Thanking Water and Dust – The Hidden Torah of Hakarat HaTov
Today’s shiur is לְעִילּוּי נִשְׁמַת שַׁעְיָא אַבִּיטָן ע״ה, four years since his פְטִירָה.
Last night we stood together with the family as they brought a new Sefer Torah into the world. Not just any Torah — a tiny, magnificent scroll, about six and three-quarter inches high. Exquisite כתיבה, a jewel of a Torah. You almost feel you should pick it up with two fingers and whisper.
It reminded me of that שַׁס piece: the king has a special Sefer Torah that “goes in and out with him,” on his arm, wherever he goes — not in the Aron, but on the body. “וְהָיְתָה עִמּוֹ וְקָרָא בוֹ כׇּּל יְמֵי חַיָּיו” (דברים י״ז:י״ט), and ḥazal say: “כְּשֶׁיּוֹצֵא – מַכְנִיסָה עִמּוֹ, כְּשֶׁנִּכְנָס – מוֹצִיאָה עִמּוֹ.”
You look at Ariel’s little Sefer Torah and you think: maybe this is what that royal Sefer Torah looked like — something small enough to bind to the arm, close enough the hat a king never forgets Who is really in charge.
And then, standing there, I saw an old friend I haven’t seen in decades — Michael Safdie, who now has a podcast on בִּטָּחוֹן בַּה׳. And he spoke about how your father, Rabbi Abittan זצ״ל, changed his life, about learning with your brother Victor, about how the Rav always carried a sefer, always spoke about bitachon and hoda’ah — appreciation, הַכָּרַת הַטּוֹב.
The Rav used to say: “מוֹדֶה doesn’t only mean ‘I thank you.’ It also means, ‘I admit I needed you.’”
That’s our topic this morning. In Parashat וָאֵרָא, HaShem brings the first plagues on Egypt, but hidden inside the makkot is a quiet, royal-sized Sefer Torah on the arm: the Torah of הַכָּרַת הַטּוֹב — gratitude — and how it builds real בִּטָּחוֹן.
Act I – When Even Water Gets a “Thank You”
We’ll start simple. The Chumash tells us:
“וַיֹּאמֶר ה׳ אֶל־מֹשֶׁה, אֱמֹר אֶל־אַהֲרֹן: קַח מַטְּךָ וּנְטֵה יָדְךָ עַל־מֵימֵי מִצְרַיִם… וְהָיוּ דָם” (שְׁמוֹת ז׳:י״ט).
HaShem tells Moshe what to do — but the one who actually hits the water is Aharon.
“אֱמֹר אֶל אַהֲרֹן… לְפִי שֶׁהֵגֵן הַיְאוֹר עַל מֹשֶׁה כְּשֶׁנִּשְׁלַךְ לְתוֹכוֹ, לְפִיכָךְ לֹא לָקָה עַל יָדוֹ לֹא בַּדָּם וְלֹא בַצְפַרְדְּעִים…”
The Nile saved Moshe as a baby — therefore Moshe can’t be the one to strike it.
Same with the third plague:
“נְטֵה אֶת מַטְּךָ וְהַךְ אֶת עֲפַר הָאָרֶץ… וַיְהִי הַכֵּן” (שְׁמוֹת ח׳:י״ב–י״ג).
Again, Rashi: Aharon, not Moshe, hits the dust — because the earth once hid the Egyptian whom Moshe was forced to kill to save a Jew.
And the Gemara crystallizes the rule with a sharp folk saying:
“בְּאֵרָא דְּשָׁתִית מִינֵּיהּ מַיָּא – לָא תִשְׁדֵּי בֵּיהּ כֵּיפָא.”
“A well from which you drank water — don’t throw a stone into it.” (בָּבָא קַמָּא 92b)
Now, the simple Musa r is one we’ve all heard: if Moshe Rabbeinu owes gratitude to water and dirt, how much more so to a human being who has helped us.
But Rabbi Mordechai Kamenetzky asks a tougher question. He quotes this same Rashi and then says: one second — isn’t it a great honor for the water and the dust to be the vehicle of HaShem’s open miracles? Wouldn’t it be a spiritual elevation for the Nile to scream out “there is no god but HaShem” in bright red blood? So why is hitting the Nile called a lack of gratitude? Wouldn’t that be the best “thank you” you could give to water and dust?
He brings, in the name of Rabbi Nosson Shapira of Krakow (1585–1633), a story – preserved in later collections – about a pious widow in the Krakow market who sold bagels while reciting Tehillim. A wealthy man offered to support her so she could sit and learn and pray all day. Beautiful. She accepts.
But after a month she returns all the money. Why?
