Hi Kids, I hope you are all well. I hope
I can share these thoughts with you in a coherent
fashion.
Story : It happenned sometime in the late 1890’s. In Lithuania at the
time it was not unusual for a budding talmid chacham, married even with
a few children, to ask and receive permission from his wife to leave
home for six months or even longer to go and learn Torah and work on
spiritual growth in depth, at the great "mussar" yeshiva in Kelm. One
day R’ Yerucham (later the great Mashgiach of Mir yeshiva) was learning
with his chavrusa, when suddenly alarm bells went off and panicked
voices were heard from the street. Fire had broken out in Kelm! Fires
spread very quickly with most of the homes made from wood and everyone
rushed out with whatever buckets they could find to help douse the
flames. Miraculously B"H the fire was extinguished before all was lost,
and the yeshiva which was on the outskirts of town was untouched. When
their help was no longer needed, the students returned to the bais
medrash to continue learning. R’ Yerucham’s chavrusa, a very serious
and introspective student of mussar paused their studies to admit to a
haunting thought he had had. "As the fire raged," he said, " the
thought passed through my mind that I wished the yeshiva would burn
down." He explained that he was feeling homesick - he hadn’t seen his
wife and kids for a few months already and missed them terribly.
However he couldn’t just go home because he had told his wife he would
be away for longer and he would look weak if he came home now; but if
the yeshiva would burn down, he would have the perfect excuse to leave
Kelm and return home. He was admitting that for the sake of his saving
face, it would have been worthwhile for the whole yeshiva (and who
knows what else) to go up in smoke.
Regular
occurance : A man runs to catch a bus and just as he gets to the bus
stop, the doors close and the bus takes off. To prevent himself from
getting angry and to console himself for missing the bus, he says to
himself " Boruch Hashem, gam zu litova, who knows if that bus will be
blown up by a terrorist and missing the bus actually saved my life." He
feels consoled - but at what price - he is saying that in order for him
to feel better about missing a bus, it would be worth it for the bus to
blow up and kill or maim scores of people.
Both of these stories are so normal, so human. It is so difficult to
remove ourselves from any given situation - to not think of ourselves
and how anything can be to our advantage. Compare these with the
following mashal told by the Magid of Mezritch to R’ Moshe Leib of
Sasov :
There were once two men who
became the closest of friends. There was nothing that they wouldn’t do
for each other. One day, one of them was accused of a crime (he
actually did not commit), was arrested, tried and sentenced to death by
hanging in the public square. The man asked for an audience with the
king and when it was granted, requested of the king that he be allowed
to go home for two weeks to take care of his affairs and say his
goodbyes to his family. The king chuckled and asked him if he had
anyone who would sit in jail in his place to guarantee that he return
at the end of the two weeks. Surprisingly the man replied that he has a
friend who would do this. The king asked if that friend would stand in
his place at the gallows and be killed if he would not return at the
appointed time. Again the man said that his friend would do it.
Amazingly enough, when they summoned the friend, he unhesitatingly
accepted and offered himself in his friend’s place - even in the
unlikely event of possible death.
The two week
period came to an end, the gallows were made ready but the convict was
nowhere in sight. The executioner, in a quandry, asked the king what to
do and the king replied that a deal was a deal - hang the replacement.
The noose was already around his neck when from a distance, a voice was
heard, "wait !! Don’t kill him - it’s me who should be hung!!" The
executioner stopped and looked from one man to another as the man on
the gallows begged him to pull the switch and kill him and the convict
continued yelling to stop the hanging until he got there so he could
change places with his friend. The executioner, not knowing what to do,
went to the king. The king came down to the gallows, looked at the two
men and asked them " are you really such good friends to fight over
being killed in place of each other?" They both nodded. The king then
said ," if that is true I am prepared to spare both your lives on one
condition - you include me in your friendship."
The people in the first two stories
could not be called selfish but their thoughts reveal that they were
not selfless either. We all admire people who are selfless and there
are many levels to selflessness. The mitzvos that Hashem gave us
regarding our behaviour and feelings to other people are opportunities
for us to practice and perfect ourselves to reach ever greater levels
of awareness of the needs of others and carry that over as well to our
relationship to Hashem in the mitzvos that we do which are between man
and Hashem. Of course I can’t stress enough that the primary
opportunity for this is within the family itself. Let us all be zocheh
to take advantage of all the opportunities afforded to us by the Torah,
the giving of which is related in this week’s parsha, to reach the
level of selflessness displayed in the third story.
Have a wonderful
Shabbos everyone. I love you all , ’d’
Important Numbers
