by LEIBY BURNHAM | September 13, 2024 8:39 pm
You can’t always get what you want. But sometimes you get exactly what you want. Today, I got exactly what I wanted. I wanted to write a Shabbos email, and was looking for inspiration, when my good friend Noach Klein sent me something quite remarkable, and perfect for this time of year.
It was an article about a woman who was not getting what she wanted. As a matter of fact, she was getting the opposite of what she wanted. She was thrust into the middle of ground zero in a crisis that is rocking the entire world. Her name is Magali Urbina, who together with her husband Hugo, bought a 470 acre pecan orchard. Her plan was to make it into a dream retirement project; together they would build a coffee shop, a restaurant, some glamping sites to AirBnB out on the riverbank, and even their dream home. They even named the property Heavenly Farms. But if she wanted a bucolic quiet peaceful retirement, she got none of that.
The problem was that the property she bought was on the southern border, right up against the Rio Grande, which splits the US from Mexico. The day after President Biden took office, he repealed a number of laws that were preventing migrants from coming into the country illegally, and within days, a never ending stream of people began crossing our border into the US. It’s hard to know how many people have come through the southern border since then. The official number given by the Department of Homeland Security is about 9.5 million people, 7.8 who have been “encountered” by the US Customs and Border Protection service, and at least 1.7 million who are known “gotaways,” people we know entered but have no information on, because they eluded the CBP. But the real number is likely much higher.
Magali Urbina’s pecan orchard is at Ground Zero. Her property line is the Rio Grande, and specifically at a spot where it runs shallow and slow, making it very attractive to migrants. It’s also right where the massive wall built by the Texas government abruptly ends, making it the very first spot people can get across easily.
At first, Magali and Hugo noticed hundreds of migrants walking through their orchard daily, in the best case leaving behind all sorts of trash, in the worst-case leaving little children wandering around the orchard by themselves, or at time corpses. Many people die of heatstroke on the trip up, and some at the hands of the vicious “coyotes” the cartel smugglers who often charge people a fortune for a “safe passage” and then rob them or worse, when the journey comes to an end. It was devastating to the new farm. When the Texas Department of Public Safety offered to install a chain link fence, the Urbinas welcomed them in, hoping it would keep the flow migrants off their property. But it only made things worse.
The fence got bigger and bigger, and rolls of razor sharp concertina wire were placed in front of it. State Troopers and National Guards began driving through the property to face off against people coming across. This didn’t stop the migrants, but now they were getting cut up and bloodied on the razor wire. The US Custom and Border Protection agents want to make it easier for people to get across, the Texas state troopers want to stop people from getting across, and Magali Urbina’s farm is right where the chaos is at it’s finest.
Her land is getting trampled by both Federal and State law enforcement. When she tried to sue to make them stop, she was told that the emergency orders of the government override her property rights. On top of that she still sees streams of migrants, some of them horrifically abused by the cartels who control the flow at the border, coming across her property, and they are still leaving trash everywhere, including children and the occasional body.
But it still get’s worse. Heavenly Farms, the pecan orchard that brought Magali to the area, is in an area experiencing one of the worst droughts in recent history. For months, it hasn’t rained, and pecans are very thirsty trees. So not only were her fields being trampled by the Feds, the State, and migrants, her trees were dying in the drought.
But while you can’t always get what you want, you sometimes do get unexpected packages that change your perspective and fortune dramatically. The package that would help Magali and Hugo Urbina came in the form of about 50 yeshiva students from the East Coast. They were attending a camp called Machane Retzufos, which combines rigorous learning with incredible chilling in San Antonio, TX. They rent out three massive AirBnb’s. Every day they have services, followed by breakfast and a long learning session (known as “First Seder”) and then they go out and do trips in the area.
On August 27th, their daily activity was a trip to the border with internationally recognized Chassidic travel blogger Shloime Zionce. He drove them down to Ground Zero, and began explaining to the boys the current crisis at the border, showing them where the border wall ended, the streams of migrants coming across, and the National Guard and CBP forces facing off in that hotspot. Magali Urbina heard that there was a large group of people on her property, and thinking it was a group of migrants, came out to see what was going on.
She was quite surprised to see a group of interested, friendly, but clearly not from Texas or any point South of the Border, Yeshiva Students! They didn’t even realize that they were on private property, and apologized for trespassing. She then talked to them for a while, learning about what they were doing with their summer, and explaining to them what she faces on a daily basis on her farm, with the migrant crisis. Eventually, the conversation turned to the drought, where she told them that she has seen more migrants than pecans this year because of the drought. And then, seeing that the whole group was filled with people of deep faith, she asked them to pray for rain.
The boys, feeling the pain of what she has been going through, began praying and saying Psalms, in prayer form and song form, and Shloime Zionce even capped it off with a beautiful Misheberach asking Hashem to bless the land with rain, and protection and success for “Magali bas Angie.” One of the Yeshiva student shared with her the story from the Prophets of how Elijah prayed to Hashem and ended a years-long drought. The boys then stopped at the family’s Eagle Grocery to buy cold sodas and snacks, and she asked if they could just pray a little bit more, and the boys gladly delivered. More songs, and more intense prayers were offered, and then the boys were off to Mexico for a quick visit.
