[Avodah] A shemitta miracle story

[Zev Sero]

Micha Berger wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 03, 2007 at 02:46:08PM -0500, Zev Sero wrote:
> : Dov Bloom wrote:
> :> Anyone in Eretz Yisrael who looks at agricultural economics knows that
> :> last year (5767) was not a great year at all! Certainly it did not give
> :> a threefold yield ( VeTziviti et haBracha beShana HaShishi VeAsat et
> :> HaTevuah LeShalosh HaShanim). 
> 
> : And yet it did for the people of Mevo Horon, who put their trust in it.
> 
> Anyone who explains an event as reward for a particular mitzvah is
> assuming the burden of explaining tragedy in terms of sin, explaining
> why one person gets reward and another not, etc....

Tzadik vera lo and rasha vetov lo are questions that are asked and
dealt with, but I've never heard of anyone asking about tzadik vetov lo
or rasha vera lo...

When you hear hooves think horses, not zebras - even if the last time
you heard hooves it turned out to be an escaped herd of zebras after all.

When the Torah says that a particular mitzvah earns a particular
reward, and someone does that mizvah and lo and behold gets that
reward, are we supposed to think that's a coincidence?  When there
are people all around who say that the promise isn't guaranteed,
and the person commits to doing the mitzvah regardless; when more
than that, the person first does the mitzvah and doesn't get the
reward, and suffers for it, but the next time the mitzvah comes up
he commits to doing it again, and this time explicitly davens for
that reward to come, and it comes, isn't the reason obvious?

And because these stories get mocked so often, here's another one,
that I heard about a month ago, directly from the person to whom it
happened.   He had decided to give a certain amount a month to
tzedaka, but hadn't decided on a place to give it, so he picked a
"temporary" address for the monthly donations, intending to stop
giving there as soon as he found a cause that spoke to him with its
need for his money.  About a year later he did come across a cause
that he liked, and decided this was where he would start sending
the monthly donation instead of the temporary place.  But on the
spur of the moment, he decided not to cancel the payments to the
old place, and to give to the new place as well as the old,
rather than instead of it.  Within a week he had a windfall -
some money came in to him that he hadn't expected to show up for
several years if ever, and whose maaser more than made up for
the extra tzedaka he'd just decided to give.

-- 
Zev Sero               Something has gone seriously awry with this Court's
zev at sero.name          interpretation of the Constitution.
                       	                          - Clarence Thomas