Skip to main content

Thought for the Day: Fueling Avodas HaShem with Love and Mussar

One of the g'dolei acharonim (I believe it was R' Chaim Volozhin, talmid muvhak of the Gr"a and father of the modern yeshiva system) was stuck on a particular gemara.  Only after days of intense work and fasting was he able to understand the depths of that particular sugya.  A short time after his exhaustive ordeal, R' Chaim was walking through the beis medrash and heard two ba'alei batim learning the same sugya and one of them asked precisely the question that had tormented R' Chaim for so many days.  Much to his dismay, his chavrusa replied, almost off-handedly, with the precisely the answer that R' Chaim had reached!  R' Chaim was distraught and asked his Rebbie why an answer so (apparently) simple had eluded him.  The Gr"a told him that the answer was neither simple nor obvious until R' Chaim had put so much of himself into the sugya.  R' Chaim had changed the world and made that gemara accessible to everyone.

Art Scroll published its first translation and commentary of kisvei kodesh, M'gillas Esther, in 1975.  I started on that course that would lead eventual lead to my becoming a frum, orthodox Jew in 1978 or so.  By that time, there were many, many resources available to ba'alei t'shuva.  Today there are so many quality resources available that it is hard to imagine what any Jew from America will be answer on Yom HaDin why he did not excel in avodas HaShem.  Tinok sh'nishbah?  Lack of knowledge and no resources?  Are you kidding?  Even Amazon has Art Scroll!  Budget is tight?  There are very high quality and freely available resources on the internet.

Now, if you had not been frum in the 1950s, you certainly could have claimed tinok sh'nishba and lack of direction.  Forget "no ArtScroll"; try, "no good english translation at all".  More than that, it wasn't at all cool to be a ba'al tshuva.  No outreach groups, no daf yomi, no shuls to help you learn how to daven, how to make shabbos, how to make a seder... how to be Jewish.  And yet, miracle of miracles, some Jews found their way.  The struggled and fought and excavated their way to a life true Torah observance.  They opened the gates of heaven to release the infusion of k'dusha into the world that has fueled ArtScroll, Ohr Soamayach, Aish HaTorah, Shma Yisrael Torah Network, and on and on and on.

On 16 Adar (Feb26)... just last Tuesday, one of those g'dolei ba'alei t'shuva, Chaya Leah bas Yosef (Lois Lefkovich) left this world.  She fought to open great vaults of k'dusha that had been locked away for so long.  We are all living on the wealth of Torah that she struggled to provide for us.  It was a labor of love undertaken to know her Creator.  I can testify that it was a labor of love, because to me (and so many others) she was Bubbie Lois.  She took us all in and made us her family.

If you are a ba'al t'shuva, then you owe Bubbie Lois a tremendous debt of gratitude.  You can turn that thought into action by signing up to learn mishnayos in commemoration of the her shloshim:
Mishnayos study in memory of Chaya Leah bas Yosef (Lois Lefkovich), a"h.
If you are not a ba'al t'shuva, there is no time like the present. I'd hurry if I were you (actually, I already signed up for Oholos); opportunities like this are rare indeed.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thought for the Day: Love in the Time of Corona Virus/Anxiously Awaiting the Mashiach

Two scenarios: Scenario I: A young boy awakened in the middle of the night, placed in the back of vehicle, told not to make any noise, and the vehicle speeds off down the highway. Scenario II: Young boy playing in park goes to see firetruck, turns around to see scary man in angry pursuit, poised to attack. I experienced and lived through both of those scenarios. Terrifying, no? Actually, no; and my picture was never on a milk carton. Here's the context: Scenario I: We addressed both set of our grandparents as "grandma" and "grandpa". How did we distinguish? One set lived less than a half hour's drive; those were there "close grandma and grandpa". The other set lived five hour drive away; they were the "way far away grandma and grandpa". To make the trip the most pleasant for all of us, Dad would wake up my brother and I at 4:00AM, we'd groggily -- but with excitement! -- wander out and down to the garage where we'd crawl
Post a Comment
Read more

Thought for the Day: אוושא מילתא Debases Yours Shabbos

My granddaughter came home with a list the girls and phone numbers in her first grade class.  It was cute because they had made it an arts and crafts project by pasting the list to piece of construction paper cut out to look like an old desk phone and a receiver attached by a pipe cleaner.  I realized, though, that the cuteness was entirely lost on her.  She, of course, has never seen a desk phone with a receiver.  When they pretend to talk on the phone, it is on any relatively flat, rectangular object they find.  (In fact, her 18 month old brother turns every  relatively flat, rectangular object into a phone and walks around babbling into it.  Not much different than the rest of us, except his train of thought is not interrupted by someone else babbling into his ear.) I was reminded of that when my chavrusa (who has children my grandchildrens age) and I were learning about אוושא מילתא.  It came up because of a quote from the Shulchan Aruch HaRav that referred to the noise of תקתוק
Post a Comment
Read more

Thought for the Day: David HaMelech's Five Stages of Finding HaShem In the World

Many of us "sing" (once you have heard what I call carrying a tune, you'll question how I can, in good conscience, use that verb, even with the quotation marks) Eishes Chayil before the Friday night Shabbos meal.  We feel like we are singing the praises of our wives.  In fact, I have also been to chasunas where the chasson proudly (sometimes even tearfully) sings Eishes Chayil to his new eishes chayil.  Beautiful.  Also wrong.  (The sentiments, of course, are not wrong; just a misunderstanding of the intent of the author of these exalted words.) Chazal (TB Brachos, 10a) tell us that when Sholmo HaMelech wrote the words "She opens her mouth Mwith wisdom; the torah of kindness is on her tongue", that he was referring to his father, Dovid HaMelech, who (I am continuing to quote Chazal here) lived in five worlds and sang a song of praise [to each].  It seems to me that "world" here means a perception of reality.  Four times Dovid had to readjust his perc
Post a Comment
Read more