“…Amar Rabbi Binyamin…,” are the first three words
of the Segulah that countless Jews have relied on for generations to re-connect
themselves with their lost objects.
In free translation it goes something like this in
English:
Rabbi
Binyamin said: All are in the presumed status of blind people, until the Holy
One, Blessed Be He, enlightens their eyes. {Bereishis
21:19}
It’s a real Segulah as opposed to the other kind because its use is not in
lieu of our proper reliance on Hashem to take care of business. For as we said in EmunahSpeak:
So Who are You Relying on… The avodah of bitachon is to
train oneself to rely only on Hashem.
Properly
understood, the Segulah to find a lost object reinforces our reliance on Hashem. It reminds us of the miracle that was
performed for Hager by the well in the middle of a desert, and as such it serves
as a template by which Hashem makes it all happen.
There
are people whose level of bitachon in Hashem, as expressed by the formula of
the Segulah, was such that for them it was not a question of whether or not
they would find what they were seeking, but rather when they would find it.
About a
year ago this point was driven home when an acquaintance told me that he had once
lost his car keys. His father was
leaving the house for work when he heard what had happened. He reminded my acquaintance to recite the
Segulah for the lost object three times.
When he arrived at his office he
called and asked very matter-of-factly: So where did you find it?
And by
that time, of course, he had.
My own
experience has been somewhat less pronounced.
When I lose something, I usually recite the Segulah and put some money
into a pushka and then tear the house apart until I find the object that was
missing. And while I was surely
appreciative of my find, I could not
help but think to myself why should I not
find it? Did I not just rip the house apart?
But that
was yesterday and all of the other yesterdays in my life.
Today,
however, was a different story.
When I
cleaned off a certain bed before Pesach to make room for expected guests from
Eretz Yisroel, one of the objects that I removed from it was a DVD documentary
that was still in its shrink-wrap. As
soon as Pesach was over I looked for this DVD but I could not find it. After fruitlessly searching for it in every
conceivable place in the house that I could have possibly placed it, I assumed
that it must of accidently been thrown out with the de rigueur piles of pre-Pesach
junk.
My wife
kept nudging me to recite the Segulah and put a dollar in the pushka but I was
too lazy to go to the kitchen to read the Segulah off the magnet on the side of
the refrigerator. And in any case I never
had more than two quarters in my pocket at any given time.
After a
week of looking everywhere I finally relented and trekked to the fridge to put
the Segulah into play. Although the
financial situation had not improved, I solved that problem by taking my wife
in as a partner as I proceeded to float a loan of one dollar from her
pocketbook. After stuffing it into the
pushka I decided to tear apart a pile of odds and ends that was in my bedroom. I had already looked there but I decided to
give it a more thorough once over.
As I
contemplated the unwieldy pile while trying to divine whether or not my DVD was buried
underneath it, my eye caught hold of something sticking out of it near the top.
And
there it was.
