The Ambulance, The Snake, and My Son (It’s Not What You Think)

I stopped at the busy intersection, alarmed by the ambulance blocking the street, its lights flashing. Three Hatzalah EMT motorcycles were also on the scene. Cars were being diverted and I couldn’t see what was unfolding down the main thoroughfare.

My mind went immediately to the bombing of a bus that occurred at this intersection years ago during the height of the intifada.

“Oy, what do you think happened?” I said to my son sitting in the car next to me.

I saw a neighbor crossing the street and opened my window. “What happened?” I asked him, bracing myself.

“A synagogue is dedicating a new Torah scroll and they closed off the street for the procession and dancing. All good!”

My son and I laughed out loud in relief, as my vision of death and destruction was instantaneously wiped away and replaced by images of jubilant Jews dancing with a new Torah scroll.

The Staff of Moses

When God gives Moses his marching orders to take the Jews out of Egypt, He gives him a peculiar sign that somehow symbolizes the power of redemption. He tells Moses to throw his staff down and it turns into a snake. Then God tells him to pick up the tail end of the snake and it reverts back to being a staff.

What does this mean?

In a nutshell, God is showing Moses that these evil things – represented by the snake, the symbol of evil – are also tools used by God in the service of redemption and good, symbolized by the staff.

This point is captured in the gematria, the numerical value, of the Hebrew word for snake, “nachash”, which is the same number for the word “mashiach” – the messiah who heralds the redemption. Having the same numerical value means the two are deeply connected. From God’s Infinite perspective, where all the pieces of history merge into a single breathtaking tapestry, nachash/evil and mashiach/redemption are one and the same.

The ambulance scene reminded me of the story of the person looking through a keyhole. A guy looks through a keyhole and sees a person about to stab a man in the chest and murder him. He throws open the door and yells, ‘Stop!’

He immediately realizes that he is standing in an operating room. The person he thought was a murderer is a surgeon holding a scalpel, about to perform open heart surgery. The very act he thought was a murder is in fact saving his life.

I thought my son would appreciate the analogy and shared it with him. "What’s the point?" he asked.

“It means that everything that happens, the good and even the bad, is somehow orchestrated by God. Because God is one, everything that happens is somehow for the ultimate good. Of course, there are many times we can’t see how that could be, what’s happening seems horrible – like having a teacher you can’t stand. How could that possibly be good?

“You can’t see it now, but when you get older and gain more perspective, you may look back on this and see how that difficult teacher was just the person you needed in your life in order to push you to excel. In this world we only see a small fraction of the picture. Like looking through a keyhole, or seeing an ambulance and thinking it is a terrorist attack. But in the next world, all the pieces come together, the door to the operating room opens, and we’ll find out it wasn’t a terrorist attack at all – it was a celebration with a new Torah scroll. We may not feel it now, but ultimately everything God does is for the good.”

My son rolled his eyes, “Sounds like a real stretch, Abba.”

Well, at least I tried.

“Noah, at some point in your life you’re going remember this conversation and say, ‘That’s what my father was talking about!’”

A seed was planted. I took it as a win.