Asher Yatzar After a Scare

Here’s a man, let’s say, who tries to use the bathroom one morning and discovers he can’t. He tried but nothing happened. But he has to! Now, that’s not a comfortable feeling at all — it’s like finding tzara’as on your skin. You can’t fool around with such a thing! So, he calls out to his wife, “Something’s wrong! Emergency! I have an emergency here!”

They take a taxi or an ambulance, whatever it is, and rush to the hospital. The nurses and doctors are rushing back and forth to different patients holding all types of instruments and each time he sees such tools he’s panicked. But he’s suffering terribly and he’s thinking, “Oy, Ribbono shel Olam — From which tool is going to come my salvation?”

Then finally they take a rubber pipe and smear it with vaseline and force it in. Ah yah yay! It hurts like the dickens! Oh, did it hurt! You can imagine the “pleasure” of such a thing! They’re screwing in that rubber pipe and it comes up with blood as they force it in. He’s screaming but then finally, blessed relief! He’s able to urinate through that tube. The yeshuah came! He’s restored to normalcy and the doctors tell him that it was a temporary blockage and that he can go home.

You should know that this man just received a big gift. And it’s not only the gift of being able to function normally. That’s important of course, but the true gift is the opportunity to recognize how good Hashem was to him before, when all was normal. That entire experience was a hundred percent waste unless he understands from now on what a great stroke of fortune it is every time he’s able to use the bathroom normally.

You know, those tubes in the body are coated with a sticky layer. And some of the tubes are very very thin and the fact that the two sides don’t stick together is a miracle. Only that it happened in this case — the two sides of the tube stuck together and therefore he wasn’t able to urinate. Why doesn’t it happen all the time? It’s a miracle.

Fifty years of relieving himself and this man had never even thought about such a thing; he never knew how lucky he was until he made this great escape. Therefore, he should understand that this one incident was intended by Hakadosh Baruch Hu to teach him from now on that he should be full of happiness whenever he can function normally. An entirely new dimension has been added to his life because from now on, every time he relieves himself painlessly, he’s so happy. Now, his Asher Yatzar is not just a brachah anymore — it’s a song of gratitude, a hallel. He’s so full of elation, so full of real joy, that his brachah is a song: “Ga’alta chayai — Hashem, You redeemed my life” (Eichah 3:58). “You saved me!”

Now, if he would tell that to someone who never had that experience of escaping disaster they would laugh at him. “Ha ha! You’re so silly! That’s fun?! That’s happiness?!” Happiness means traveling someplace, spending money. To go to a bowling alley or a restaurant, that’s happiness! But going to the bathroom b’shalom is a happiness?!

But you can’t fool this man anymore with your leitzanus. Because he already learned what true happiness is. Some people don’t go home. Sometimes the doctor comes in and tells him, “I’m sorry Mr. so and so, but we have to keep you here for more testing. There seems to be a growth and we have to do a biopsy.” And then it begins — doctors and specialists and tests and hospitals.

How happy a person should be who doesn’t know anything wrong about his body! That’s what this man learned. Health is wealth! I remember I once went to a Russian shoe repair man. He said to me like this: “Az m’iz gezunt iz men reich.” I learned a piece of Torah from this shoe repair man. “If you’re healthy then you’re wealthy.”