The Lottery Ticket
04/17/2023 12:55:27 PM
Apr17
The last thing that I did to mark the weekend of my fortieth birthday was to buy a lottery ticket. We were leaving Atlantic City (having broken even, I can proudly say) after a beautiful Shabbat. We stopped at a rest stop and feeling lucky, I bought a Powerball ticket.
It’s been several weeks. I still haven’t checked my numbers. Why?
It could be that the chances of winning the Powerball are next to nothing. They are so slim that it’s probably not even worth the time of going through the hassle to check the numbers on the website.
However, I think that there’s also something else at play here. As long as I don’t check the Powerball numbers, I could still potentially be a winner. Hope springs eternal. But the second that I check my ticket, the game is over. I know that I will have lost the game. I’d like to put off that feeling as long as humanly possible.
Why don’t we know the day we will die? Why, as Pirkei Avot teaches, are young children like blank pieces of paper waiting to be written on, but old people like crumpled up, withered pieces of paper?
It is because two things about our lives remain true at the same time.
Our lives are like a game of chance. God knows our dispositions. But we want to believe that the outcomes and possibilities for the direction our lives can take are infinite and rely on the choices we make at every second.
Yet, I have to believe that it is also true that somewhere out there is a lottery ticket with our numbers on them. Only God knows whether we will be winners or losers. Only God knows our fate: “who after a long life, and whose time will be cut short.”
We would all look at the results if we could. But we can’t. The results of the Powerball are predetermined. But the journey of how we get there remains up to us.
Mon, May 6 2024
28 Nisan 5784
Rabbi Daniel Dorsch
Mon, May 6 2024 28 Nisan 5784