That night, when Shloime Zionce got home, after a long five hour drive back to Houston, he was shocked to see a text message from Magali Urbina, ““It rained for about an hour! This hasn’t happened in four or five months. I feel so loved by G-D I want to cry. Thank you and Thank G-D. I’m grateful for meeting you all today.” The Eagle Pass Business Journal reported that a thunderstorm blew in unexpectedly and dropped between two and two and half inches on Eagle Pass.
But that wasn’t all, the rain kept coming and coming. A fee days later .73 inches fell, and then 1.03 inches a few days after that. The math is unbelievable: Drought for months + sincere prayers from close to 50 Yeshiva Boys = Miraculous rain being delivered within hours. You can’t always get what you want, but if you pray sometimes, you just might find you get what you need!
We are now in the runup to the High Holidays, a time when Jews of all stripes and backgrounds do a little bit more praying than usual. And we undoubtedly sometimes question where all our prayers are going. Hashem isn’t a jukebox, you can’t just put a few prayers into the box, and press the result you want and expect to see it play out. But sometimes, Hashem pulls back the curtain and shows us that our prayers matter, in a real and powerful way.
Collectively, the Jewish people have offered billions of prayers since October 7th, and yet the war drags on. We can become discouraged, thinking our prayers are not effective, but we have no idea how much protection we have been giving the Jewish people at large. We can’t know how many of the tens of thousands of missiles shot at Israel were supposed to hit their targets and didn’t because of our prayers. Yes, there have been hundreds of IDF casualties, but we can’t know how many thousands have been prevented by our never-ending stream of prayers.
On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, there is a prayer that is considered to be one of the most powerful, Unesaneh Tokef, which talks about the power of the High Holidays, where it is written and sealed, “who will live and who will pass… who will have tranquility and who will suffer… who by war and who by hunger, who will be brought down and who will be elevated?” And the refrain shouted out by the community is: But Repentance, And Prayer, And Charity Remove the Evil of the Decree!!!
We are in a time when we need every bit of evil removed from the decree. We need a year of peace, tranquility, prosperity, health, and the elevation of our spirits. Let’s take this story of those 50 yeshiva boys who brought the end to a months long drought with nothing but a few prayers as the inspiration to remember that our prayers matter. And let’s use the awesome power of our prayers to bring a 5785 that will be filled with blessing, success, happiness, good health, and most importantly, peace!
Parsha Dvar Torah
If you were to enter a yeshiva at any given moment, you would surely find people poring over pages of the Talmud dealing with obscure subjects that will never play any real role in their lives. For example, there is a tractate called Bava Kamma whose first few chapters deal almost exclusively with damages pertaining to oxen goring each other. The Talmud discusses in detail the different kinds of payments the owners of the oxen would owe to the owners of the damaged ox. This does not happen often in Oak Park, Michigan.
But what some people would find even more perplexing is the chapter in Tractate Sanhedrin called “ben sorer u’moreh,” which deals with a law taught in this week’s parsha, Ki Taiztei. The Torah talks about a child who at the tender age of thirteen has become involved in stealing and raucous partying, delinquent to the point that we can know for certain that he will not change, but will rather turn to violent crime to support his nefarious habits. The Torah says that he should be put to death rather than be allowed to continue to devolve, and end up being put to death guilty of homicide. The Talmud in Sanhedrin tells us that there never was such a case nor will there ever be one, and if you wonder why the Torah wrote this law, it was so that we should study it and get rewarded.
Many people are frustrated by this. Is there not enough in the vast ocean of Talmudic study that G-d had to add fictional scenarios so that we can have what to learn and get reward? And the frustration spills over to other areas of study. People constantly question; “Why are yeshiva students wasting their time learning about obscure topics that have no relevance to daily life?”
There is a beautiful answer to this question, through the following analogy. If you were staying in a stranger’s home, and wanted to get to know him better, would you read a map he left for you showing how to get from his house to the closest Wal-Mart, or would you read poetry he wrote and left on his coffee table? Obviously the latter!
The Torah is the writing of G-d, and it has two important functions. The first is to serve as the map we use to navigate this world. G-d created the world using the Torah as a blueprint, so if we want to find our way through this world without bumping into any obstacles, we need to study the blueprint. The topics in the Torah which don’t seem to tell us anything for the world we currently live in are not maps but the poetry of G-d. Delving into G-d’s poetry for no other reason other than to trying to understand Who He is, is the greatest act of love we can show Him.