Because when she left the bagel stand, she lost her constant hakarat ha-tov. She says: when it rained, I thanked HaShem for the farmers. When the sun shone, I thanked Him again. When I sifted flour, when the dough rose, when the bagels baked golden, when each customer came… my whole day was “todah, todah, todah.” Now I sit at home with no bagels — and I barely remember to say thank You. This “kollel” is killing my gratitude. I want my bagels back.
Rabbi Kamenetzky explains: Moshe lived with that kind of awareness. Every time he saw the Nile, every time his foot stepped on Egyptian soil, he reminded himself: HaShem used you to save my life. Those inanimate things became his daily triggers for gratitude.
If Moshe would turn the Nile to blood, or the dust to lice, yes, it would be a national miracle — but he would lose his personal reminder, his private “thank You” points. And Moshe Rabbeinu is not willing to pay that price.
So Aharon does the public miracle, and Moshe keeps the quiet daily Sefer Torah of gratitude on his arm.
And that already speaks to today. On a yahrzeit, there are “big miracles” — the speeches, the Torah, the dedication. But there are also the tiny, daily memories of Shaya — a word he said, a smile, a Friday night at the table — that are supposed to become our “bagels,” our daily reminders to say, “Todah, Hashem, she-zakhinu.”
Current word count: ~600 words
Act II – Gratitude vs. Ego: From Pharaoh to the Bathhouse
Rabbi Naftali Reich, in an essay this very week called “Thanking the River,” points out something subtle. Why are people so allergic to saying “thank you”? It’s not because we’re not polite. It’s because “thank you” also means: I am not self-sufficient. I needed you. I owe you. And the ego doesn’t like being “in debt.”
That’s why the Hebrew word הוֹדָאָה is so deep.
• “מוֹדֶה אֲנִי לְפָנֶיךָ” — I thank You.
• “מוֹדֶה עַל הָאֱמֶת” — I admit the truth.
Same shoresh. Gratitude and confession are the same spiritual muscle. To have הַכָּרַת הַטּוֹב you have to admit: I am not the whole story.
Rabbeinu Baḥye, on “וַיָּקָם מֶלֶךְ חָדָשׁ… אֲשֶׁר לֹא יָדַע אֶת יוֹסֵף” (שְׁמוֹת א׳:ח׳), brings a Midrash that connects this straight to emunah:
“כׇּל הַכּוֹפֵר בְּטוֹבָתוֹ שֶׁל חֲבֵרוֹ, סוֹפוֹ שֶׁיִּכְפּוֹר בְּטוֹבָתוֹ שֶׁל הַקָּבָּ״ה.”
Whoever denies the good of his friend will, in the end, deny the good of HaKadosh Barukh Hu.
First Pharaoh “doesn’t know” Yosef — wipes out the gratitude for the man who saved Egypt. A few psukim later he says: “לֹא יָדַעְתִּי אֶת ה׳” (שְׁמוֹת ה׳:ב׳) — I don’t know HaShem either.
Once a person trains himself never to say “thank you,” he won’t say it to people — and he won’t say it to G-d.
Rav Yaakov Yitzchak Ruderman זצ״ל (Rosh Yeshiva, Ner Yisroel), in Sichot HaLevi on Va’era, pushes it further. He quotes a remarkable story recorded in the Shitah Mekubetzet to Bava Kamma 92b about Rabbeinu Yitzḥak Alfasi, the Rif.
The Rif refused to judge a din Torah about the local bathhouse. Why? Because he used that bathhouse. He felt he owed it הַכָּרַת הַטּוֹב — and therefore he would not risk “hurting” it by ruling that it should be closed or sold.
You hear that? Gratitude to a building. To hot water and steam.
Rav Ruderman says: from here you see that הַכָּרַת הַטּוֹב is not a nice extra; it is one of the foundations of עֲבוֹדַת ה׳. If a person cannot admit that he receives — from people, from objects, from the very earth under his feet — how will he ever bend his head and say: “מֹדֶה אֲנִי לְפָנֶיךָ מֶלֶךְ חַי וְקַיָּם”?
This is exactly what we were talking about last night with Michael and with Abi Abittan. Rabbi Abittan זצ״ל lived a life of hoda’ah. He didn’t just teach bitachon as “Hashem will take care of me.” He taught that the way you train yourself in bitachon is by practicing, constantly, “I am not self-made. I receive. I depend.”
You see an older man in a wheelchair in shul — you think, “I should sit and learn with him,” or “I should call him Motza’ei Shabbat.” The moment you act on that is the moment you’re admitting: my time is not only mine; my koach is borrowed from HaShem; my life is entangled with other Jews. That’s hoda’ah; that’s bitachon.
