What’s a Rat?

What’s a rat in the grand scheme of things?
Especially when it’s a baby rat the size of my thumb (plus a tail)?
What’s the worse that can happen?
Sweep it out, get over it .
Except when your life is a house of cards, one thumb- size rodent is all it takes to upend your sanity; to find yourself falling, falling, falling.
Lech lecha… go for yourself —
To the lands of hate and blood and peace and love…
To Babylon and Rome, Spain and Austria, Manhattan; Mumbai.
Asu li mikdash.. build me a home, a place to visit, to rest, reside —
So that they can rip out our precious Torah scrolls, our communal souls and trample, burn, bury them, us, You.
So they can hunt us like rats through our sanctuaries, until our fear is so thick, its memory lingers through the generations.
Long after the ash has settled.
Rabbi Nachman amar: Hakol Letovah… everything is for the good.
The destruction; the restitution; the highs and the lows, the sickness and health.
The rat free life, and life with a rat.
Breakfast at Tiffany’s or watery gruel in Auschwitz; a peaceful white Christmas or a Christian pogrom.
In a hospital with cancer or on a holiday to Cancun?

My mind’s been rattled by a tiny rat.
Hashem, todah.
Thank You for this suffering and no other.
Everything is for the good.

So why am I falling, falling, falling?