It’s getting cold again.  My kids daycare told me that I have to start sending boots and a jacket.  So I had to fish through the winter stuff and brace myself for having to dress 3 kids in 17 layers of clothes every time I want to leave the house.  

And of course, with the cold weather, comes the kids getting sick every other week.  Which means me getting sick more as well.

And most germs are just annoying, but some, well, some you really have to watch out for.

And it all begs the question, couldn’t G-d have made the world a little differently?  What if He had made it without cold winters?  Without the flu?  Without us being so frail that our mortality could always be at risk?

Well actually, according to a medrash in Breishis Rabah, He did originally create the world without any of those things…

When Noah walks out of the arc G-d says: 

עֹ֖ד כָּל־יְמֵ֣י הָאָ֑רֶץ זֶ֡רַע וְ֠קָצִ֠יר וְקֹ֨ר וָחֹ֜ם וְקַ֧יִץ וָחֹ֛רֶף וְי֥וֹם וָלַ֖יְלָה לֹ֥א יִשְׁבֹּֽתוּ: 

So long as the earth exists, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.

Breishis 8:22

The medrash says that this is the point in the history of the world where G-d is establishing the seasons.¹  Prior to that, the world always experienced the pleasant weather of springtime.  Things were so idyllic, that the medrash attests that people only plowed their fields once every 40 years, and didn’t have to re-do the work in that whole time period.

The Malbim adds that because the weather was always so nice, people didn’t really get sick back then.  And because people weren’t getting sick, long life was more of a standard, expected thing.

That sounds so amazing!  So why then, did G-d change how He ran the world?  

When people only had to plow their fields once a yovel and they didn’t have to take any sick days, did they use that time to do more mitzvos?  No.  They used that time to figure out how to manipulate the legal system and oppress each other.  When they knew that they would live well over a century, did they use that time to learn more Torah and become great scholars?  No.  They procrastinated on building a connection with G-d and whittled their time away.  

Perhaps counterintuitively, everything going smoothly does not cause most human beings to reach their full potential.  It is actually adversity that makes us rise to the challenge.  If you look at the people who have achieved the most in this world in one field or another, almost invariably, you will find that they faced serious challenges before they reached for the stars.  If you look at the most beautiful gemstones, you will find that they were formed by years under tremendous pressure and temperature, much more so than common sedimentary rocks.  

It’s easy to think that if all our challenges disappeared, everything would be perfect.  But it could be that, if used properly, some of those very difficulties are what sharpen you into the best person you can be.  

When the pressure is on, don’t complain that the burden is heavy.  Become the diamond that G-d wants you to be.

Good Shabbos,

Rabbi A and the JET Team

1. Admittedly, Rashi and others, take a more conservative approach to this verse and suggest that the seasons were merely paused during the flood and G-d was simply restarting the seasonal cycle (and therefore they did have multiple seasons like ours prior to the flood). ↩︎