Michael el Chayil

I like to think of myself as someone who is not dense. You know, I pick up on important things. I just heard this same Chazal for the third time completely out of the blue (Pesachim 68b): רב יוסף ביומא דעצרתא אמר עבדי לי עגלא תלתא אמר אי לא האי יומא דקא גרים כמה יוסף איכא בשוקא Rav Yosef would make himself a beautiful BBQ on Shavuos, saying: If not for what that day (Shavuos) caused (ie, me to learn Torah), I would be just another Yosef in the marketplace. I first heard it on Shavuos night in the rav's shiur (I was in Boca Raton). Then a friend pointed me to a Beur Heitiv (Siman 494). Then I just heard a shiur  from R' Efraim Twerski on TorahAnytime.com . So what makes this Chazal so interesting? First, Rav Yosef seems to be "tooting his own horn" here. "I am a rav, and they aren't. I'm special, and they aren't."  Also, why is Rav Yosef focusing on the day? Shouldn't Rav Yosef be focusing on the Torah? It is  the Torah after all that makes us...

When my children were young, we had a book called, "Never Tease a Weasel." It was a cute story about how teasing and annoying someone is just not nice. Yet Chazal give us that advice for dealing with our יצר הרע/Evil Inclination. In fact, it's only one step in systematic strategy to subdue the יצר הרע/Evil Inclination (Brachos 5a).  R' Levi bar Chama, a person should constantly be use his יצר טוב/Good Inclination to antagonize his יצר הרע. If you win that battle; great! If not, then get involved in Torah. If you win that battle, great! If not, then say k'riyas Sh'ma. If you now win that battle, great! If not, remember you will die someday. One might ask, if remembering the day of death is the most powerful antidote to the יצר הרע, why not just start there and get on with your life? What's with the escalation and constantly trying new strategies?  What's the goal, in fact? I mean, if the יצר הרע is so dangerous, then is antagonizing it a good idea? Poki...

Brachos 8a seeks to explain the meaning of על זאת יתפלל כל חסיד אליך לעת מצא/For this every pious person will pray to you at the time He can be found (תהלים לב ו). I figured this would go quickly. After all, I know as well as anyone, when can He be found? During the 10 days between Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur. Right? Yes right, but this Chazal had something much different in mind. I started reading the Gemara and couldn't make much sense of it. I knew what all the words meant, but had no idea what realization I was meant to, well... realize. So I looked at Rashi: יתפלל שיהו מצויין לו כשיצטרך/Daven that is should be available when you need it Isn't that strange? What happened to just do your השתדלות/normal efforts and then rely on HaShem. The Gemara proceeds to list five things that you are most definitely going to need/want, but apparently they need more than just the normal השתדלות and reliance. I think Chazal are telling us that we need to plan our life around these things, ...

I volunteer a few hours each month at the ChesedChicago food co-op, which helps families in our community get kosher food at wholesale prices. They asked me to volunteer because of my advanced computer skills, which I use to update a spreadsheet that calculates their total. Someone else handles the actual payments, of course. Want to volunteer yourself? Check out opportunities at ChesedChicago . Last time I was there, I had the merit to help R' Efraim Twerski and I mentioned that I had not seen shiurim from him on TorahAnytime.com recently. I will take some credit, therefore, for his more recent post on Bitachon for Everyone . He started with an interesting conversation with a Jew who lives in another town who is a member of a shul that is quite Modern Orthodox. (R' Twerski said that as much as he doesn't like to label people, here it fits.) The man told him that they had five levels of security at the shul. Including, but not limited to, 65 closed circuit cameras to which ...

Why do we read Megilas Rus on Shavuos? Because, Chazal tell us, Megilas Rus is filled with acts of חסד/benevolence. Chazal go a step further to show the relevance (Sotah 14a): Rav Simlai expounded: The Torah begins with an act of חסד and ends with an act of חסד. It begins with an act of chesed, as it is written: ‘And the Lord G-d made for Adam and for his wife coats of skin, and clothed them' (Breishis 3:21); and it ends with an act of חסד, as it is written: 'And He buried him in the valley (Devarim 34:6). At shalosh s'udas the Shabbos before Shavuous, R' Fuerst, shlit''a, expounded on the importance of chesed as a preparation for and maintenance of receiving the Torah. He made the poin with a few stories, one of which was so inspiring that I said the story over to my wife. R' Fuerst repeated the story once again at the end of his Sunday morning shiur,  June 9. Here is link, story starts at 52:50: Shavous Shailos: meat and milk, dairy meal on yom tov, mistak...

While discussing how much I appreciate living in the Chicago Jewish community with a good friend and long-time/native resident, he made this observation: We have everything a Jewish community needs. We don't have the quantity that New York or Lakewood has, but we are not lacking anything in quality. The Midwest Bais Hora'ah, a dedicated group of five rabanim headed by R' Shmuel Fuerst, shlit''a, that handle nearly 800 calls a month (much, much more around Pesach, of course), is a shining example of that. They recently had their annual parlor meeting to raise needed funds. (Due to the volume of calls -- which is always increasing -- R' Fuerst would like to add two more rabanim; which takes money.) The highlight of the parlor meeting was divrei bracha from R' Fuerst followed by divrei chizuk from HaRav Avrohom Schorr. As R' Fuerst finished his divrei bracha, he prefaced his last point with: You may not want to hear this, but it is important. Everyone was v...

Great title, no? But that's the gemara (Brachos 5b/6a):  אַבָּא בִּנְיָמִין אוֹמֵר: שְׁנַיִם שֶׁנִּכְנְסוּ לְהִתְפַּלֵּל. וְקָדַם אֶחָד מֵהֶם לְהִתְפַּלֵּל, וְלֹא הִמְתִּין אֶת חֲבֵרוֹ. וְיָצָא. טוֹרְפִין לוֹ תְּפִלָּתוֹ בְּפָנָיו...  וְלֹא עוֹד, אֶלָּא שֶׁגּוֹרֵם לַשְּׁכִינָה שֶׁתִּסְתַּלֵּק מִיִּשְׂרָאֵל Abba Binyamin says, [if/when] two enter [a shul] to daven and one starts to daven before the other and doesn't wait for his friend, but leaves -- his t'fila is torn up in his face... Not only that, but he causes the Divine Presence to be removed from the Jewish people. Sounds bad, right? Like, really, really bad. What did the first guy do so wrong? The basic understanding is that they went to daven ma'ariv and in those days the shuls were out in the fields. That meant that leaving someone alone out there was putting him in some danger. At the very least it would make him nervous and distracted. That is, Jew A basically took away Jew B's t'fila. So, מידה כנגד מ...