So in Act I we saw Moshe refusing to strike water and dust. In Act II, we see that going one level deeper: if you train yourself to see every gift — from your shower to your breakfast — as something that obligates you, you are slowly crushing the yetzer that says, “I did this. I deserve this. I am owed this.”
And that’s how a person becomes a ba’al bitachon. Not by slogans, but by thousands of small “todahs.”
Current word count: ~1,200 words
Act III – From Inanimate Objects to Living Souls
Now let’s bring it closer to our lives, and to this morning’s yahrzeit.
Rabbi Reich, in that same piece, tells a simple, modern mashal. A great sage is eating in a hotel with a young talmid. The Rav says, “The owner of this hotel is such a fine person. Look at the meal he prepared for us, the service…”
The student pushes back: “Rebbi, come on. He’s getting paid. He’s making a tidy profit. Why should I feel grateful?”
And the Rav answers: that is exactly the sickness. You are working so hard to avoid gratitude — to find every reason not to feel obligated, not to feel you owe someone thanks. But who loses? The owner still gets his money. You lose the chance to become a better person. Recognizing the good in others, even when they “had to” do it, makes you bigger.
That’s the same point Rabbi Yissocher Frand makes from our parashah. The Nile didn’t do anything “heroic” for Moshe. It was just being water. Objects have no beḥirah, no merit. But הַכָּרַת הַטּוֹב is not measured by the giver’s effort; it is measured by the receiver’s gain. Since Moshe’s life was preserved through that water, he is obligated in gratitude — even to a river following the rules of physics.
And Rabbeinu Baḥye adds: that’s why the Torah later says, “לֹא תְּתַעֵב מִצְרִי, כִּי־גֵר הָיִיתָ בְאַרְצוֹ” — “Do not despise an Egyptian, for you were a stranger in his land” (דברים כ״ג:ח׳). Even after everything Egypt did to us — the slavery, the bricks, the blood — the Torah still says: there was a moment, at the beginning, when you needed a place to go and they took you in. Never erase that from your memory.
“כׇּל הַכּוֹפֵר בְּטוֹבָתוֹ שֶׁל חֲבֵרוֹ, סוֹפוֹ שֶׁיִּכְפּוֹר בְּטוֹבָתוֹ שֶׁל הַמָּקוֹם.” The person who deletes that early chapter will, sooner or later, delete HaShem from his story as well.
So what does that mean for us, sitting here with coffee and a class on a weekday morning, on Shaya’s yahrzeit?
It means that today is not only a day to remember what we lost; it is a day to remember — very concretely — what we received.
• To say: HaShem, thank You that we had Shaya for the years that we did.
• Thank You for the sefarim he learned from, for the shiurim his father gave, for the family that continues his Torah.
• Thank You for the old friends who still show up — the Michaels of the world, who resurface after forty years and remind us that a word of Torah, a smile, a quiet act of kindness, can echo for decades.
And it’s also more personal, more immediate.
Who are the “Niles” and “dust” in your life right now — the inanimate things, the routine things, that are constantly saving you, constantly holding you up?
• The car that somehow still runs.
• The phone that lets you call or text children and grandchildren around the world.
• The shul that opens its doors every single day, whether ten people show up or a hundred.
And then: who are the people?
• The spouse who quietly picks up the slack so you can run to a minyan.
• The child who phones just to check in.
• The congregant who shows up with a smile and a “Rabbi, how are you doing?”
• The older gentleman in the wheelchair who texts, “Rabbi, when can we learn?”
To live with הַכָּרַת הַטּוֹב means not only to feel bad that we can’t give everyone all the time we wish we could — but to actually say the words:
“I am so grateful you reached out. Even when I can’t do everything, it means a lot.
We are learning together — through the newsletter, through the podcast, through every word of Torah we share.”
That’s not a line. That’s hoda’ah. That’s admitting: I am not a self-contained universe. I am tied, through thousands of cords of kindness, to HaShem and to His people.
Current word count: ~1,750 words
Closing – A Small Sefer Torah on the Arm
Let’s bring it back to that little Sefer Torah from last night.
The king’s Torah that he carries “בְּזְרוֹעוֹ” is small in size but huge in impact. Chazal say it goes out with him to war, it sits with him at the table — it is there in the exact places where a person is most likely to forget HaShem.
הַכָּרַת הַטּוֹב is that kind of Sefer Torah.
• When you say “todah” to water and dust — you are writing a tiny letter of Torah into your character.
• When you say “todah” to a spouse, a friend, a rebbe, a community — you are writing another letter.
• When you say “todah” to HaShem — for health, for children, for another day of life, even when it’s not easy — you are binding a whole Sefer Torah to your arm.