The more we do so the more we discover the sensitivities of G-d. This shapes our moral fiber. We learn the care one has to display towards the possessions of others, and the responsibility we have to insure that none of our possessions cause damage to others. Even though we don’t have oxen that gore, we do have cars that sometimes nick other cars by mistake. Studying remuneration plans for oxen that gored helps us realize that we must leave a note behind when we nick someone else. (P.S. someone nicked the back fender of my grey minivan. If you are reading this please slip $350 under my door so I can get it fixed, and you won’t have to feel shame that you ignored it for three months!)
Studying the ben sorer u’Moreh, we realize that a life of stealing from others is a life not worth living. Studying the numerous parts of a farmer’s yield which have to give to various segments of society such as the poor, widow, convert, orphan, priest, and Levite, teach us about social responsibility and caring for others that don’t have what we have. The more we learn about G-d by reading the poetry that we thought had nothing to do with us, the more we realize that there can be no greater endeavor, no better discipline, no more meaningful experience than getting lost in this pursuit.
This week’s parsha is made up almost entirely of laws, dozens of them. As a matter of fact, this parsha contains more mitzvos than any other parsha in the Torah – 74 to be exact. I won’t be able to go into detail for all of them, and I may skip some, but I challenge you to find out which ones I skipped and email me back with the list.
The first law is quite a intriguing one. It deals with a soldier falling for the beauty of women captured in battle, and desiring her as a wife. The Torah knew that if it flat-out forbade the relationship, soldiers overcome by the fatigue and the challenges of war would disregard the law. Instead, the Torah allows one to take the captive lady as a wife, but only after a number of conditions are met. These conditions are designed to help disenchant the soldier. The captive woman must sit by the door of his house dressed in clothes of a mourner, with no makeup, and mourn the family that she lost in the war. (This is a great insight into marital relationships: no one wants a spouse who sits moping and mourning all the time!) If, as the Torah hopes, he decides that he doesn’t want her as a wife after all, he must set her free; he can’t make her a captive servant after putting her through that ordeal.
The next law discusses someone who has two wives – one he favors and one he hates. The Torah estate law dictates that a man’s firstborn son gets a double portion of the inheritance. If this person’s firstborn is from the less favored wife, he cannot elect to give the double portion to his oldest son from the beloved wife, but has to leave it to the rightful heir, the firstborn. The reason this law is found immediately after the previous law is to teach us that those who marry people based on their looks, as did the soldier in the previous law, are bound to end up hating each other and trying to find ways to spite each other.
The next portion discusses the ben sorer u’moreh, the rebellious son, the kind of person who makes us tell our children, “Just give him the lunch money; I can’t afford to buy new glasses every day!” This follows the previous law to teach us that if one hates their wife and there is no shalom in the house, they are setting the stage for rebellious children. While I was living in NYC I spent many years working with delinquent children, and I saw this to be so true. Ninety percent of the children we worked with came from homes lacking shalom.
The Torah warns us about the law of Hashavas Aveida, returning a lost item. Not only does the Torah command us to not ignore any lost items we see, it even tells us that we have a responsibility to actively seek out the rightful owner, so that we can return the object to them. We are then told that if we wish to take eggs or young birds from a nest, we must first shoo away the mother. This mitzvah is rewarded with long life, a fact which prompts Rashi to point out that if we get long life for such a simple mitzvah, imagine the reward for a difficult mitzvah, one that demands strong self-control! The Torah next prohibits cross dressing, commands us to put up a fence on our roofs to prevent any accidents, and reiterates the mitzvah of tzitzit.
One of the laws in this week’s parsha shows a great deal about the sensitivity of the Torah. Before the banking industry was what it is today, personal loans were the most common form of loan. In order to guarantee that a lender would get his money back, he would often take an object belonging to the debtor as collateral. The Torah teaches that we may not take an object that will impede the debtor’s ability to earn a livelihood, such as a millstone (the part of a mill used to grind grain, which would earn the debtor money). The creditor is not allowed to come into the debtor’s house to demand the collateral. Rather, he must wait outside while the debtor brings the collateral out to him. This way, the debtor is able to retain a certain level of dignity – he is the sole ruler of his house, and his debts and inadequacies need not follow him into his home and sanctuary.
In this week’s parsha there is also the prohibition against usury or taking interest for a loan. The Torah both commands us to lend money to help the destitute get back on their feet, and forbids us from taking interest. This helps us become more giving. The Torah understands that the only way we will become better people is by doing acts of kindness, not by simply having all the right feelings in our heart.
It is no wonder that the Jewish people are the most philanthropic race on this planet, with a higher percentage of their wealth being given to charity than any other race (According to one study the Mormons give more. The problem is that the Mormons are a very small group, and the researchers only count the religious ones as real Mormons, and the non-religious ones, who would likely give less, are not included in their calculations). In the Jerusalem phonebook, there are 96 pages listing free loan societies which lend or give away everything from medicine to power tools to chairs and tables for events to free medical referrals to mother’s milk! As we say, “Mi K’amcha Yisrael- who is like your nation oh Israel”
Quote of the Week: It is what you are inside that matters, you are your only real capital. ~ Vladimir Zworykin
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