Subject: In Memory of Baruch Yitzchak ben Yirmiyahu (Barry Pessin)
From: Heath Berkin <heath.berkin@gmail.com>
Date: 12/29/2017, 1:06 AM
To: Heath Berkin <heath.berkin@gmail.com>
BCC: menachem@alonsystems.com
I heard a very interesting story this week from a well known speaker in Israel, R' Elimelech Biderman:
The Rambam, Maimonides, besides for being a great torah scholar, was a world renown physician and he served as the personal physician of the Sultan. There were elements in the government though who were extremely jealous of the Rambam, his great success and closeness with the sultan. These people decided to fabricate stories about him which brought into question his medical expertise while claiming they were superior doctors. The Sultan had no choice but to address this and he therefore decide to make a test between the Rambam and the physician who was leading the campaign against him.
The sultan decided that each physican should create a deadly potion and his counterpart would be forced to drink this potion. After drinking the potion each man would then need to concoct and antidote which would save his life. The Rambam was first and he was given the deadly potion that his counterpart had created. The Rambam drank the potion and fell ill but he then used his medical knowledge to heal himself and survived. It was now the Rambam's turn to create a deadly potion to give to his counterpart. The Rambam gave his "potion" to the other doctor, who upon drinking it, felt fine. The physician couldn't understand why we wasn't feeling sick. He became very worried that the Rambam gave him something which would have no immediate impact and soon he would fall ill and die. He was constantly worried and concerned what was going to happen to him when was it going to "hit" him, he had no way to prepare and no way to formulate an antidote. The physician couldn't sleep or function due to his constant worry and eventually died.
The sultan was impressed with the Rambam and declared him the winner. The sultan then asked the Rambam what he gave the other physician. The Rambam responded that he only practices medicine to help cure and make people feel better. He would never have used his knowledge to create a deadly potion to kill his counterpart. The Rambam told the sultan that he simply gave his counterpart a cup of water but it was due to the severe worry and anxiety that his counterpart had, that caused his death.
We are faced with many challenges and tests life, these are usually out of our control and for whatever reason G-D gave us these challenges to stand up and persevere. What is in our control though is our reaction. Our worry, anxiety, anger and sadness are all emotions and feelings we create in response. G-d didn't tell us to be worried or angry, that we decided on our own. We need to make sure that when we are faced with tests in life we aren't making them more difficult for ourselves.
