Esther is unwilling to play her part.

There are many other lessons one can learn from Waze. For example, “Watch out: Car stopped on shoulder ahead.” Indeed, there is little quite as humbling as a luxury car stuck on the side of the road with a flat tire, and a system that reminds us that such things do happen.

Even the ability for one wazer to inform another wazer of a road block is quite instructive. Some parents think that children should discover truth on their own without guidance. The Torah perspective is that we are obligated to caution children of possible places where they might stumble so that they can meet challenge with good judgment.

But for me the most important is the awareness that all we do is being tracked, and the path we take is being guided. Hashem has many ways to bring salvation. May we be fortunate to hearken when we are called upon to play our personal role in destiny.

© 2017 by TEACH613™