Author Archive
Jun
Seeing the Real Beauty
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I’m always so amazed by optimists, I honestly am. With the insanity and craziness which we are struck by, on a daily basis, it is sometimes so very hard to see the beauty within everything.
Our parsha of the week speaks of leaders of the Jewish People who are sent out to scout the land of Israel, the beautiful little piece of land which was promised and destined to us by the One Above, before entering and settling.
We all know what happens. After they come back and speak of what they saw, we were severely punished with a forty year detour in the desert.
Now we usually describe their sin as ‘lashon hara’, speaking of the evil tongue. But one second … they didn’t speak lashon hara, they spoke the truth, they spoke of what they actually really did see, with their own eyes. How then could we all be so greatly punished for telling the truth?
Our great master, The Ba’al Shem Tov explains that everything in the world really is naturally beautiful. However, if you look at someone and you see that they are ugly… nebech, you are so ugly inside. Inside, deep down inside of your being, there is something so off and ugly that lets you see something bad in another person.
In our parsha, the Master Of The World is sharing with us some of the most important and crucial elements of faith. G-d needed to let us clearly understand that to come into the Holy Land means that we have to change our whole perspective of how we see the world. This is the Land of seeing the ‘tzelem elokim’, the G-dly image in every aspect. Erets Yisrael is a whole nother ballgame.
The real people of today are in a place where they literally cannot see any ugliness when looking at the ugliest and lowest person in the world. It is completely beyond them.
Lashon Hara doesn’t necessarily mean telling lies about someone. It can also mean when you spoke the truth, reporting about your eyes and ears heard and saw, but this sin is so heavy. It is such a heavy transgression because when saying it, we are basically showing another person how we are the ones who are so empty inside. Who are we to talk so lowly of ourselves?
We should be blessed to see nothing but beauty, pride and true longing for the real thing whenever we look into each other’s eyes.
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May
Parshat Behar/Bechukotai
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The way our Holy Torah talks about Eretz Yisrael is the only thing which might give us hope these days.
In the middle of our parsha, the Torah reminds us ‘Venatna Ha’aretz PIRYA Va’acheltam Lasova’. The Land Shall Give You Her Fruit And You Eat Your Fill.
The Torah tells us quite clearly that the only way one can be sustained and complete, lasova, is if we receive Eretz Yisrael’s Pri, it’s fruit.
It’s fruit is it’s life force, and it’s life force is it’s destiny.
It’s destiny has never changed …. Beiti Beit Tefila Yikare Lechol Ha’amim, My House Is A House Of Prayer For All Nations.
Davening is our only real sustenance.
How do we expect to invite the whole world when we ourselves have yet to figure out how to pray together?
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May
When learning how the Ishbitser Rebbe brings down to earth the concept
of Sefirat HaOmer, which was commanded to us in this week’s parsha, it
seems as if this beautiful mitzva of counting takes on a whole new
meaning. As we see by many of our sages, what happened to us on Pesach night
was birth. We came out into a world, an event which is way too much
for us to comprehend. Truth be told, the whole experience of life down
here, in this world, is way too much for us to make sense of.
So the Ishbitser in Mei Hashiloach tells us of a scavenger hunt, but
not just any scavenger hunt.
On this scavenger hunt we are told to collect certain items that might
not seem so valuable to us. The object of this hunt is to collect
whatever we are told to collect, and at the end we will be told and
explained the worth of our findings.
Continues the Mei Hashiloach so beautifully, and lets us know that if
Pesach was our birth, then Sefirat HaOmer is our whole life down
here. Picking up pieces, following commands which might not make that
much sense due to our disability of being able to perceive what is
really holy and valuable.
All this… why? Because on Shavuot, which is a taste of the next
world, on the day we received a form of G-d’s will via a text… the
findings from that scavenger hunt all become more alive and more
meaningful than ever.
So while we are still here, living a life of Sefirat HaOmer, where
every night we polish another aspect of our souls, let’s remember an
important, if not the most important word in the commandment of the
counting.
“U’sfartem LACHEM”
We someway have to figure out how the whole Torah, the whole world and
the counting toward eternal redemption is ‘lachem’, for us. It’s the
‘for us’ part which makes this hunt so special.
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