Skip to main content

Thought for the Day: תחית המתים Every Second of Your Life

There is an old joke. The driver says to his blonde passenger, "Oh, no... I just glimpsed a police car in the rear view mirror! Are his lights flashing!" The blonde passenger turns around to look and reports, "No. Wait.. yes! No. Hmm... yes. No. Yes..."

Ha ha. A blinking light means sometimes on and sometimes off; silly blonde. However, on further thought, the light really isn't blinking. It is either on or off. "Blinking" is a word we use to describe something that we expect to turn back on after it turns off. If it fails to either turn on or off, but just stays in one state, it's not blinking. Again, though, that is our expectation that is failing, not the light. Maybe the jokes not on the blonde, after all; but on us.

In case you don't know how blood flows around the body, let me give you a simplified explanation. The heart has four chambers, the top two chambers are a staging area for the bottom two chambers. When the top two chambers are filled with blood, the top of the heart squeezes (that's the "lub" of the "lub-dub" of a beating heart) and smooshes the blood into the lower two chambers. Once the blood is wrung out of the top chambers and the lower chambers are filled, then the bottom of the heart squeezes (which is the "dub") -- forcing blood out of the heart; the right side flows to the lungs, the left to the entire body. Then the heart sits there and waits for the top to get filled again.

How does the top get filled again? The circulatory system is a closed system. When blood get pushed on one end, it moves everywhere. When the bottom of the heart wrings out its blood, that blood pushes the blood already in the lungs into the upper left chamber of the heart and the blood throughout the body into the upper right chamber. All terribly mechanical and simple to understand. Just needs one thing... for the heart to beat again.

In a very real sense, the heart stops each second, then starts each second. In the time it takes you to say the words at the second bracha of Shmone Esrei, ברוך אתה השםת, מחיה המתים, you have experienced a very personal תחית המתים/resurrection of your life. Each and every beat is a brand new thing. Each and every beat is a renewal/rejuvenation/resurrection of your life.

Sounds a bit dramatic for your taste? How about this? Every single person since the dawn of creation who has died, was alive just one beat before that that. In that time it takes you to say מודים/thanks in Shmone Esrei, you have about 15 moments of not dying. 15 near death experiences -- just one beat away! That's 15 great reasons to give thanks.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thought for the Day: Pizza, Uncrustables, and Stuff -- What Bracha?

Many years ago (in fact, more than two decades ago), I called R' Fuerst from my desk at work as I sat down to lunch.  I had a piece of (quite delicious) homemade pizza for lunch.  I nearly always eat at my desk as I am working (or writing TftD...), so my lunch at work cannot in any way be considered as sitting down to a formal meal; aka קביעת סעודה.  That being the case, I wasn't sure whether to wash, say ha'motzi, and bentch; or was the pizza downgraded to a m'zonos.  He told if it was a snack, then it's m'zonos; if a meal the ha'motzi.  Which what I have always done since then.  I recently found out how/why that works. The Shulchan Aruch, 168:17 discusses פשטיד''א, which is describes as a baked dough with meat or fish or cheese.  In other words: pizza.  Note: while the dough doesn't not need to be baked together with the meat/fish/cheese, it is  required that they dough was baked with the intention of making this concoction.  That is, even th
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

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