When the recent rebellion broke out in Egypt it made me think of the Yom Kippur War which took us by surprise and caught us unprepared.

I remember that Yom Kippur afternoon vividly. I left shul in the middle of Musaf for an entirely personal reason — my wife was deep in labor and I had to take her to the hospital. On the way of course I saw the action in the street men being drafted left and right for immediate mobilization to war. Many were wearing talleisim as they were rushed off in any available vehicle including private cars to their various military units (a young chassidic man from our shtiebel went straight out to the battlefield and never returned Hy”d). And then as the siren sounded letting us know that Egyptian fighter planes were on their way to Tel Aviv I rushed home for dear life to protect the three little children I’d left there….

Why did I suddenly recall that day? Because of what happened soon afterward. I too was drafted and together with my regiment I was brought to the front along the Sinai shore facing Egypt. Some days later as the fighting progressed and we sensed an interlude of relative quiet I became the “hero” of my unit. Since I was the only Torah-observant soldier in the battery I was appointed by my comrades to be the direct representative of HaKadosh Baruch Hu. What was going on here in the higher spheres they wanted to know? And it was my job to explain. Why did this war break out almost bringing the State of Israel to destruction? And mainly why were we so totally taken by surprise?

The explanation I gave them on the Sinai sand dunes is just as relevant now when surprises are popping up on all sides.

Just a few weeks ago after the uprising in Tunisia a White House spokesman stated that this would never happen in Egypt. The regime there was stable and Mubarak was firmly in control. He had the backing of the United States government and there was no cause for concern. Political commentators all over the world shared that opinion. Israeli intelligence officials thought similarly just as they’d thought back then a week before the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War when they announced with arrogant confidence that the likelihood of war was extremely low. Yet war came taking the country totally by surprise and changing our lives in the most crushing manner…

No the commentators statesmen and intelligence officials have no satisfactory explanation for why they were taken by surprise why the unexpected always happens in contravention of expert assessments.

To press the question a little further: is there any significance to the fact that the unexpected always seems to happen ?

Let us return to the Sinai Desert in 1973 when I spoke to my fellow soldiers on the shore of the Suez. There is indeed meaning I told them to the fact that the unexpected always happens. I learned it from Rav Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler ztz”l in his Michtav MeEliyahu where he enlightens us on the surprising complexities we face in this world.

Human beings he writes make plans — business plans personal plans career plans. If they are at all perceptive they will notice that all their plans have certain “black holes ” certain components that are not under their control things that simply cannot be provided for in advance. For instance a person might plan a business meeting. He devises an apt strategy for winning over a potential investor. He researches the man’s business background and personality type. He knows his strengths and weaknesses. And of course he’s practiced his sales pitch to perfection.

He can’t plan in advance however what mood the man will be in on the day of their meeting. Will the investor be feeling sunny and expansive or cloudy and pessimistic? That is outside of his control. He can’t tell if the investor will happen to hear some unfavorable gossip about him shortly before their appointment or if he will show up at the meeting directly after an unpleasant confrontation with a neighbor. Or he might have a painful ulcer that acts up right before the meeting putting him a snappish mood. Any of these things could capsize his well-laid plans.

We are all familiar with the feeling that our success largely depends upon what people in their blindness and pride call luck although we know that this uncertainty really comes to instill us with firm faith in Divine Hashgachah. It teaches us how much we need to pray that HaKadosh Baruch Hu will guide our plans to a successful outcome. These “holes” in our plans are our escape hatches through which we can come to recognize the presence of our Creator.

This is also the underlying secret behind those irrational unexpected acts of world leaders. To give just one example look at the unsound policy of the US government. Former president George W. Bush bound hand and foot to the American dream of democracy blindly insisted on free democratic elections in the Gaza Strip with Hamas running its candidates alongside other parties. What was the outcome of his pure-minded faith in the democratic process for citizens of every land? A cruel completely antidemocratic dictatorship emerged in Gaza.

Now regarding the current crisis in Egypt let us take President Barack Obama as another example. We all have bad memories of his campaign to reach out to the Arab world culminating in the infamous Cairo speech in which he kowtowed to the world Islamic movement in the hope of reducing the Arabs’ hatred of his country.

To achieve this understandable goal he was not averse to paying in Israeli currency. The unforeseen result was increased hatred of the United States and belittlement of its true strength especially in light of its behavior toward Egypt during the current crisis. And now the president of this great world power has repeated the mistake of his predecessor (the same mistake President Carter made when he tried to bring democracy to Iran) and is throwing out hints of abandoning Mubarak  his erstwhile faithful ally in favor of a wrong-headed dream of democratic freedom in Egypt. This is almost certain to put the Muslim Brotherhood on the throne of Egypt to Tehran’s triumphant applause. That is to say another instance of plans being turned on their head.

This teaches us I said to my comrades there in the bunker that the purpose of unforeseen events and sudden changes in political policy is to negate all the theories proudly contrived by authorities experts and commentators who think they’re in charge of the world. Look at all the “mavens” and how silly they appear when the unforeseen occurs and overturns all their expectations. This is how HaKadosh Baruch Hu teaches us mortals who is really in charge.

I remember one of the soldiers saying “That’s scary!”

“Just the opposite!” I answered him. “You find it scary because you think that all these military and political reversals point to universal chaos. But we know that there is a Boss in charge and He has plans of His own. When we fortify ourselves and look at it that way it is actually the most calming of thoughts.”

Food for Thought

Without HaKadosh Baruch Hu a person can’t even cross his own threshold and with HaKadosh Baruch Hu one can split the sea

(Rav Mordechai of Lechowicz)