Skip to main content

Thought for the Day: HaShem Wants Talmidim, not Robotim

My daughter told me that my granddaughter had formed her first sentence yesterday, "No more cookies?"  I was very proud.  Then my daughter told me that, of course, little Avigayil then threw a temper tantrum.  Then I was proud and thrilled.  Not the normal thrill I get that comes from seeing my grandchildren give back to their parents what their parents gave to me.  (Ok; there was some of that also.)  This was the thrill of realizing that Avigayil really knows what she is saying, and the temper tantrum proved it.  If you break it down into steps, she must have formed a hypothesis that her mother was not going to give her more cookies, then checked her hypothesis against data (she asked her mother), then she responded appropriately.  That's really cool.  And that's bracha in its truest sense.

In this week's parsha, Avraham Avinu asks if Eliezer wouldn't be an appropriate heir.  Eliezer is called "damasek" because he would "doleh mei' toraso shel rabo u'mashke l'acheirim" -- he drew from the Torah of his master and taught to others.  Sounds like a perfect talmid, no?  Yet in a few weeks when we read of Avraham sending Eliezer to find a shiduch for Yitzchak, we are given a seemingly much different picture of the faithful servant.  Eliezer wants to propose his daughter as a wife for Yitzchak, but Avraham Avinu tells him no, because "you are arur (cursed), and I am baruch (blessed)"; a shiduch like that just won't work.  Isn't shocking that Avraham Avinu would speak to his faithful servant that way?  Isn't it even more shocking that Eliezer doesn't seem in the least perturbed nor insulted?

The word "baruch" means increase; it is related to "b'reicha" -- "pool".  Eliezer is static.  He draws from his master's well of Torah, but never digs his own well.  To be baruch you have to be searching and connecting to the ultimate and only source of all bracha, HaKadosh Baruch Hu.  If you are not doing that, then you "arur"; there is no middle ground.  Eliezer is known as "Eliezer eved Avraham", and he is proud of that.  No Jew is proud to be a slave of anyone or anything, except one, The One.  Including my granddaughter.  May the Lord have mercy on her parents.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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: 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: What Category of Muktzeh are Our Candles?

As discussed in a recent TftD , a p'sak halacha quite surprising to many, that one may -- even לכתחילה -- decorate a birthday cake with (unlit, obviously) birthday candles on Shabbos. That p'sak is predicated on another p'sak halacha; namely, that our candles are muktzeh because they are a כלי שמלאכתו לאיסור and not  מוקצה מחמת גופו/intrinsically set aside from any use on Shabbos. They point there was that using the candle as a decoration qualifies as a need that allows one to utilize a כלי שמלאכתו לאיסור. Today we will discuss the issue of concluding that our candles are , in fact, a כלי שמלאכתו לאיסור and not מוקצה מחמת גופו. Along the way we'll also (again) how important it is to have personal relationship with your rav/posek, the importance of precision in vocabulary, and how to interpret the Mishna Brura.  Buckle up. After reviewing siman 308 and the Mishna Brura there, I concluded that it should be permissible to use birthday candles to decorate a cake on Shabbo
Post a Comment
Read more