The Baby My Daughter Waited 5 Years For by Rabbanit Yemima Mizrachi

The Baby My Daughter Waited 5 Years For by Rabbanit Yemima Mizrachi

(I’ve known Rabbanit Yemima’s daughter Shuli since she was a young girl. I was at her Bat Mitzvah. I rejoiced when I heard she’d gotten married. And over recent years, I would often exchange greetings with her when I ran into her on her way to teach 6th grade near my home. She always looked SO happy, with cut- and-paste her mother’s gorgeous smile and heartfelt “Baruch Hashem!” I thought, “Of course Shuli’s happy! She found her partner in life and married young. She has a job she loves. And she’s Rabbanit Yemima’s daughter!” I had no inkling about the pain hidden behind that smile until Rabbanit Yemima shared in her weekly class about Shuli’s 5-year struggle with infertility which bH ended last week with the arrival of her newborn daughter). Here is what Rabbanit Yemima had to say about it all:

I want to welcome my new granddaughter, Alma Sol.
5 years we were waiting for Alma Sol, 5 years full of prayer and disappointments. Always thinking “Hashem, why aren’t You listening? Why aren’t you answering? Why is everyone having a baby except Shuli?”
I remember when my beloved daughter, Shuli, would come back from all the fertility clinics and consultations and she would ask me “Why is God shaming me like this, Eema? Why do I need to be humiliated this way?…” And I didn’t have answers for her. But I would always say to her, with God’s help, in the end we will sing.
And after Alma Sol was born, we understood that it’s only after your prayers are answered that you understand that things that seemed at the time to be the biggest threat to your happiness were actually the key to your salvation.
I want to talk about the first woman called Alma, and that woman was Miriam.
“The girl [Alma] ran to tell her mother…”
HaBen Ish Hai explains that Miriam, standing on the river banks, prayed that no Egyptian would come near and see her brother, Moshe, in the basket, for if that happened all hope was certainly lost.
Then, the Egyptian who came near was not only an Egyptian, she was the daughter of the king that ordered the drowning of all the newborn Israelite boys.
Miriam was so frightened, “God. why aren’t You answering my prayers?”
Then Miriam prayed that the king’s daughter wouldn’t notice the basket. For if that happened, surely all hope was lost.
But Pharaoh’s daughter saw the basket.
Miriam then asked God once again to at least not let Pharaoh’s daughter reach the basket and take it, but then she watched as the hand of the king’s daughter got longer and reached the basket.
Miriam prayed then that Pharaoh’s daughter wouldn’t like her brother, but the king’s daughter looked down at Moshe and liked him right away.
Miriam then prayed that she wouldn’t find out that Moshe was Jewish, so she wouldn’t drown him. But Pharaoh’s daughter realized he was Jewish straight away.
The Ben Aish Hai explains that the “mighty hand” that brought salvation to the enslaved people of Israel was none other than the much-dreaded hand of Pharaoh’s daughter.
How much you cried when your prayers went unanswered “Why aren’t you listening to me? Again and again You aren’t answering…”
But even when the situation seems as bad as it can get. And you fear all hope is lost, don’t stop singing. Know that all the things that seemed the most difficult and horrible were the paving stones to your personal Splitting of the Sea.

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