I like good coffee; very good coffee. I am willing to spend time getting a good cup of coffee. As part of that quest, I have purchased a hand coffee mill. Not a grinder, a mill. An electric home coffee grinder would be better named "coffee pulverizer"; it is simply a blade that whacks the tasty coffee beans into a heterogeneous pile of powdered and chunked coffee beans. A coffee mill, on the other hand, uniformly grinds the beans between two stones. I bought a hand mill because: (a) I am cheap; and (b) it's ever so satisfying to drink a cup of coffee made from coffee milled with your own two hands. I also discovered two wonderful life lessons. First, when the grinding gets harder, that's when your doing the most good. When it gets too easy to turn the handle, either something is preventing the beans from entering between the grinding stones, or the hopper is empty. Second, turning the crank faster does not get the job done faster. The beans must enter between the stones to be ground; too fast and the beans cannot efficiently enter that small sweet spot. In fact, trying to go faster can actually impede progress and require more time for the same results.
The Peleh Yo'eitz makes a bold statement: everything we do -- davening, learning Torah, performing mitzvos -- has one result: to extricate קדושה/holiness from the קליפות/peels. He compares those trapped sparks of holiness to captured children of a king. The king is suffering even more than his imprisoned children. Anyone who can return even a single child to the kink earns a reward beyond imagination and a truly special place in the king's heart. So that is our job; retrieve those sparks of holiness and return them to the King, our Father, the Holy One, Blessed be He. Our reward is not something ancillary, it is joy of being reunited with our own family. What difference does it make if we are having an easy time or difficult time, says the Peleh Yo'eitz. After all, we are here only to achieve a purpose, not to live here!
Of the three categories mentioned by the Peleh Yo'eitz -- prayer, learning, performing mitzvos -- prayer is far and away the most difficult for me. That one I take slow and carefully; which often puts me behind everyone else. I therefore look for ways to be efficient. I'll share two with you that I recently honed with the approval of R' Fuerst.
Mincha is preceded by אשרי, which (of course), I say slower than everyone else. I therefore say אשרי as I am walking to shul. That has an additional benefit that I sometimes get a few extra minutes for other learning -- such as שניים מקרא ותרגום אחד. Once I have said אשרי, I don't need to repeat it even if I finish early before the congregation has even started.
The other modification I have is to not say the 18 verses inserted before the ma'ariv shmone esrei to give latecomers a chance to catch up. First, I am almost never a latecomer. Second, I can't keep up with the ontimecomers, who can really rip through those verses. In this case I slooow down (that is, say it at my normal speed) in my recital of sh'ma, thus finishing the last bracha after sh'ma as they are finishing the 18 added verses.
Little things, you say? Not even important enough to mention you say? Little diamonds are precious, each spark of holiness more precious to the Creator than our own children. Look for those times its "hard to turn the crank", and put special effort there.
The Peleh Yo'eitz makes a bold statement: everything we do -- davening, learning Torah, performing mitzvos -- has one result: to extricate קדושה/holiness from the קליפות/peels. He compares those trapped sparks of holiness to captured children of a king. The king is suffering even more than his imprisoned children. Anyone who can return even a single child to the kink earns a reward beyond imagination and a truly special place in the king's heart. So that is our job; retrieve those sparks of holiness and return them to the King, our Father, the Holy One, Blessed be He. Our reward is not something ancillary, it is joy of being reunited with our own family. What difference does it make if we are having an easy time or difficult time, says the Peleh Yo'eitz. After all, we are here only to achieve a purpose, not to live here!
Of the three categories mentioned by the Peleh Yo'eitz -- prayer, learning, performing mitzvos -- prayer is far and away the most difficult for me. That one I take slow and carefully; which often puts me behind everyone else. I therefore look for ways to be efficient. I'll share two with you that I recently honed with the approval of R' Fuerst.
Mincha is preceded by אשרי, which (of course), I say slower than everyone else. I therefore say אשרי as I am walking to shul. That has an additional benefit that I sometimes get a few extra minutes for other learning -- such as שניים מקרא ותרגום אחד. Once I have said אשרי, I don't need to repeat it even if I finish early before the congregation has even started.
The other modification I have is to not say the 18 verses inserted before the ma'ariv shmone esrei to give latecomers a chance to catch up. First, I am almost never a latecomer. Second, I can't keep up with the ontimecomers, who can really rip through those verses. In this case I slooow down (that is, say it at my normal speed) in my recital of sh'ma, thus finishing the last bracha after sh'ma as they are finishing the 18 added verses.
Little things, you say? Not even important enough to mention you say? Little diamonds are precious, each spark of holiness more precious to the Creator than our own children. Look for those times its "hard to turn the crank", and put special effort there.
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