Rabbi Abittan זצ״ל taught — and Shaya reflected — that the test of our generation is bitachon. But bitachon is not just “trusting that it will all work out.” Bitachon is living every day with the sentence:
“Everything I have is a gift. I am standing on water that saved me, on dust that hid me, on people who carried me.”
And when you live that way, you can walk into very dark places and still say: “מוֹדֶה אֲנִי לְפָנֶיךָ… שֶׁהֶחֱזַרְתָּ בִּי נִשְׁמָתִי בְּחֶמְלָה, רַבָּה אֱמוּנָתֶךָ.”
Takeaway – Today’s Avodah
Let’s make it practical — one small Sefer Torah we can all “wrap” on our arm today, לְעִילּוּי נִשְׁמַת שַׁעְיָא אַבִּיטָן ע״ה:
1. Three “todahs” to people.
Before sunset today, choose three people — in your home, in shul, at work — and say an explicit “thank you” for something concrete:
• “Thank you for always setting up my coffee before I leave.”
• “Thank you for the ride you gave me last week — I didn’t say it properly.”
• “Thank you for your text; it meant more than you know.”
Tomorrow morning, say Modeh Ani just a little slower. Pause on the word “מוֹדֶה.” Hear both meanings: I thank You, I admit I need You.
3. One memory of Shaya or his father that becomes a trigger.
Pick one small thing about Shaya — a midah, a smile, a pasuk he loved — and decide: every time I remember this, I will use it as my “bagel,” my reminder to say:
“Ribono shel Olam, thank You for putting him in our lives. Help me to live with that same הוֹדָאָה and הַכָּרַת הַטּוֹב.”
If we do that, then that little Sefer Torah from last night is not just sitting in the Aron. It’s sitting on our arms, inside our hearts. And that is the greatest zechut we can give a neshamah on its yahrzeit.
• חוּמָשׁ שְׁמוֹת ז׳:י״ט, ח׳:י״ב–י״ג, with רש״י citing שמות רבה ט:י׳ on Aharon striking the Nile and the dust.
• בָּבָא קַמָּא 92b – proverb “בְּאֵרָא דְּשָׁתִית מִינֵּיהּ מַיָּא, לָא תִשְׁדֵּי בֵּיהּ כֵּיפָא.”
• רַבֵּינוּ בַּחְיֵי עַל הַתּוֹרָה, שְׁמוֹת א׳:ח׳, quoting Midrash “כׇּל הַכּוֹפֵר בְּטוֹבָתוֹ שֶׁל חֲבֵרוֹ סוֹפוֹ שֶׁיִּכְפּוֹר בְּטוֹבָתוֹ שֶׁל הַקָּבָּ״ה.”
• סַנְהֶדְרִין כ״א:ב׳ – the king’s two Sifrei Torah, including the one that “goes in and out with him.”
• Shitah Mekubetzet to בָּבָא קַמָּא 92b, as cited by Rav Yaakov Yitzchak Ruderman in Sichot HaLevi, Parashat Va’era, on the Rif and the bathhouse.
• Rabbi Mordechai Kamenetzky, “Hitting Pay Dirt,” Parshas Va’era, based on teaching of Rabbi Nosson Shapira of Krakow (bagel widow story; appears in later collections).
• Rabbi Yissocher Frand, drashot on Va’era (Torah.org) discussing hakarat ha-tov to the Nile and the dust, and the idea that gratitude is measured by the recipient, not the giver.
• Rabbi Naftali Reich, “Thanking the River,” Legacy series, Parshas Va’era, on hakaras hatov, ego, and the hotel owner mashal.
Thanking Water and Dust – The Hidden Torah of Hakarat HaTov
In this Breakfast & a Class on Parashat Va’era, delivered on the yahrzeit of Shaya Abittan ע״ה, we explore one of the quietest — and most demanding — foundations of Jewish life: hakarat ha-tov, genuine gratitude. Why was Moshe Rabbeinu forbidden from striking the Nile or the dust of Egypt? What does it mean to owe gratitude even to water, earth, and routine objects that “did what they were supposed to do”? And how does this shape our understanding of bitachon, trust in Hashem?
Drawing on Rashi, Midrash, Gemara, and the teachings of Rabbi Mordechai Kamenetzky, Rabbi Naftali Reich, and Rav Yaakov Yitzchak Ruderman זצ״ל, this class weaves Torah, memory, and lived experience into a powerful reflection on appreciation, humility, and faith. From a tiny Sefer Torah to the daily words of Modeh Ani, this shiur challenges us to reclaim gratitude as a spiritual discipline — one that transforms how we relate to Hashem, to others, and to our own lives.
