Menu
Menu
June 26, 2021
Author(s): Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz,
Parshat Balak
June 26, 2021 — 16 Tammuz 5781
Bashert
by Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz
Temple Emanuel, Newton, MA
A few weeks ago I was in Los Angeles on a family reconnection tour seeing relatives I had not seen during the pandemic. I was speaking with my niece Megan and her husband Randy, and they shared an improbable story about a dog.
Randy and Megan and their children had loved their dog, a miniature schnauzer, named Kelsie, that was a part of their family for 15 years. That is a long life in dog years. When Kelsie passed away, it was a big loss, and they mourned her.
She died just as the pandemic was setting in. Pets became intensely popular during the pandemic. Cute little puppies were in great demand. Megan and her family would have wanted another dog to love, but given the great demand for puppies during the pandemic, they thought it would be a very long time until they had their new puppy.
Then one night something unexpected happens. Megan is preparing dinner, getting ready to put chicken in the oven. The phone rings. It is her mother-in-law Helene who says to her: If you want a really cute puppy, a Cavapoo, come to my house right now. Off to her mother in law’s she goes.
There Megan meets Helene’s neighbor and hears this neighbor’s story about how it came to be that, in the middle of a pandemic, when puppies are impossible to come by, an incredibly cute puppy is looking for a new home. This neighbor, a couple in their 70s, had wanted to get a puppy to help occupy them during the pandemic. Their daughter helped them arrange it. She picked up the puppy from the dog breeder out of town and delivered them a Cavapoo. Everything was in place. There was only one problem.
Right before the puppy arrived, the 70-something year old husband had had Tommy John surgery to repair a damaged shoulder. Tommy John surgery, and the recovery, are very painful. The two of these coming together—a new puppy, which requires a lot of work, time, and patience, and recovering from Tommy John surgery—did not mesh. The husband said: we cannot keep this puppy. We have to find the puppy a new home.
Megan takes one look at this puppy, falls in love, and exclaims: it’s bashert.
Bashert is a Yiddish word which means it’s fate. It’s destiny. It’s in the stars. It’s meant to be.
My niece looks at the concatenation of circumstances and says: so many things had to fall in place so that we could get a new puppy in a pandemic. My mother in law’s neighbor had to want a puppy, they had to get a puppy, just as the puppy arrived, the husband has Tommy John surgery which made keeping the puppy not feasible. All these random things don’t just happen. They line up because it’s in the stars, it’s bashert, that we are to take this puppy home.
Just as she finished saying those words, her husband and son come in from Little League. Randy takes one look at the puppy and exclaims: it’s too soon. We are not yet ready for a new puppy.
It’s bashert. Take the puppy home. It’s too soon. Do not take the puppy home.
How do we interpret the events in our lives? Do we see seemingly random events as random events, or do we choose to make connections, do we connect dots, do we see patterns, do we discern messages, do we see God nodding and winking behind the clouds?
That is an eternal question. That is especially our question now, as we emerge from Covid.
So much has been written about how people are reevaluating their lives. Do the current patterns still work? Do the old choices still make sense? My job is okay, not great. Should I do something else? This city is okay, not great. I’m in a bit of a rut. Should I shake it up and write a whole new chapter in a new city? Just as I am thinking these thoughts, just at that moment, a recruiter calls me, or I get an email, for an intriguing new job possibility in Austin, Texas.
Austin? Austin? I hear so much about Austin. And I’ve been thinking I’m in a rut anyway. Why now? Why did the outreach for Austin come just now? Is that random, or is that bashert?
A lot has been written about people reevaluating their marriage after the pandemic. There is an uptick in split ups as people emerge from the past 16 months. My marriage is okay, but you only go around once, nobody knows how long they have, and okay is not okay. I’ve never been a therapy person. But as I am wondering what to do, somebody tells me a story about how, for the first time, they went to therapy, to couple’s therapy, and it was super helpful to them. It saved their marriage. Is that a sign? That I heard about therapy just when I was, just when we were, at the crossroads? Or is that random?
How do we know if something is bashert or random?
There just are things in this universe that we do not understand. Was the availability of the mother-in-law’s neighbor’s Cavapoo just then, was the email about the intriguing job opportunity in cool Austin, Texas just then, was the story about how somebody’s life was made much better by therapy just then, random, or is that the universe whispering a message? The truth may well just be that we don’t know.
But we don’t have to know, because what matters more than our interpretation is what we do because of our interpretation. My father in love, Rabbi Arnold Goodman, likes to say: Decisions are not right or wrong. They are made right or wrong. What matters more than how we read the tea leaves is that once we make a decision, we make the decision right.
In the end Megan’s sense of bashert shaped what the family did. Megan believed that the dog was their destiny, so they took the dog home. Randy believed happy wife happy life was his destiny, so they took the dog home. The family walks their new dog. Feeds their new dog. Pets their new dog. Loves their new dog. Whether it was bashert or random who knows. What matters is that they made the decision right. That new puppy is now a beloved part of their family.
The importance of making our decisions right is not limited to our pets.
I recently met with a young couple that got engaged this year. They knew one another since Kindergarten, since they were five years old. They were not childhood sweethearts, they were childhood friends. They were friends in grade school, middle school, high school. They were friends in college. They dated other people and got to engaged to other people. Then his engagement to somebody else broke off. Then her engagement to somebody else broke off. They were comforting each other as friends, and then it dawned on them: is this a sign that they were meant to be? A lifetime of deep friendship, a history of connection that threads through every chapter of their lives, what is it all for? The more time they spent together, the more right it all felt. Recently he surprised her by taking her on a walk to Mason Rice, where they had first met when they were five years old. On the steps of Mason Rice, he knelt down on one knee, took out a wedding ring, and said: Will you marry me? She said yes.
They were at the crossroads on the steps at Mason Rice. But the truth is, as we emerge from the pandemic, we are all at different crossroads. We all have different decisions to make. We all learn things that bear on our future that could be perfectly random or could be a sign of a larger divine plan. Most of us won’t know for sure which it is, but it doesn’t matter. What matters is that whatever decision we make, and for whatever reason, we make that decision right.
And that is in our hands. Shabbat shalom.