Small Actions, Massive Consequences

Following his Brit Milah, Avraham Avinu was visited by three malachim disguised as Arabs. The Gemara tells us in detail about the effort that he put into serving them. He spared no cost in serving them the finest delicacies, including three cows that he slaughtered in order to give each one of his guests one full tongue, the choicest part of the cow. However, we find an interesting verse that seems to conflict with the general theme of Avraham’s largesse: יקח נא מעט מים – “a little bit of water shall be taken” (Bereishit 18:4).

The Midrash explains that this means that Avraham Avinu did not serve the water himself; rather, he allowed others to serve it for him. Everything else he personally served to his guests, and as a reward for every item that he served, Hashem personally provided that specific thing for Klal Yisrael generations later. However, when it came to the water which Avraham Avinu did not serve himself, in a future generation Klal Yisrael would not be served the water directly from Hashem. Rather, when Klal Yisrael was in need of water in the desert, Hashem sent it to them through the rock which Moshe had to hit.

The famed maggid, Rav Yaakov Galinsky zt”l, makes a calculation. Had Avraham Avinu served the water himself, there would never have been the rock which was used as an intermediary to provide water to Klal Yisrael. This means that Moshe Rabbeinu would not have been denied entry to Eretz Yisrael. Had Moshe Rabbeinu entered Eretz Yisrael as planned, he would have built the Beit ha’Mikdash which would have never been destroyed. We see that through this one small, seemingly insignificant act, the course of history was altered.

After many years of sitting and learning in kollel, this particular young man decided that the time was ripe for him to go out and change the world. He became a kiruv rabbi and looked for a suitable community where he would be able to have a positive influence. He came across a community in the middle of nowhere, whose members had no connection to Orthodoxy. Their only exposure to Judaism was through the Reform. The community interviewed him and were deeply impressed by what they saw. They requested that he stay for a Shabbat. During the course of the Shabbat, he gave excellent speeches which left the crowd spellbound. Following Shabbat, they offered him the job as rabbi of their community. The rabbi agreed, with one condition. “I can accept your offer,” he explained, “only if you erect in the synagogue a mechitzah – a partition to separate between the men and the women.” The community leaders thought about it and, although it was not the ordinary thing done in their circles, they acquiesced. They took a vote among the community members who all voted in favor of hiring the young rabbi and implementing his condition. He was so excited to have the opportunity to put his passion into action and potentially affect an entire community.

The next morning he received a phone call from one of the directors of the board who embarrassingly informed him that although the entire community had voted in his favor, the president of the synagogue had voted against the mechitzah, and therefore they could not go ahead with their agreement. The rabbi was surprised and asked for a private meeting with the president. When he politely asked him why he was so adamant in his refusal to have a mechitzah, the president explained, “For twenty-five years I lived next to a religious man, and every year that neighbor built a Sukkah. Not once did he invite me to join him in his Sukkah. If this is what Orthodox Jews are all about, I want nothing to do them!” The rabbi did not get the position, and the community unfortunately never had a chance to be influenced and change.

We are oftentimes unaware of the ramifications of our actions. Those small actions that we are not even aware of have the potential to change worlds.