By Marco Del Monte
In the parashah of Massei, the Torah tells us that the Promised Land was assigned “begoral”, by lot. A concept that may seem strange: why entrust something so sacred to chance? But the goral is not mere coincidence.
It is the silent language of Hashem, a way of revealing His will without words. The Sound of Silence, as that famous song went. The goral — the lot — is mysterious by definition. It does not speak, it does not explain, it does not justify, but exclusively delivers the final sentence. It seems blind, but in reality it is the hidden voice of the Divine will. When King Saul seeks Hashem and G-d does not answer, a deafening silence is heard. But the apparent silence is not absence, but a test. It is the "pedagogy of the void", of Hester Panim, of the "Hiding of the Divine Countenance". As Rav Dessler says: "Hashem's silence is His highest word". The goral is the mask that Hashem "wears" when He does not wish to show Himself openly. But it is not a game. Hashem does not play dice with the world: He is a Refined Architect of the universe. Every event, every deviation, every surprise is a piece of His design. Man makes plans... and Hashem smiles, He does so with the righteous and with the wicked. With the former He does not do so with contempt, but with tenderness. Like Moshe, who asks to enter Eretz Yisrael, and Hashem says to him "Rav Lach" — "I have thought of something greater for you". Parallelly, His laughter reserved for the wicked becomes "cynical" (Kiviachol): they may build perfect strategies, but "He who sits in the heavens shall laugh". Their plans self-destruct, ours are elevated. "Kol man d’avid Rachamana letav avid" — everything the Merciful One does, He does for the good, Rabbi Akiva always said. And it is precisely this master who teaches us the most powerful of spiritual and psychological strategies to best experience the Divine design: At sea, during a storm, he clung to a plank and every time a wave came... "he bowed his head". He did not oppose, he did not try to conquer the sea: he bent with intelligence, with faith. And he survived. Because sometimes the one who wins is not the one who resists, but the one who adapts. Not the one who fights desperately, but the one who surrenders with consciousness. Very often, we do not live the easiest life. But we live the rightest life. Hashem does not give us what we ask for... but what makes us grow. When plans fall through, when life changes direction, it does not mean we have made a mistake — it means Hashem is leading us back to our highest path. Like Moshe, who does not enter the land but enters history. Like Rabbi Akiva, who survives by bending. Like us, who often do not understand, but can always trust. This is the key: learning to trust. To accept that life does not always take us where we want, but always where our soul needs. Hashem does not punish us with unexpected events: He repositions us. Thus, disappointment is not a failure: it is a Divine shift. What looks like chaos... is a precise trajectory towards your highest soul. "Your suffering is not a punishment, but an indication". All of us need control to feel secure. But in life, plans often fall through. The goral teaches us to trust the invisible without feeling lost. Not everything has to go according to our desires, because our desires do not always know our true greatness. The goral does not give verbal answers, but opens up inner questions: "What can I learn from this event? In what direction is it leading me? It is an invitation to live life as part of a sacred text — where every event is a word to be deciphered. When things do not go as we had hoped, we must not ask ourselves: "Why did this happen to me?" but: "Why did Hashem think that precisely this was necessary for me?" This does not eliminate pain. But it gives it meaning, and a life full of meaning is a life in which even chaos is transformed into a journey. And then... Shabbat arrives: we too, among the goralim, the waves, the broken dreams and the unexpected roads, can sit at the Shabbat table and say: "Gam zu letovah – this too is for the good. Everything was accomplished in six days, but on the seventh... the meaning was revealed. Shabbat is called Meen Olam Habbà, a taste of the world to come, a taste of the dimension in which "cards will be played openly", that is, with the awareness of events, a world where everything is revealed: "Gal", revelation and wave, not by chance, are spelled in the same way.
Shabbat Shalom
Translated from the Italian with Google Gemini. The Italian text is the original.