Mimi the hamster

Last Friday as I picked up my four year old daughter from school, she bounced into my arms, barely containing her excitement as she declared she was bringing home a guest for Shabbos. I asked her who this special guest was, to which she replied simply, “Mimi.”  I don’t know her classmates that well, but I’m pretty sure there are no Mimi's. Just then she pointed to a hamster- the class pet- informing me that she was given the honor of spending Shabbos with us.

And quite a Shabbos it was. Hamsters, as it turns out, are nocturnal, so Mimi spent the entire night running on her exercise wheel while our kids stared enthralled.

After Shabbos I googled the hamster’s obsession with the wheel and discovered that due to very poor eyesight, it doesn’t realize it is running around in circles all day. But all ends well for the rodent, as G-d compensated it with an acute, almost supersonic, hearing sense and a highly sensitized sense of smell.

The same principle holds true for all of G-d’s creatures: when we are deficient in one area, G-d compensates us by giving us something else.

Every one of us carries a burden in some form or another, each one of us endures an exile of some kind. For some it’s a constant financial stress. For others it is the pain of loneliness, or the agony of infertility. But know this: G-d handpicks our hardships for us, no man is laden with a worry he cannot carry. And furthermore, when G-d makes us suffer in one aspect of our lives, he allows us to excel in another aspect.

Perhaps this is why we bless our children with the blessing that Jacob bestowed upon his grandchildren Ephraim and Menashe, “May G-d make you like Ephraim and Menashe.” But why would Jacob perpetuate the names of these two grandchildren as opposed to his own children, the twelve tribes of Israel? What was so special about these two that turned them into beacons of our nation?

The answer lies in the interesting fact that out of all Jacob’s seventy children and grandchildren, Ephraim and Menashe alone were born and raised in Egypt. They were kids who grew up in a hostile environment, challenged by a total lack of Judaism. No cousins to play with, no grandparents to share stories of their tradition. Yet, through all this, not once did they cave in to peer pressure. They remained loyal and devout Jews till the end.

Ephraim and Menashe inspire us to overcome our own hurdles and weaknesses. Their legacy stirs us to live our lives as real Jews despite our challenges and obstacles.